From the garden

A whole salad, fresh from our garden! Delicious!

Check out the size of these ones! We must be doing something right!

Axel may not realise but it is most definately spring-ish in Canberra at the moment. I love this time of year, when everything starts to come back to life. I also love it because it's not a busy time yet in terms of doing work on the weekends and people are not yet properly out of winter hibernation (yes, in Canberra this happens. Social events slow down significantly over winter). So, a fairly quiet social scene mixed with 2 weekends in a row of stunning weather means we get things done around the house. More on that soon though. For now, here are some photos from a beautiful sunny weekend.

The last of the Broccoli - this one was as big as my head!

Lucky - all grown up and exploring the spa cover.

Beautiful blossoms in our front yard - ahh

Hope you have also had a lovely weekend!

31 Photos in 31 Days: 5-7

Day 5 - Dessert

Day 6 - Axel

Day 7 -  Garden

What we've been doing

Our 3 day front yard working bee in pictures.

When we first moved in.

Creating parking space

New garden bed for screening plants. The space between the garden bed and the front window will be a paved courtyard area. Inspiration pics to come! The brick wall to the left of the house was previously obscured by bamboo that was taking over the front garden. Getting rid of that was the hardest part. We had to do a little bit each weekend because it was so hard to hack out!

 Creating second garden bed and effectively reducing a lot of mowing (hell yeah)! The bamboo has been replaced by a grafted lemon and lime tree. Hopefully it will do better here with a north facing brick wall than the poor thing in out back yard!

 Garden beds edged and mulched. Awaiting plants in spring time. The frosts are a bit too much here already! I can't believe how cold May has been! We will re-sow grass in the area that is still bare, once again, waiting for spring with that.

It is still a bit of a mess but we have made some progress which is always a good feeling!

Here's a bit of a breakdown of costs so far.

Stone for parking space - free, we just had to shovel it out of someone else's driveway ourselves, thank you classifieds!

Sandstone - bargain of the century $30 for a trailer load, thank you again classifieds!

Weed mat - lots $80

Mulch - two metres $100

Topsoil - left over from veggie gardens
Excavating soil for parking space and from in front of retaining wall + spreading of stones - 1 case of beer for our brilliant neighbour who conveniently has a little bobcat!

Total - $210 plus a case of beer. Not too bad really.

What we've been doing

Is turning the front of our yard into a disaster zone. It's OK though. Usually things have to look worse before they look better, right?

Before

So what's the plan? We are turning that bare patch which doesn't grow grass no matter what into an extra parking space that goes along the front - see the black weed matting? That will be covered with crushed brick pebbles that were free (so long as we did the shoveling and carting of them out of one of As colleagues driveway). Yay. 

During

Between the black matting and the retaining wall (that you can't see in this picture) we're going to plant a row of Leucadendrons that will grow to a metre high and create a bit of a privacy screen so we can put in a little courtyard/deck just in front of the windows you can see on the left. On the road side of the screening plants we'll put in the Strelitzias (that A's mum gave us from her garden, that are still sitting in pots over a year later - opps) and maybe some Kangaroo Paw because I am in love with Kangaroo Paw at the moment!

Leucadendron - Devils Blush via Garden Express

Kangaroo Paw via dicktay200 on Flickr

Strelitzias by Gurney5 on Flickr

Apart from loving the colours of these plants, the leucadendrons are frost and drought tolerant, a must in Canberra. Strelitzias must be tough as despite serious neglect in their pots for the last year and a bit, they just keep on coming back and any plants that we grow, despite the best of our intentions, need to be survivors!  Kangaroo Paw can be difficult I'm told, but I plan on hunting down the gardeners at work for advice as we have the most amazing Kangaroo Paws in the gardens there.

In other news, chair progress is slow. I've pulled two apart and worked out how to fix up the sagginess but trying to choose a fabric is a nightmare! Will post some thoughts on that later.

Hope all is well!

Happy days...

Back to that whole idea of stopping to smell the roses, there are some things happening at the moment in good 'ol Canberra that I love.

1. Balloon Festival! I love, love, love seeing the balloons floating through the air as I'm driving to work.

2. Outdoor Art Show - leaves rustling as you wander under the trees and check out the artworks. Such a nice vibe.

3.  Skyfire! Stunning fireworks. I love fireworks, they make me happy. Sorry I didn't take a camera because I can't stand to feel like I'm missing them while I'm trying to take a decent picture!

4. My garden - the plants are growing and I have a 'mohawk' of carrots sprouting. So exciting.

5. Cheap dining chairs as I mentioned last post. Here are the photos...

We've pulled one apart to work out how to fix the sagginess (not a word, I know) and create a pattern for the new covers. Hit a slight bump when we went to check out fabrics. A's choice $158 a metre. Mine, $71. When you need 1 metre per chair, this adds up to, well, I used my maths skills up last post, but the chairs are no longer such a cheap solution. So, still on the hunt for the fabric - know any stores/websites I should check out?

6. Finally, because I can't help but share this with anyone who will listen...a conversation from my classroom last week...

Me: "Ok guys, so next week we're going to start looking at Ancient Greece...blah, blah, blah, make it sound really great..."

Cue massive sigh from girl at the back of the room.

Me: "What's up StudentX?"

StudentX: "Well Miss, it's just that, what is grease apart from the stuff you put in a frying pan?"

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Sometimes I love year 7, they worry me, but they always keep life interesting!

Garden progress

Finally, after about a year of talking about it, the added inspiration of a visiting veggie gardener (my father) and the yummy beans and zucchini our lovely neighbour gave us we have built a proper veggie garden! Yay, we've crossed something off the wishlist! 

Here's the story in picutres...

Delicious veggies from W's garden

The area before - we chopped down 7 trees without feeling too guilty as 5 of them were considered pests

Dad provided the brains of the operation (and a lot of the brawn too)!

Laying out the garden beds and bolting on the sides.
We may add another 1 or 2 thin beds either side of the lemon tree...

One bed built - looking good!

All finished and ready to plant - like my beautiful 'zen' rakings on the front bed?
Yes, the fence is most definitely on our 'hit list'!

Planted with peas, leek, carrots and basil.
Cauliflower and broccoli to come this weekend!

Strawberry/ Herb planters given to us by A's mum.

A close up so hopefully you can see the great herb stake label thingys she also bought for us.

We're very pleased with how they look but there is still a bit of work to go. Going to look into putting some weed mat down around the beds and paving them or putting down pebbles so we don't have to worry about the mowing.

Other than that, it's just a matter of waiting - Grow little veggies, grow!

Things I love about summer - part 3

Apart from Australia Day and Hottest 100 of course! Off to a pool party this arvo and have a bit of a competition going with A about whose votes will be highest on the chart. We're one down each already!

Anyway, the other thing I love about summer is my garden.

Oregano & Thyme

Rhubarb - mmmmm

Lettuce

Fish pond & Hydrangea - haven't got much further
with the spa/BBQ area renovation

Water lily

More hydrangea because I love them so

There are some tomatoes coming along, parsley, basil, coriander, lemongrass, sage, rosemary and even the little lemon tree has some flowers at the moment! Here's hoping we get our first home grown lemon!

Happy Australia Day one and all!