Front path a masterpiece in recycling.

I haven't shown you any renovation pictures in eons, so will skip a discussion of growing eggplant from seed (or rather, a series of complaints about growing eggplant from seed) to show you our front path instead. It's only halfway through, but taking shape beautifully, and so far we've not spent a single cent on it. Bonus!

It starts here: with the porch. Pity I forgot to take a 'before' photo, but never mind. Why demolish the porch? Because it was broken and cracking, and right up against the old weatherboard, which was rotting. As the porch was peeled away, it became clear that the whole thing was damp and pretty terrible for airflow and general building health, so off it goes. We'll replace it with a little deck, we think. And I'm keeping the old iron scroll work pillars, because I like them.

Under those layers of tan-brown tiles, and rusty red stained concrete, there was sand and rock, and lots and lots of it.

 FIL had a flash of inspiration. A while ago, I'd mentioned just chucking a whole heap of paving sand around the 'pavers' I'd salvaged from when we demolished the back patio and have been using as stepping stones to the front gate. FIL thought he could dig up all the sand from the front porch (since he was going to anyway) and use that instead. Brilliant! The garden edging down the left of the path is old hardwood beams we had (although if they're old ones from our house, or ones the neighbour gave us, I can't remember).

 

Right down the back of  the path, behind FIL in this photo, is our new gate, which D has been building in dribs and drabs over the last few weeks to help make our yard a little more toddler-safe. Our gate is actually our old back door, with a recycled hardwood architrave. I think I'll paint it pillar-box red, or yellow. I like yellow, at the moment. We've put a little trellis to the right-hand side to climb plants up and over this space (I have planted roses, the native 'wisteria' Hardenbergia violacea 'Rosea,' and native clematis, Clematis microphylla). For the gardeners, other plants I have in this space - though barely visible at this stage - include the natives Plectranthus argentatus, Plectranthus  parvifolius, Hibbertia aspera, Guichenotia macrantha, and Goodenia amplexans. I've also got lemon balm and nasturtiums in here. This scrap of garden is probably the most challenging spot I've come across so far: it's quite shady, narrow, and not just dry but actually water-repellent. So far I've added loads of compost, manure, and clay to address the issues faced here.

And just for fun, here's a happy snap of the other half of the front garden which I took tonight at my favourite time of day: when the sun is getting low in the sky and shines though my Poas, which swish and shimmy in the breeze. All those roses are going to explode into flower in just a couple of weeks. Last year this happened in November, but some of the buds are splitting open already so I think they might bloom early this year.

I forgot to title this one.

With the warm weather has come a blossoming of activity at our little house. We've been painting our window frames with their undercoats and putting them up. And I really mean 'we' this time, even I wielded a paintbrush for one of them, and SP had the most fabulous time painting with water all over the patio. People are coming next week (I think) to put in the glass for the windows and our big doors too. Yet another thing I didn't know about building: not all windows come with glass automatically (like baths aren't sold with plug fittings, who knew?! Honest to God, I really thought that they came together!)


Aaaand... the sparkies have made their first visit to do the pre-wiring bits and pieces.


I LOVE how quickly the two of them managed this part. It took them six hours, including tea-breaks, to wire up our entire little house as much as it needs to be at this stage. Fantastic! Now we have loops of cables around everywhere.


What's one nifty green trick we got them to do for us? We asked them for a remote switch in what's going to be our TV room/library, so when we turn off the lights at night we can turn of the TV and stereo at the same time with side by side switches on the wall, just to help eliminate the 'hassle factor' and so we remember to do it each night. Easy peasy!

It's really starting to look more like a little house now, and like we might actually get to move back in one day!

Rambly renovation post

I thought it was about time I did a renovation update... not that there is very much to update you on. Autumn of 2011 in Adelaide was the coldest we'd had in 56 years, and one of the wettest as well. Needless to say, this impacted on how much work could be done since it's all still at an outdoor stage. Nevertheless, there has been some progress and the tank plumbing is very nearly finished! We are having the rain water plumbed into the house so in times of plenty we can use it inside as well as on the garden (the concrete is just there temporarily to stop the pipes floating away before they could be covered).


One day, this will be lawn and garden beds, and what a happy day that will be. Right now, as you walk across it, you get gradually taller as the clay builds up on your shoes.


Speaking of chunks of concrete...


I have had an idea, it's very environmentally friendly, but whether or not it will actually look good remains to be seen. I wanted to put in a path through the front garden rose bed, and I liked our old green-coloured concrete patio, and I thought I might be able to reuse some of the bigger broken pieces to make stepping stones. I especially liked this chunk, which features an engraved arrow (by FIL, for purposes known only to him).


I've been collecting up the remnants of the green slab, and laying them through the garden to see how they look. I think I like it. They're not in place properly yet, of course, I still have to finish dispensing with the gravel (FIL promises me he'll have somewhere to put it out the back very soon, to use in the retaining or something something). Then I'll set them down flush with the soil and plant some creeping, crawling, scrambling little plants around them to soften up the edges. Hmmm. Might work?

Company in the shower

Sometimes we forget that our houses are not impermeable, and that we have built them smack-bang in the middle of various habitats, so it's good to have a reminder from time to time of why we should be looking after the Earth in whatever small ways we can. My reminder came yesterday, when I found I was sharing my shower with a little friend. I got out, wrapped myself in towel, took a few happy snaps, rewet my hands, and then, gently gently gently, coaxed him onto my hand and took him back outside. Dear little Southern Brown Tree Frog, I hope you find our yard safe to stay in.

Expo update

So, did I go to the Gardening Australia Expo? I did indeed! And did I buy anything? Oh yes, but I managed to restrain myself to a mere nine plants, all little locals (provenance). Most were only $3 each, and one I got from Trees For Life for a gold coin donation (I am very seriously considering joining them to grow plants for revegetation projects).

In my bag I have:
1 x Sticky Hop Bush (Dodonaea viscosa)
2 x Knobby Club Rush (Isolepis nodosa)
1 x Small fruited Fan Flower (Scaevola albida)
2 x Native pelagonium (Pelagonium australe)
1 x Clasping goodenia (Goodenia amplexans)
1 x Old Man's Beard (Clematis microphylla)
1 x Native lilac (Hardenbergia voliacea)

I must make a special mention of the Clasping Goodenia. It's an odd little plant. It has bright green leaves, quite rough like sandpaper, and pretty yellow flowers which fold downwards when they are open. But the most notable feature of this little plant is the very strong herbal smell, some call it 'spicy'. It's a memory smell for me, it's the Hill's bush in our oven-hot summers; it's watching an echidna trundle through the low, wind-clipped shrubbery by the beach; it's the snap, crackle and pop of eucalyptus pods opening, smoke smudging the horizon, and sun so bright you can hardly see between the trees.

Resting the vegie patch

I had the opportunity yesterday to have a bit of a potter in the vegie garden. I pulled out a few weeds, picked some Amish Paste tomatoes, and pulled out most of the daggy squash and zucchini plants. Plenty is still going on out there, even though the days are rapidly cooling and shortening.

My 'Yellow Patio Watermelon' has one lonely melon, but I am guarding it zealously and hoping like mad nothing happens to it before it ripens! It's about as long as my hand so far.

The Broccolini was ready to be picked so we sliced the tops off with a sharp knife. Three out of four plants produced lovely heads, though small. The fourth was totally insect infested and went straight to the compost heap. I left the plants in place to see if they'll do anything else. About a fortnight ago I also planted baby cauliflowers, some brussel sprouts, and more broccoli. I did have both broccoli and cauli seeds sown which had sprouted about a month ago, but they got frizzled off by a few very hot days.  

The pepino looks good. Nothing has tried to eat it yet!

The pumpkins are a disappointment overall. I will have to try again next year. We have only one butternut pumpkin (Butternut squash for the rest of the world!) actually growing. A number of other pumpkins started and swelled a little, then fell off. Maybe I planted them too late? There did seem to be an awful lot of male flowers compared to female ones.

This pumpkin, which I must admit I can't remember the name off, still looks healthy and strong but considering how the rest of the pumpkins went I'm skeptical that any of the fruit will go beyond their current walnut size. 

The other recent action in the vegie patch was green manure sowing. For the uninitiated, green manure crops are crops which are grown to add organic matter and nutrients to the soil. You sow plants like clover, beans, fenugreek etc, and you slash them down when they are still green and then mix them into the soil or use them as a mulch on top. They're something I've read quite a lot about but have never actually tried. I didn't have specific green manure mixes on hand at the time, but I did have fenugreek spice seeds from the supermarket which sprout very readily (in a day or two, in fact) which are legumes and will fix nitrogen (from the air to the soil). We can also eat the leaves as a herb. I also had half a packet of sprouting seeds (chick peas, mung beans and soy beans) from a very brief and unsuccessful foray into sprout growing which I scattered out there as well. A few weeks ago it looked like this:

And now it looks like this:

I've put patches of green manure throughout the entire vegetable garden and in the new garden bed I am still very slowly creating around it.

The nature strip takeover continued.

Today I finally, finally, got the chance to plant my native babies into the nature strip out the front. To set the scene: the Weather Bureau is predicting that we here in Adelaide will have the average rainfall for March over these few days (beginning last night, we dreamt to the sound of it drumming on the room and spattering off the gum trees). This morning SP had her swimming lesson with D (how very suburban of us) and I took the opportunity to get digging out the front. It was drizzling a little when I started, and the rain continued alternating between heavier and lighter, spotting and spotting, grey and misty. The cars splashed past me, and I probably got a few sideways looks as I got wetter, and wetter and wetter. No doubt my neighbours thought I was odd (Honey, that girl next door, the one that never wears shoes, is even weirder than we thought), but I was having a brilliant time: scraping away the dolomite layer with my mattock; cutting into the slippery clay; adding the peat and compost mix and stirring it all about with a hand fork. There is something sublime about playing in the mud and the leaves like that.

Anyway, here are the babies ready to go with their peat and compost bedding;

and here they wait in the mist while I dig their beds;

down the western end of the nature strip the water runs off the path and over the gravel. I chose this spot to put the Common Rush as it prefers boggy ground;

and now they have been all snuggled into their holes with a little basin around each to hold the water.

Later on I'll add a row(?) of Tussock Grasses along the path to tie in a little with the planting along the fence;

Species List:

Correa 'Dusky Bells'

Poa poiformis (coastal tussock grass)

Eremophila 'Rottnest Emu Bush' (red flowered form)

Eremophila maculata compacta (red flowered form)

Eremophila 'Kalbarri Carpet'

Melaleuca fulgens 'CF Payne'

Grevillea lavendulacea (Victor Harbour form)

Juncus ursitatus (Common Rush)

Last day of Summer.

Today is the last day of Summer and the days have already cooled. To celebrate its passing I went for a wander around the front yard to see how everything was going.

A few weeks ago I posted that I had bought some Coastal Tussock Grasses to plant along my front fence line. They were planted at each fence post and are doing well and showing no sign of stress at all.

In between each of the grasses I planted a couple of Common Thyme out of a punnet. Over time, I'm hoping they will grow and spread to fill the space along the front of the fence and cover up the unsightly dolomite.

Overall I think it should have a nice architectural kind of look. Both the grass and the thyme were chosen because they are very hardy and should required minimal care.  (Apologies for the quality of the photo - or lack thereof - very bright and glarey conditions out there today.)

I found a nice surprise out by the front gate too, poking through the fence from the shared access way on the other side: Cream coloured Belladonna Lillies (Amarylillis sp.), although I grew up calling them Easter Lillies because that is when they appear in our area. Most of the ones around here are pink, so these seem just that bit more special being different. 

And out the back? Gigantic zucchinis! Oh, I know, I know, everybody manages to grow huge zucchinis and then goes on to take a few photos and after this they try to eat them and find them virtually inedible, but it really is amazing how fast they went from big to enormous, and I think they must weigh almost as much as my tiny girl and the photo opportunity was too good to pass over. I've had to remove almost all the zucchini and squash leaves now as they predictably got Downy Mildew on them (and boy, that appears as quickly as the zucchinis grow), but I've left the stems and remaining small fruits - the plants look like thorny snakes now - and I will see if we can grow just a few more before they're finished for good. 

So, as you know, we have moved to my MIL's house while we do a fairly major renovation of our house. The next post will show you what's been done so far, but for the time being I'll leave you with a sneak peak of MIL's most beautiful and inspirational garden, together with my most beautiful and inspirational SP.

Encroaching on the nature strip

Why stick to gardening within your fence line? When I was planting my little lavender hedge, I couldn't help noticing how bare and drab it was on the verge. Most of it is compacted dolomite, which suppresses even the most tenacious of weeds, although someone at some point has planted a few daisies down the driveway end.


Over the last week, I got stuck into the beginnings of a verge-makeover. I have begun immediately adjacent to our fence by removing the dolomite, and adding a home-made mix of coir peat (dead-cheap), compost, a dash of manure and sand. This shot is from a halfway point, when the dolomite is gone but the new 'soil' only partially added. In a couple of weeks, once it's all settled in, and once this horrendous heat has subsided, I'm going to plant clumping native grasses by each post (perhaps Poa poiformis, Coastal Tussock Grass) and something small and creeping and grey-leaved in between (but what? A trip to the State Flora Nursery is in order!)


SP was fascinated by the coir peat, helping it to break apart in the water, my little gardener!

Next up will be greening the little bit of ground by the road. I'd like to put in mostly small indigenous plants (current daisies excepted, they may stay), something for the birds and the butterflies: grevillias, goodenias, correas (correas! Yay!), eremophilas, grasses...
I have to check with the council first, but I can't imagine they'd have a problem with what I would like to do.

The Grand Plan

Oh, oh, oh, now this is exciting! For me, anyway.
As you may or may not know, we bought this house at the end of March last year. Aside from the totally awesome location, top of my personal priority list was that it had a big north-facing garden and no pine trees. Well, two out of three ain't bad, as they say. Big yard? Check! The total block is over 800m2, which whilst not enormous is still very decent size. North facing? Certainly is! 20 degrees off North (I'm told). No pine trees? Unfortunately, you can't always have everything you want (or don't want, in this case) and there is a whopper of a pine tree overhanging the north-east corner of our block, blocking lots of sun, stealing water, and acidifying the soil. This is our yard right this minute, in all it's weedy and 'work-in-progress' glory.


So over the last nine months or so I have been looking at our back yard, our virtually blank canvas, watching where the sun warms, looking at the contours, and thinking and dreaming and plotting to myself. And this is what I have come up with. Very pretty, even though I am a bit inept with the old coloured pencils.


It's not obvious in the photo above, but there is some slope in our yard, with the patch under the pine tree being the highest point. My central idea with the garden plan is to basically take what is existing in the yard already in a soft and unformed kind of way, and add bones with stone walls and a touch of terracing. I'd like the retaining walls to look a little like the slate cladding below, with its blue greys and warm reds. Not sure yet how this will be achieved, but my father-in-law is on the case for me.


When we in Japan, I wanted to see Tofukuji temple in Kyoto, and in particular the paving stones dissolving into moss. We never made it to that temple, we ran out of time, but I am channelling the Tofukuji Zen Garden nonetheless, and would like to mimic that paving with large pavers and grass, but beginning with a solid patio/courtyard rather than a checkerboard (Google it).

The house does not yet extend that far into the yard, but it will in the not-too-distant future; plans for a house extension are being drawn up by a draftsman even as you sit and read this. In a nutshell, looking at the bottom of the plan and reading upwards, we'll have a big extension on the back of the house with lots of glass, then a formal-ish courtyard with a curved seating area on top of the wall. I'd like the right-hand side of the courtyard to have a slightly sunken feel, which I'm hoping to achieve with careful planting. In the future, there will be some sort of trellising over the courtyard with deciduous vines to provide shade in summer, and extra sunlight in winter. Then you walk out over the paving which blends into the lawn. Straight ahead will be a lawn with a large water tank at the back, and perhaps a couple of small gum trees, underplanted with aggies (recycled from the current planting over the existing retaining walls). If you walk right, there's a raised area with trees underplanted with smaller plants on one side, and a large vegetable garden on the other.
I will be planting as many edible and food plants as I can, with lots of other pretty but hardy plants in between. Later we'd like some chickens. They can have a coop up the back, and free range during the day.
Does this all make sense? Easy enough to draw, but hard to put into words! And who knows how much of it will come to fruition, subject to the idiosyncrasies of climate as we are? My garden will grow, it will change, it will take 20 years to look remotely like I imagine. I can hardly wait, but I must.


SUMMARY (click on image to zoom)

1- Gums
2- Row of plum trees
3- Compost heap (very glam!)
4-Vegetable garden
5- Espaliered fruit trees
6- Kiwi Fruit on trellis
7- Dissolving pavement
8- Mulberry Tree (exisiting, very small!)
9- Fig tree (existing, may espalier)
10- Tahitian Lime
11- Kaffir Lime
12- Apricot tree (existing, small)
13- Fruit tree (not sure what yet, nectarine?)
14- Lemon tree (existing, small)
15- Japanese quince (existing, small)
16- Garden bed, shrubs
17- Garden bed, shrubs
18- Water tank + agapanthus.

Paws and Peas

I have become enamoured of Kangaroo Paws (Anigozanthus sp). Close up, they splay out half a dozen flowers like an extended hand, closer still, each flower opens like a furred six-pointed starburst.

(Image from the Australian Native Plant Society)

But from a distance, a single plant is not especially striking, with it's low strappy leaves close to the ground. It's a bit of a shy and retiring kind of plant, and to be honest I hadn't thought too much about it, my Native Love being almost entirely focused on Correas (Ahhh, Correas!)

And then I saw them planted along the new, rather extravagant and overblown overpass between South Road and Anzac Highway in Adelaide (for those playing at home), of all places. And then I understood. To appreciate the Kangaroo Paw, that retiring native from Western Australia, you must see them en masse. The flowers, which can be up to 2m tall, rise above those green strappy leaves in a froth of upraised hands. Beautiful.

(Image from here)

So, naturally, I must have some kangaroo paws in my garden. Lots and lots of them. I google, I look them up, I work out how many I would need (perhaps 100+), I am aghast; even little plants are $8 each. $800 in Kangaroo Paws? I am, for all intents and purposes, a stay-at-home-mum. I have no money, but I do have lots of time. Off to Ebay, where I dither for an hour: do I want yellow ones, or red ones? And then in the post arrive 150 Red Kangaroo Paw Seeds (Anigozanthus flavidus: $3). Read the instructions, seems fairly straight forward - plant in seed-raising mix, keep damp etc - wish me luck!


With my Paws, I also ordered 40 Sturt's Desert Pea seeds (Swainsona formosa: $3), the SA floral emblem, dontcha know?

(Image from Fir0002/Flagstaffotos).

They're pretty cool, and seeing the seeds for sale I couldn't resist. The propagation instructions for the Peas is, unlike the Paws, not very straight forward. One must soak the seeds overnight in hot water (which is happening as I write).


Then 'nick the seed coat of the seed lightly with a sharp knife opposite the eye'. Hmmm. They're only about 2mm long. And flat. Then they need to be soaked again. Mind you, some more googling tells me I might be able to get away with just very hot water, lest I slice off a finger in my nicking attempts. Or I can use sandpaper to break the coat open. I am hedging my bets by just trying half of the seeds to begin with. Such a hard coat is necessary in the wild to protect the seed until ideal germination conditions arrive (we have a hard climate, here in SA). And then I read that they can be hard plant to maintain in a home garden. $3 well spent, or more trouble than they're worth? We will see!

Vegie garden snapshot

Just a quick one today to show you how the vegie garden is looking. Those zucchini plants are looking especially spectacular at the moment! And the tomato at the right - an Amish paste - is much bigger than any of the other tomatoes, which are all elsewhere in pots or another garden bed. The pumpkin and melon plants are all still quite small, but are starting to get flowers, as are the eggplants (centre). I freely admit that the grass matting along the fence isn't great, but the western sun beats down on that iron and plants are getting sizzled on the hot days, so it's there temporarily to help cut down on that reflective heat.


Yesterday we made a shopping trip to Bunnings and I came away with a horseradish plant, some rainbow chard (the roots are coloured too!), some cos lettuce, some spring onion seeds, and an experiment: 'Mr and Mrs Kiwifruit' vines. Since then I have been doing a bit of reading, and I have to say that I didn't realise that kiwifruit could get so big! A plant to watch for sure, let's hope it doesn't take over the backyard, or bring the fence down. Try as I might, I cannot find any information about what cultivar of kiwifruit it is, so I will have to assume it is Hayward, which is the most common and well known.