Honest backyard photo

This is our backyard. Midwinter, retaining walls still under construction with their black plastic and piles of rubble and soil, and our patchy, un-mown lawn. It has been raining so much that lawn is under over an inch of water at the moment. That will drain once the rain stops, but that will take a few days (both the raining and the draining).  Still, since a couple more rows have been added to the wall, I felt it deserved a progress shot. Also, some honesty in blogging is always good. 

More storms

A smattering of vivid yellow leaves can make even the daggiest building site backyard shine in the breaks in the clouds. 

Concreting

Again... 

Footings for our next wall. 

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.

The Great Wall of Adelaide.

Five meters down, only about 40m to go! We are busy packing all the rocks we've dug up back in behind there, and later on (today? In my dreams!) I'll plant my plum trees in the level we've created. A long way down the track the wall will be rendered to attempt to beautify it, but for the time being we are concentrating on the structure only (the 'bones'). Naturally, yesterday when D didn't have a day off the weather was absolutely perfect. Today, when he's home to help its warm, sunny and very, very, very windy. Not half an hour after I was admiring the gorgeous purple and fuchsia flowers on my Japanese snow peas they were swept off their trellis, bending and breaking half way down. Pooh!

Getting organised.

Look what I spent the afternoon doing: laying out my future vegie garden! The boards are temporary markers - just old weatherboards from the old cladding - but when we build the real beds they'll be made out of recycled hardwood boards (donated by our old neighbour for getting rid of the pine tree). Each bed is about 1m wide by 2m long so I'll have 8m square of dedicated vegetable growing area, although I'm sure I'll keep squeezing random vegies into other patches of the garden.

After I took this photo I got to work digging out a bit of a ramp on the right hand side and levelling out the area where the beds will go (terracing them though in a disorganised 'make it up as I go along' kind of way, Katie-style). It got dark while I dug but I was on a roll so we set up FIL's spotlight and kept working for another hour. Now I have blisters and a warm sense of self-satisfaction for a lot of dirt moved today.

A bit grim out there today

You'd have no real idea from this picture just how cold and wet and windy it is outside today. There are the raindrops on the window (for I was standing outside to take this) and a bit of a wet sheen on the paving.


I am torn between going to the shops (to do some SP-free girly shopping, nice but not necessary) and staying inside in the warm looking at pictures of gardens on Pinterest (not Productive). I am also hoping this sideways rain doesn't wash our groundworks down the driveway.

You see, on the slightly nicer days we've had recently, D and I have been busy digging to make foundations for our retaining-walls-to-be. I say 'digging' but mostly I mean 'moving rocks.' You can see my original garden plan here, and for the most part the retaining (the darker lines in that image) will be about the same shape and in the same place, except for right up at the back fence where the ground is so rocky we have decided to forget about trying to make the wall go straight to the fence, and instead there is going to be a little raised area by the water tank where I hope to have a garden seat and some overhanging trees so I can sit up the back of the yard and admire the view (such as it will be: a completed view and organised garden, rather than the Shambles it is now.)

In the background you can see our unfinished chicken coop (a Work In Progress for over 6 months now, oops), the only passionfruit vine I have ever managed to grow well (on the fence), and where that lonely Styrofoam tub is is roughly where I am going to put my raised vegie beds once the retaining is done and that area is flattened out properly.


I am SO looking forward to having this done. It will be a big tick off the To Do list (a huge tick, in fact) and then I will no longer have a yard which looks like a building site. I can hardly wait!

(Winter countdown: 15 days left).

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.

Mini updates #3 and #4

#3 Three cheers for indoor plumbing: hip hip hooray! And, if the Gods are with us, we'll have hot water by the end of Tuesday :)

#4 An autumn colour happy-snap: my crabapple seems to be settling into the rose garden nicely (Malus ioensis 'plena'). I suppose I won't know for sure until next spring when it bursts back into life with blooms, but I'm looking forward to viewing it from our bedroom window!

Mini update #1 and #2

The idea here is to do a series of quick updates over the next few posts, seeing as I don't seem to be able to get to the old blog very often any more (and I haven't been able to read many others, either, sorry everybody! I have been neglecting you, though not intentionally.)

#1 Renovation update:

While we've been pottering along and things are slowly happening, not much of it has been particularly newsworthy. The big news of the day is that our bathroom bits and bobs should be arriving at the end of the week, and all things being even the plumber is going to visit early next week and we'll have an INDOOR TOILET! (I want to hash-tag that #firstworldproblems...), and if he's really on a roll we might even get, like, running water inside and not need to bring it in in buckets anymore. Actually, I lie, D brought home an empty 20L olive oil cask from work and we've been filling that with water. From time to time we've slept over at the house, but the lack of plumbing is terribly inconvenient so we limit it to once or twice a week.

In slightly more photogenic news, I've tried out some samples of paint on the exterior of the house. I wanted to paint it purple or mauve, so we tried it: everybody hated the lavender tone on sight - including me - and although I quite liked the darker purple I was the only one and well outvoted, so I came to my senses and went off the paint shop to look for what I like to call 'dove grey.' I'm not sure if this qualifies as dove grey - suspect that's a matter of opinion - but is IS very pretty, and no one is looking at me like I have two-heads with this colour, this time. (On a side note: I can hardly wait until I can tackle the landscaping in the backyard and stop ignoring the weeds, though Heaven only knows when that will happen.)



Mini Update #2: Microcitrus: for the gardeners.

Back in August last year I bought myself a Fingerlime (Microcitrus australasica). Recently I finally got around to repotting it in a terracotta pot and he's doing quite well so far. In the last 7 or 8 months he's grown perhaps an inch higher and is lovely and healthy. At that time I also bought my first Australian ground orchid, a greenhood Pterostylis curta). And although I don't have any photos yet, I'm happy to report that it has come out of dormancy after the Summer and resprouted from five bulbs. One fell victim to a snail or slug the moment it poked it's green nose out of the sand, but I whipped the rest away to safety and surrounded the new shoots with a protective ring of snail bait (bad greenie, I know!)

Early Autumn?

It was only 21c in Adelaide today, which is very, very weird for the middle of February. Most years, around about this time, we swelter through our annual 40+ Celsius heatwave for a week or two, but so far (fingers crossed) this seems to have passed us by. I'm not complaining; it's lovely weather, and absolutely perfect for gardens provided we water diligently. I am wondering if Autumn is here early this year - some of the trees in the main street are starting to blush already. Autumn is my favourite season, and if it turns into an Indian Summer that might be quite nice, so long as it rains, (please, Huey!)

The veggie patch is doing beautifully for us at the moment and we are able to make complete pasta sauces or ratatouille with our harvests now! We got this whole entire box of veg the other day in a quick whip around the garden (for the record we have: overgrown spring onions, loads of baby corn, two different eggplants, some pale green capsicums, three different zucchinis, yellow and green beans, Desiree potatoes, and the inevitable tomatoes).


And on the home front? The kitchen is starting to look like it might be finished in the near future! We need the electrician and plumber to make another visit to hook everything up and attach some power points and our pendant cords to the ceiling (we've tacked them up just to see what they look like). We also need to make a decision on the splashback. We do have some tiles we like but are looking to see if there is a more economical option out there (probably not, but best to check!) And we need architraves and skirting boards. And to put on the door and drawer handles. And to put on another door or two (they were up, but the boys wanted to use different hinges so off they came). But apart from all that, it's almost done.

And you might notice that the top left unit has changed? That's because I'm a woman and I'm entitled to change my mind. Originally I wanted book shelves down both the left and right hand sides of the top cupboards to the bench. I got vetoed on the right hand side shelves and I can't even remember why, but we kept them on the left side. I didn't like it, I prefer symmetry and, actually, we all thought the same. So out came the power saw and the bottom was lopped off and I think it looks much better this way.

Our kitchen is taking shape.

I have been reminded that it's been ages since I've done a renovation update. You'd think that nothing had been happening, which is not true. Lots has been happening, but I had hit the 'over it' renovating speed bump I think most people encounter. Anyway, I've dragged up some energy for a quick post with a couple of progress piccies to share.

So.

Floorboards: tick! In the extension they are what the floorboard industry likes to call 'Australian Chestnut,' which is not a chestnut at all, but at least four different species of Eucalypts. We don't know what the floorboards are in the old part of the house, they may be 'some kind of wood from New Zealand they used a lot back then [in the Fifties] but you can't get it any more.' That was the best description we got after taking a sample around to a number of floorboard places, mostly people said, 'sorry, no idea.' After hearing this, we decided not to worry about trying to match the boards, and just chose something we liked the look of ('not too pale, not yellow or gold, not dark'). It's interesting that the unpolished new and old boards didn't look too dissimilar, but once they were polished the differences really came out. The new section is fabulous and sleek and uniform, while the old section is much more varied in colour, from light greys to quite dark reds. I absolutely adore it. I am so pleased that I got my way when I vetoed carpet! I've apparently forgotten to take a decent picture. Instead I just have this one: hallway boards (original), without context, and featuring an extension cord....


And then out in our extension, our lovely new floorboards, featuring renovating dust, the very beginnings of our new kitchen, and cute child:


Which takes me nicely to the next part of the post: our kitchen! The idea was to spend our money on the appliances (specifically, the ovens, stove and rangehood) and scrimp on the cabinetry. The kitchen is essentially black and white (black cupboards, whitish benchtops) which feels fabulously brave and risky and modern and was one of the reasons for doing it more cheaply, so that in 10 years when I wonder what the hell we were thinking it's not such a wrench to upgrade it! The splashback will probably be turquoise tiles (I wanted something bright to help with all that black so it wasn't gloomy) but isn't organised yet.

The photo below is a halfway shot as FIL fits the rangehood:

And, lastly, a shot from Chef D's phone from the other night. Missing from the kitchen at this point are the lower doors and drawers, splashback, sink and the island benchtop, however you still get a pretty good idea of the overall layout. Also missing is the lighting, which is something I have developed a bit of an obsession over and intend to devote a whole post to in the near future!

xx

General Update

Too many things to write individual posts about, and none would make an especially interesting blog post on their own, so here is a brief update about what's been going on around here:

The tomatoes dried beautifully in the oven overnight. Halved tomatoes needed an extra day of drying, so I quartered the next lot and they dried much faster. I think we're going to invest in a real dehydrator soon, as I hope to have years and years of harvest gluts ahead of me, and I'm just not comfortable leaving the oven on overnight. And the taste? When eaten alone they are, as Chef D put it, 'not that nice,' as they are so intense, but I have been chopping them up and adding them to bread and that's a very good way to eat them and use up quite a lot of tomatoes in one go. Since the toms keep pouring in, my next job is to make and freeze a whole lot of Neapolitan sauce.


I am still trying to grow various things from seeds. The latest to sprout are a whole heap of red onions, and I'm making a last ditch effort to grow melons (Eden's Gem) before the season is out.



And on the house front? We have been painting at last! And that's nearly done, too (inside anyway). And the floor polishing guy has been in and is making our place sparkle, but no photos yet because we can't really go inside while that is happening.


And last but never least, despite her diminutive size, SP is cuter than ever and we are starting to consider 2nd birthday cakes! She has requested a bird cake, specifically :-)

xx

Mid-September back garden tour

I have shiny new and uncorrupted camera cards so I am back to my old snap-happy self and to celebrate I'm going to share a dozen or so photos from the (mostly) vegie garden out the back of our house.

We've had a few little harvests lately:

There was a lovely big bok choy (growing in a pot with a baby plum tree).


And the experimental Greenfeast peas had enough fat pods on them to be able to cook enough for a side to dinner for three adults and a pea-'loving toddler.


And there are more peas on their way, although the whole plot is starting to look decidedly lopsided now and I don't anticipate it will last much longer.


There were a couple of baby beetroots (not my forte, not yet anyway!)


I was going to throw all these baby beetroot leaves into a stirfry - since the actual roots were so disappointing but I accidentally left them out in the garden overnight on Monday and it absolutely bucketed down that night and the were beaten down into the ground. Still, I thought the photo was too pretty not to share; those colours! Imagine the vitamins in them!


And, as ever, the rainbow chard is still providing loads of leaves for us for no effort at all on my part. It's not quite as vibrantly coloured as it was when the weather was cooler.


We've got more fruit and veg on it's way too.

There's the Aquadulce broad beans, which are taller than my waist. I have dutifully nipped out the top buds of each plant. Apparently if you don't do this they will not set fruit, and I can say that despite all the flowers over a month ago I didn't see a single bean pod until after I'd done the nipping.


The other broad beans - Bunyard's Exhibition, that I sowed much later - are only around a foot tall but producing flowers already. Now, do I do the nipping now, or let them get taller and then nip them? I always feel like I'm making up this gardening gig as I go along!


And for months and months I have been looking at the purple pepino flowers and moaning that they were doing nothing. And then, suddenly, there are at least a dozen fruit! I theorise that the weather had to warm up enough to bring out the pollinators (feral bees, no doubt). I don't know how long they'll take to ripen, and I don't know what they'll taste like (like 'melon,' I've read), and I don't even know if we'll like them but it will be good to find out!


Some of the recent sowings are doing quite well so far and not too attacked by snails, like these daikon which I'm growing in one of my Styrofoam boxes (the carrots have sprouted too, but are too tiny to photograph).


There's beans doing their thing. These might be butter beans, but I can't remember what I've put where (it is written down though!) For some reason, the beans in the pots sprouted weeks ahead of those in the ground. Maybe because the pots are warmer than the ground?


Oh gosh, I can't remember what these are either! Pumpkins? Cucumbers? Zucchini? Eek! It's a pot luck garden! These were sown in jiffy pots and then transplanted.


And just for fun, I've planted lots of red and yellow sunflowers, and 'black' and white hollyhocks along the fence. I'll write a whole post about this soon, I'm hoping.

The red-flowered sunflower seedlings have red stems and leaf veins too. These were planted in toilet paper tubes filled with seed-raising peat (I love that stuff!) I accidentally left the tube poking a bit above the ground but I'm sure it won't matter. Some bugger of an insect has had a nibble on a number of the sunflower seedlings which is a little bit irritating.


These are tiny baby hollyhocks. Some I planted singly, and some in pairs like these two, in anticipation of some natural attrition!

Seems such a shame that nasturtiums are a weedy nuisance when out in public! They are supposed to be total pest magnets in the vegie patch so it seems contradictory to plant them there, but the idea is that you attract the bugs - aphids especially, but also slugs, snails and caterpillars - to the nasturtiums and not to your vegies. However, I seem to have the healthiest, pest-free nasturtiums out there, and my brussel sprouts are absolutely covered in grey aphids and not fit to speak about (or eat, for that matter, might give the old brussels a miss next year)


It's a very exciting time of year, this ever-lovely Spring.

[and, even better, look at this! A new satellite photo of our little house:



It shows my still unfinished path out the front, the new extension out the back, the water tank which, thanks to the big downpours earlier in the week, now has enough water in it that some comes out when you open the tap, and finally no more huge pine tree! Compare it to this photo back in April:



Woohoo, rolling along quite nicely!]

Poor Poss!

FIL has been busily removing the old wall cladding on our little cottage, and the stuff under the eaves too, and look what he found when he took out the piece from the corner of our bedroom!


Actually, I must confess I didn't take that photo. I found it on the Internet over here, at a gallery by Ákos Lumnitzer. My own photo, frantically taken by my phone which I happened to have in my pocket, is of a blurred furry possum bottom with white-tipped tail retreating into the distance along the fence. It's a cute bottom, though.

So as I was saying, FIL was taking off the cladding/ceiling stuff from the eaves, and as he pulled down a big piece he found a little ringtail possum, and the remains of it's grassy drey, sitting petrified in the middle of the board. It had frozen on the spot - as you would, if your house suddenly dropped out into daylight beneath you - so he was able to carry it down the ladder and take the whole lot over to the shrubbery, where the creature sprang back into life. He (or she) paused for a few moments to take stock - while I snapped my picture - probably thinking 'WTF just happened?' and then trundled away into the neighbour's yard (he picked the yard with all the bushes and trees, so a good one I think). But now I'm left thinking poor bugger, where is he going to go now? and that train of thought takes me to thinking about possum boxes, and where could I put one or two since we have no trees (yet) and if I put a box under the eaves would that tempt him back into the roof? - which we don't want since possums wear boots at night and go dancing - but maybe I could put one under the eaves of the shed which has no ceiling for a possum to build a nest in ... and so on. I really think that humans should be making spaces for wildlife to live in, since we've taken so much of it away already.

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!