The toolshed

We put up the toolshed a while ago now, and it's been keeping various garden tools dry and out of the way (out from under the varandah) for a year now. I always intended to use cob to fill in the front wall, since tin is ugly (there is SO much corrigated iron around!!) and the wood used to construct it was bits of various sizes and shapes that we happened to have lying around. Since there are no straight edges, cob is a great choice.

Then I saw in a borrowed Ownder Builder (no.181) the back page has a great article about installing a bird nest into their cob garage as it was being built. This inspired me! See, we have a great problem, lots of native blue banded bees call our cottage wall home, and this year they managed to burrow right through and into the kitchen. We've plugged the hole temporarly, but I would love to build them more mud walls. I don't feel right about repairing the kitchen wall until they have somewhere else to call home first.

So, we're poking blue banded-sized holes into the cob to start them off. I also would like to add some bamboo on end for some of the small mud wasps (they fill every little hole with mud), and of course the bigger mud wasps are always welcome to add their nests to the walls as well. They're enjoying making a muddy mess of the bathroom mirror right now. Yep, mud wasp central here. Luckily for us they all seem friendly enough.

I've also inserted a few old Fowlers jars for a little extra light when looking for the shovel. I don't know that they'll make a difference, but they're fun anyway. It's going to take a while to finish, it's not as fast as putting up a few bits of tin, but it'll be a whole lot nicer to look at, and hopefully create some habitat as well.