[Aliantha]

Mav has been talking about breeding birds for a while now. We have an aviary which we've never used since we moved to this house, so I told him I didn't see a problem with his plan at all. So he settled on peach faces because they're good breeders and easy to care for.

The major impediment is that the boat has been parked next to the aviary which restricts access and really would make it kind of hard to sit and look at the birds anyway, so I suggested to Mav that we clean up the shed and put the boat away (something I've been waiting for almost 2 yrs for my husband to do), and then next weekend we can clean out the aviary and make the garden nice around it again, and then all he needs to do is build a couple of breeding boxes (easy peasy) and away he goes.

So we went out to the shed yesterday, and Aden and Max came mostly to watch at first, but then we started making some really good head way and they got into the spirit of it all and started helping out. Before long we had everything stacked neatly around the edges, tools sorted, fishing gear in the boat or in the right spot on the work bench, floor swept, and general rubbish in the bin. The whole job took less than 2 hours from start to finish, and the boat is now in the shed leaving unrestricted access to the aviary.

I should have taken before and after shots. Aden's first comment was that it didn't take as long as he thought it would, and Mav just looked happy about it all. Max went around the floor picking up all the runaway sinkers.

They all did a great job, and said to Aden, "Imagine how much quicker it would have been done if you'd gotten stuck into it right from the start".

Food for thought.