Progress

We had a very foggy start to the day yesterday. I couldn't see beyond the fence when I looked out of the kitchen window. Today it's sunny and beautiful.




Since my last post, there have been a few heartening signs of progress in the garden -

The mulch has finally all been spread. It's only taken us nine months or so! I will now have to plant some spreading ground-covery plants to hide the demarcation between our messy front garden and the uber-neat one next door.

I have had someone around to quote on landscaping the weed farm flourishing where the pool used to be. I was very reassured when he didn't take one look and head for the hills. He even declared that he had "seen worse", and kept saying "no worries!" to all my ideas. Of course it's entirely possible that I will never hear back from him...

I have now pruned 16/25 rose bushes - some of them are already showing signs of sprouting new leaves (and aphids!).




And finally, one of my very favourite flowers has reappeared.



I always forget whether they're snowdrops or snowflakes - I just love their little green dots. I especially love that they pop up faithfully every year in spite total neglect on my part - what more can you ask?.

Weeds

It seems that everywhere I look, I see weeds. The winter rain has made them sprout with glorious abundance. The spot where our pool used to be now looks like this.




I don't know how many buckets of couch grass I've pulled out over the years, but it's still coming up where it shouldn't.




Because of my hippy (according to my daughters) views on herbicides, I can't bring myself to spray weeds. So that really only leaves pulling them out as a solution. I believe, or sincerely hope, that persistence will win out, and that the weeds will eventually just give up.

Some weeds are really very pretty (and useful). We have hundreds of lupins coming up everywhere - I really don't know where they came from. Apart from the nitrogen-fixing function, they have lovely velvety leaves as well as the gorgeous blue flowers (still to come).



I can remember sitting on the grass during sport in primary school, drinking the sap from these flowers. I think they're called sour-sap, or something similar. Their flowers are such a bright cheerful yellow, it seems a shame to pull them out.


After reading The Wilderness Garden, I've adopted the Jackie French approach of throwing weeds on a pile where they can happily compost themselves. Perhaps this is why they come back so prolifically every year!

Round and round the garden

It's the middle of winter and there isn't a lot happening in the garden. Still, if you look you can find a few surprises -


The first Erlicheer daffodil has emerged - they are so pretty, with such a delicious perfume.



Good old reliable, trusty azaleas.



The first nasturtium poking through - before long they'll be taking over the backyard.


I've forgotten what this one is called - I got it from the Digger's Club. In a few weeks it will be covered in these beautiful flowers.



The flowers on this eucalypt are lovely in a very subtle way, even though they're hot pink.

It's a bit cold outside for gardening today - I may decide there are more enjoyable things to do inside!

Rainy Sunday

In between downpours, today we managed to make minor inroads into the mulch pile. I pulled out several bucketfuls of couch and Guildford grass, while Martin shoveled mulch into the wheelbarrow. We had to stop every now and then when the heavens opened.


Even the birds were trying to keep dry.



Our neighbours over the road were also gardening - they were busy pruning their roses. Is it really that time already? I thought I might as well make a start, and have so far butchered pruned 5 of our 25 rose bushes.

The frosty mornings two weeks ago plus the recent hail have killed off some of the potatoes I planted in late summer - this doesn't happen very often in Perth! Even so, a little digging around produced this mini-harvest.



Feeling very virtuous after all that work, I'm going to put my feet up now and enjoy a cup of tea and a housey magazine. The urge to tweak the house is coming on again and I'm looking for inspiration!

Mulch

There is a large pile of mulch on our front verge. It's been there since last September or October. This is the third pile of mulch we've had delivered in the last two years or so, and each has taken us months to spread on our garden. A mulch pile seems to be a permanent feature of our front garden - I think it's actually there on our Google street view.

After months of mulch-spreading, the pile now looks like this.



So we clearly still have a long way to go. We didn't get anywhere with it this weekend - maybe next week?

Frosty morning

Inspired by a friend to start a blog, I wondered what I might write about. Then as I was wandering around my garden last week, I thought why not write about that? We've lived in our house for 21 years now, and we've made lots of changes to it in that time. Then about three or four years ago, we decided to fill in our aging swimming pool. We were left with an enormous area of yellow sand which quickly sprouted a huge and vigorous range of weeds. It's been like that ever since, while we've thought about what to do with it. Since last December, we've been having a deck and pergola built, which is now finally almost finished. So we need to go from this

to, well, something yet to be decided.

Last Friday morning , when I looked out my window onto the deck, it was covered in frost - in sunny Perth! It had been a really cold, clear night - the coldest in four years.We've had a week of cold (for Perth) mornings since then. Cold is great, but lots of rain would be even better!