transforming

Over January I usually get stuck into a lot of gardening.  It's like a new year thing - fresh start, weed purging, time to do it, pruning emotionally and literally.

The derelict garden bed on the side of the house needed a little attention.  Some love and some tidying.  Possibly a new retaining wall - but the budget didn't allow for that.

Before:

I have gone for the type of plants that the Brisbane City Council puts in the middle of the road - I figure they can survive me - lariopes and agapanthus.  I left the weeds on the ground as a kind of green ground cover.... If you blur your eyes it almost looks grassy.

After:

I also updated my herbs in pots that all died in the 40 degree day we had a couple of weeks ago.  I love having fresh herbs from the garden for cooking.  I feel all Jamie Oliver.  Plus when you buy herbs from the shops you get a massive bunch and often you only need a few leaves.  Everything seems to grow well except coriander.  Coriander and I have a weird growing relationship - I keep buying it to plant and it keeps going to seed and dying.  It's like it is telling me 'you can have me in your garden but you can't own what I do'.  Coriander is such a 14 year old girl herb.

Note the 'no-mats-over-concrete-old-style-trampoline'.  It makes them jump in the middle of the mat and have good proprioceptive boundaries.  At least that's what I tell myself..

The girls were also desperate to make a garden.  They were also desperate to not have the chickens kick it everywhere.  So I said they could make a fence from whatever was lying around under the house.  I think they did a pretty good job!  I am waiting to see if their pleading promises of watering the garden every day actually eventuate.

Gardening always makes me think spiritually.  The pruning, the weeding, the growing, the watering.  Let's hear it for dirty hands and the smell of the hose on freshly mown grass.

the grass is always greener

I was given some turf for Christmas - a big THANK YOU to Gen and Al.

It transformed this space...

Oh thanks Matt,Gen, Tony and Al for digging up the yard for me!  We (I use 'we' loosely here) dug the ground up about ten centimetres with the mattock, then wet it with the sprinkler, then made it level (ish) then slapped the turf on top then left the sprinkler on it.  Muddy and wet.  Scooter loved it.

My newly turfed garden.

Complete with stepping stones.

And I am pleased to say due to great preparation none of the turf has died since being laid four weeks ago.  In fact it needs a second mow.

The grass is definitely greener.

you are de vine

and we are de branches.

Boom ching!

But seriously - whenever I am gardening I think about how quite spiritual it is.  All that pruning and growing and reshaping, pulling out weeds and encouraging the 'good' plants.  It is no surprise there are so many gardening/farming stories/metaphors in the Bible.

This vine climbing and creeping over the pergola has to come down.

The pergola is just too rotten.  The vine is one of the reasons I love this house.  As soon as I saw the vine over the patio I knew we had to buy this house.  It was so....viney and sleeping beauty castley. But sometimes you have to do dramatic pruning because the inside is all rotten.  I am going to keep the bottom of the vine and see if I can grow it up again into glorious covering of the patio when we build a new pergola.  In about twenty years.

And then this appeared after the storm yesterday afternoon.

That dead tree right there.  Really.  I had no idea we had a dead tree right near our house.  Amazing.  The rainbow lorikeets love it.

.....

big grub alert

Long service - where the days pass by in list-ticking, friend-catching, child-homework-supporting and gardening. 

While gardening today I bumped a branch and with my superior strength it broke it half.  Or maybe it was because it was weakened by this

By the time I had run upstairs to get the camera it had retreated halfway back into the branch so there was not a good glimpse of it's yellow bigger-than-both-my-thumbs body.

I showed the grub alive looking sausage to a guy who had come over to give a quote on tree pruning.  He also took a picture with his phone and said he had never seen anything like it.

When Chris arrived home he pulled it out of the branch.

It does look a bit like he was just about to chuck it on the barbie.

Entomologists - please identify.

thinking and inspired

I have spent a lot of time in the garden in the last week.  Mostly because I am hanging around waiting for a puppy to tinkle.  And while I am standing there for a wee time, I look at my plants and plan away.

So far I have planned the new improved chicken run, the hedge along the bottom fence (lemon scented myrtle - apparently a mosquito repellant), the garden under the mango tree and several vegetable herb garden projects.  In my imagination.

With green thumbs blazing I popped into the Brisbane Green Heart Fair at the showgrounds today to get free plants, free herbs and a free electrical board.  And had a very long chat with a weed management guy - where I found out that much of my green garden consists of noxious weeds that need to be painted with poison.  I need to go to the council website and do a bit of 'what weed is that?'.

This corner of the garden needs some work.  I am thinking I will fence it in and let the new chickens do the weeding.

Gardening.  Lots of weeding, pruning, planning, tending, watering, prickles and joy.

Much like a life lived with God.

gardening

Today I spent a long time in the garden pruning and weeding.  I love being outside at my house - the trees and chooks and weeds all create a great ambiance.  When we were looking for a house to buy I viewed about 100 houses, and then found this one.  My description to Chris was 'the trees the big trees everywhere trees big all around it'.  He sensibly asked what the house was like - I said 'um some white three bedroom thing but the trees the trees'.  So we bought a house based mostly on the garden and the trees.  And I have not regretted that decision making process.

I have watched my garden through many seasons and now almost know what works (and what doesn't grow).  And the garden has a wild crazy feel about it, almost like it could slip into jungle at any point and over take the house.

But today I subdued it a bit and gave it a weed, haircut and mulch.  The scent of sugarcane hangs over the house now and I almost imagine we could be living in North Queensland.  The lorikeets have screeched their way to bed and the night crickets chirp softly.