Mini updates #5 and #6

We've moved in and I'm back at the old lappy! I am slowly trying to read all the blogs I have been missing (getting there). I feel I have 100 things to write about and am still playing catchup, so here are two more update snippets.

#5

Look! Look! It's a nearly completed and tidy house space! Very exciting :)

This shows some of the things I have been rambling on about for the last 15 months: 'Australian Chestnut' hardwood floors (really up to four different species of Eucalypt), high double glazed windows (looking east), Danish couches (new to us, IE second-hand), 'Parchment' wall paint (Solver), and good old ceiling-white paint on top. And I do believe this is the first appearance of D's fish tank on this blog? It may feature in later posts, on and off.
Still to do in this section: my photo wall, adding a rug or two, and a reshuffle of the furniture. I am pretty happy with this corner of the house so far, especially considering that from the point that I took that photo, if I'd turned about 180 degrees to take it you'd see complete chaos and it would look like a different house (with quite nice floors).


#6

The Great Fence Project.

This is what I've been attacking over the last month or so: planting a variety of fruit trees along the fence (mostly figs and citrus so far), and removing the clumps of old Agapanthus planted along there. Apologies for the dodgy photos; I didn't realise how blurry they were until I loaded them up! So far I have removed well over 200 individual Agapanthus plants (rhizomes?) This is, in short, a crap-load of hard work. They're surprisingly shallow rooted, but very heavy and bulky. I feel that rather than using a spade to remove them, I'd be better off with a machete. It's an unpleasant and particularly dirty task, made worse by the sticky and slimy gloop that the broken leaves exude.


It feels a little thankless, at times, to have been hacking away at the clumps for hours and only have cleared a small space, and then to have looked up and see the meters and meters of plants stretching away in front of me still waiting to be cleared. I persist because of all that lovely warm and sunny west-facing garden space they will free up once they're gone.
Bottom left of this photo is a representative of one of my new espalier-babies (a Eureka Lemon). I plan to try my hand at espaliering a whole row of fruit trees along this fence, but I'll devote a whole post to that later.



FWIW, many of these Aggies are going to family member's gardens. I feel a bit torn about it: I hate to waste a perfectly usable and useful plant (drought tolerant, fire retardant, endlessly green), but on the other hand a fairly serious environmental weed, though not a declared one, and often still available for sale, and mainly a problem when garden waste is dumped in bushland. If the old flower heads are removed before they scatter seed everywhere they're not really a problem (but still...)

Must go. Need to be up at the crack of dawn for the early-bird plumber tomorrow.