Farm #1, which is actually a garden.

So, we've all seen those gardens in Home and Garden magazine and on the gardening shows and think it most be impossible to maintain or even make a garden like that, right? Well, our current hosts have one of those gardens. I even saw their glossy spread of it in Home and Garden. It's crazy, it's huge! Their home looks out into the Blue Hills, and they're surrounded by other farms. Our hosts are Denis and Lynnette, who seem quite in love and call their home paradise. Adorable.

Our work has been fairly easy, mostly weeding of sorts. Our first day we pulled a cactus nicknamed Mother of Millions out of the agpanthas, reminding me of my environmental restoration class (dad you can have a chuckle). They practice permaculture, so everything that you would think is waste isn't. In fact, Jen got the job of scraping off the top layer of pond scum off of the pond and spreading it around trees (which were also surrounded by horse shit) to keep them moist and insulate them from the frost. We are learning quite a bit from Denis about permaculture, and Jen has got all the info down in her journal in adorable diagrams. The art degree is going to good use. We work for five hours, including a break for tea and cakes that seems to last an hour. They cook all of our meals and refuse all of our offers to help. We feel truly spoiled. And I've befriended their long-haired chihuahua Kevin. Only an Australian would name their dog Kevin.

We are leaving tomorrow for the Blue Montains. We had to buy some more clothing for the trip so we don't freeze in the night, but in another week after we've passed through the mountains we'll be leaving the clothes behind. But that's okay because we bought them for dirt cheap at the Big W, which was "rolling down prices"... After the mountains is our next farm, which we don't know where it is yet. We're going to try to go to this farm that also owns a B&B in a winery town and work out some deal that we could work double for a few days stay at the B&B. We'll see if that works. And now we need to walk back to the farm before the sun goes down and the "goons" get us, as Denis says.