Last weekend we picked up the dingo (mini digger) from the hire place and got to work on a few of the outdoor projects that have been on our list.

One of those things was digging up the shrubs and mess of blackberries from the side of the house. These shrubs have become so unruly and it’s really difficult to get the mower in here to cut the grass so it all has to come out.  I was thinking about paving this area but I don’t think my paving skills are up to it so we’re going to put a few loads of compacted metal dust in there instead (like what we used for the platform for the water tank). Eventually, I’m going to put a greenhouse somewhere on this side of the house, so it’s probably best that I put metal dust rather than expensive pavers down here.

Tim managed to fill up two of the new vegetable garden apple crates.

And he also spread a layer of soil down the back of the yard in readiness for this, our “test turf”:

Last week we  laid some “test turf” down the back of the yard where that massive fallen tree used to be. I’m calling it “test turf” because rather than spend thousands of dollars on turf for the entire back section of the yard I thought I’d start with 70 square metres just to see how it goes. Becase that area sometimes gets flooded and it’s kind of dark down there it may not be the easiest place for grass to grow. So I’m experimenting with this little section. I’ll give it 2 or 3 months and if it’s still going strong I’ll go ahead and order more turf for the rest of the back section.

Onto other things, I’m half-way through making the final round garden bed:

And I’m half-way through making a paved step down to the sliding door of the shed:

Hopefully by the end of this week I can have both of these projects finished.

Recently, we were driving through Sandy Bay and noticed some chairs thrown next to a skip bin on the side of the road. We turned the car around and had a closer look at the chairs. When we went to ask the owners if we could take them, they asked us if we wanted any other stuff. It turns out the three sons had come over from Melbourne for the weekend to clean out their deceased mother’s house. They were chucking out all types of stuff. We came away with some garden chairs, some garden ornaments, a plant pot or two, a couple of book cases, a mirror, some bookends and a few books. I pulled out a pair of rickety old fold-out stools from the skip and finally managed to get the time to paint them and make a new cover for them.

Before:

After:

I used these cute antique bronze daisy upholstery tacks from Bunnings:

So, whats been happening this past two months? It feels like not much but when I sit down and think about it, really a lot has happened and a lot has been achieved. 

There was Christmas, of course. This was the first Christmas that Tim and I have spent together just the two of us. For Christmas Day lunch we had lobster with prawns, cold meats and salad topped off with some fancy cheeses and crackers and a pavlova.

We had a lovely few days of Christmas lunches and Christmas dinners and despite the fact that it was just the two of us we still had all the trimmings for Christmas dinner, including my favourite Sharwood’s mango chutney with gravy soaked baked potatoes and pumpkin, roast pork with apple sauce, turkey with an apricot and herb stuffing and roast lamb with mint sauce.

Tim gave me a set of Pantone mugs. I had my eye on these as far back as September 2008 (see here) but couldn’t justify spending almost $20 each on mugs. Tim’s got a good memory. Look how nice they look on display:

And the grand poobah of them all is the ride-on mower trailer that I received from Tim. This is definitely going to come in handy for moving soil and transporting weeds and clippings. Tim’s mum also suggested that we could wash the dogs in it :)

Housewise, the main bedroom got decorated (although no wallpaper yet because I haven’t been able to find one to match the grey on the walls correctly). The windows were stripped, sanded and re-painted so they are all nice and lovely now. New window hardware was fitted and a blind was added. I want to make curtains for this window as well, perhaps in winter.

The hallway was decorated (although we’re just waiting for some picture rail to complete the hallway - it should be ready in February). New sofas, an extraordinarily comfortable mattress and a bedroom suite were ordered and they should be delivered in about 3 weeks. With these purchases, combined with the $935 car service and $900 for four new tyres for my car (yes, $225 per tyre!) I am hemorrhaging money. Perhaps its time to stop and re-group for a couple of months. Then towards the end of March I’ll be handing out more money again when the bathroom gets done.

Gardenwise, the last of the silverbeet was harvested in December. This crop has given us three or four silverbeet & fetta pies since I planted them out in about February or March 2010.

Silverbeet is a vegetable where you can keep cutting the leaves off and it will re-grow. But it will go to seed eventually. Once they go to seed you can keep cutting the seed heads off but after it goes to seed, the plant never produces lovely big deep green leaves. So it was time to say goodbye to the silverbeet. 

I also pulled up the last of the carrots and most of the leaks.

And in their place I planted pink eye potatoes, which seem to be going steadily but the bushes are not as tall or as bushy as they were last year. Seeds of corn, cucumber, lettuce, carrot and strawberry were grown in punnets.

The lettuce and carrot are growing pretty slowly so they will be transplanted out into the vegie garden in the next couple of weeks.

The cucumber seeds seemed to sprout quickly and they were transplanted into the garden to get growing. About half of the cucumbers seem to be growing very minutely – the rest aren’t doing well at all but we’ll see what happens. 

The corn also sprouted really well and it’s now in the apple crate veggie garden growing nicely, but perhaps not growing as quickly as I would like them to.  To my surprise, amongst the corns there are a few pea plants growing. It struck me as odd because I hadn’t actually planted any pea seeds this season. Then I realised that some of the pods would have fallen off the pea bush that was in this crate back in November. If I find the time I’ll transplant the little peas elsewhere so that they can get proper support to grow on. It’ll be interesting to see if they yield as many pea pods as the original bush.

I had no luck with my early tomato seeds, not one sprouted, so I purchased some seedlings instead: Grosse Lisse and Green Zebra. The bushes are nice and strong and I’m certain that we’ll get some nice juicy tomatoes from these little beauties.

I’m also hopeful about perhaps getting a few artichokes from the globe artichoke seeds that I planted last year. Look at this beauty.

Disappointingly, we didn’t get a single plum from the plum tree. The birds ate every last one of them. I bought a plastic owl and even put shiny chrismtas ornamnets on the tree to scare the birds but they didn’t seem to care. I think the tree really needs to be cut down and a net placed over it. Not sure if that will happen this year though.

Elsewhere in the garden, I’ve been training the climbing rose to braid itself up and around the lamp post that sits at the entrance of our property. In early December it finally bloomed. Since we’ve been here, it has never bloomed. To my delight it turns out it’s a pink rose! Here it is in the background:

We did a lot of general cleaning up in the garden towards the end of 2010. When I first moved here in May 2009 and had a fence put in, the fence contractors had to bulldoze a lot of vegetation (mainly reeds and weedy type bushes) in order to get the fence in. They ended up just dumping tonnes of vegetation in two huge piles at the back of our yard. It’s been on our to-do list for a while to clean up the piles. After last year spotting two tiger snakes, being within a metre of one and seeing the other poking its head over the gutter on the roof (ya!), I am now paranoid about snakes. I would forever blame myself if the dogs got bitten. So I moved this clean up project to the top of my to-do list. Next to the piles created by the fence contractors, there used to be a massive fallen tree trunk more than a metre in diameter and about 7 metres long. In October, I got someone round to take away most of the vegation mess and Tim chainsawed the fallen tree into bits so that we can use it on the fire this winter. How nice it is to have this area cleared.

Before:

After:

We have a dingo booked for next weekend so that we can level that section out and spread some nice top soil in preparation for laying some lovely green turf. Those weeds should all be dead by that time as I sprayed them last week. Next weekend will be interesting because we have about 6 projects that we need the dingo for and we only have the dingo for the two days. I wonder if it will all get done?!

So, what is on the to do list for 2011?

Some time soon – have a clean out and take some stuff to auction[done], buy pendant lights for hallway, create a step in the paving at the door of the shed [done], pave the section of courtyard currently covered with river pebbles [change of plan, we're going to build a deck in this spot instead], pave the section at the side of the house [chang of plan, I'm going to dump a couple of loads of compacted metal dust in here instead], finish spreading grass seed under the kitchen window [done], finish spreading grass seed along the length of the drive way, seed any other sections of bare patches in the lawn [done], build the final garden bed [done], fill up the garden beds and the new veggie crates [done], plant out garden beds [done] and veggie crates, install chook wire under the fence behind the shed so that Cloe stops escaping (she got out 3 times in one week in December and I had to run up and down the street calling her name and people just looked at me like I was a maniac) [done], cut remaining piles of fence palings.

End of March – bathroom renovation, laundry renovation, plasterboard entrance around front door, remove aluminium sliding door from sunroom and replace with french doors, decorate the sunroom.

August-ish – repair rotten deck.

Fun and games lay ahead!

Two months have gone by without a post. Poor maintenance, I know. I am kicking myself on the inside because when I first started this blog I didn’t want this situation to arise where I have to post one of these kinds of posts where I have to state the obvious and say “Geez, can you believe it’s been two months since my last post.” Because keeping a journal or writing about things doesn’t come naturally to me and often what does get posted is infinitely inadequate compared to the blogs that I read regularly (and because half of the keys have stopped working on my laptop and I have run out of USB ports to install a new keyboard) I really couldn’t get motivated to make a post. I guess I have maintenance issues.

This was confirmed to me yesterday when I took my car in for a log book service. Unfortunately for me, two years have gone by without a single service on my car. I was admonished by the dickhead service department guy who made me feel like a bad person for not getting my car servied before now. He felt the need to tell me two or three times that my vehicle is poorly maintained and that the car has never been serviced. His tone was such that he couldn’t believe that the car hadn’t been serviced. I felt the need to apologise as he started to become frustrated with me. And surely I must have known that I need to book a courtesy car prior to arriving with my car because they only have 5 courtesy cars available. No, dickhead, I didn’t know that you only have 5 courtesy cars. Oh and didn’t I know that the courtesy car is not an actual courtesy car but more like a hire car that I have to pay $55 for the day for, even though by the time I return to collect my car at the end of the day and drive out of the yard I would have handed over $935 for a 50,000km log book service. Next time, I’m going to Ultratune for my log book service. That’s if I can maintain my maintenance.

Beetroots:  This is my second batch of beetroots. The first batch didn’t yield a single edible beetroot and this second batch was pretty dismal. Out of a dozen seeds, these 3 beetroots are the only ones that grew. They were very nice boiled, peeled and eaten cool. Pretty sure I’m not going to try them for a third time.

Sugarsnap peas: Huge success. From about 12 seeds, these peas grew like wildfire during winter and gave us about 4kg worth of peas that we harvested last week. We had so many peas that we gave half to our neighbour (it’s not possible for two people and two dogs to each that many peas and not turn green in the process :) ).

Plums are just starting to form on the tree. Last year we didn’t see any fruit on this tree at all – probably because the wind blew all the buds off(?) Crossing my fingers that the possums don’t eat them all.

Strawberries are coming good with heaps of flowers on the two plants. I’m hopeful that we’ll have a nice little crop this year.

Anemones in all their glory.

Leucadendron coming into bloom.

 Camelia trying to peek out.