easter weekend

this weekend was easter and i tried vainly to get some gardening done in between the showers of rain that seem to descend upon the long weekend.

anyways here are the befores....

 check out the tiny path and the over grown ferns and hedging and weeds.

the kids have barely enough room to ride their bikes along it and constantly end up riding on the grass so i thought something needed doing seeing 

i haven't touched it since we moved in almost 2 years ago-eek!

i got out my secateurs and chopped back the prickly  little hedging thankfully wearing gardening gloves otherwise there may have been a lot more bad words flow out of my mouth.

to my surprise i found that our path is actually 5 pavers wide rather than the 3 or 4 i thought lol and

cut the offending plants back to the edge of the pavers

i also transplanted some spider plants from where the new vege garden will go into a space cleared under the palm after some weeding.

then i mulched up all the stuff i had cut off via a friends mulching machine 

and threw that all over this garden 

 here are the after shots...

 the jacarandah by the house got chopped down a while back but has sprouted again so gave it a nice haircut and am turning it into a bush lol

 spider plants put in-man they are so adaptable

 back garden i did today

 my not so happy helper-she wanted me to come inside and watch tv with her :<

this is where we want to put some stairs in at some stage so we can access our garden from the verandah....instead of trooping out through the laundry every time. the plan is to extend the decking out a bit more hence why nothing too flash is being done to this part of the garden and it is being allowed to go a bit ferny and bushy.

any suggestions for my garden feel free to add some

cheers ears

look what i found!

found this awesome website called http://www.gardenate.com/

it is a gardening calendar

you can get daily reminders of what you should be doing in your garden for your area of australia

as for my gardening efforts this long easter weekend?

i borrowed a friend's chipper and

i started chipping a pile of branches to use as mulch around the garden.

but thanks to the usual easter weather routine it has started raining so i have had to stop my efforts.

maybe the rain will peeter out a bit later and i will get a chance to do what i planned

cheers ears

the letterbox

<insert foreboding music here>

dum dum dum dum dum

 this part of the garden is one of the most annoying as i pass it every day many times and it seems to sprout grass as soon as i turn around....or weeds....never pretty flowers lol

when we bought the house there was a bush that practically covered it but we chopped it out because it was to hard to get the letters out 

 so here's what i did today. i cleaned away the grass and weeds

found some paving stones under it all

and i intend on skipping down to get some weed mat to cover the bark

then i am thinking i might just plant some of the ferns and hydrangas i cut out of the bit i did last time

on another note whilst i was there i also went along the fence line and cut back all the tall grass or stuff sticking through the fence. when the lawns get mowed we always have some sticky out bits that are too close to cut-we should use the weed eater but i really don't like the machine so reverted to using secateurs today and sitting on my bum :> it was good because it meant i got to pull out any grass that was attempting to migrate into the garden.

 made a mess and managed to fill half a wheelie bin with it all

including all the crap that lazy people seem to throw into our yard whilst walking past...grrrrrrr

 on a sad note though i have a dead plant. my hebe (i think that is what it is?) is not looking so good. i am guessing it will have to come out. the dirt around it is also quite mouldy and seems like it is full of cobwebs...can anyone help me with what it possibly could be?

now i think it may be a bath night tonight-my back is a bit sore...uh oh :<

see ya!

my mission today

was to finish the garden on the side of the house.

i have been meaning to do it for a while but life and weather have stopped me.

today i had NOOOOOOO excuse :>

here are the before shots with trees and bushes touching the house and it all over grown and full of weeds and dead flowers on the hydrangas. the path was full of dead and decaying stuff and leaves and leaves and leaves and blossom and general crap.

 so after a couple of hours in the garden and help from my kids (oh yeah that was so good-NOT!)

i have managed to get walking space down the side of the house without brushing aside plants or poking eyes out with tree branches. I do still need to get the tall man to get on a ladder and give the tops of the trees a haircut but that can wait for another day :>

 look! you can walk down the path!

clearing the ferns was a mission. they had stretched themselves out quite a bit and i had to clear them off 2 paving stones widths . I kept the plants i took out plus all the bulbs to put in other parts of the garden that have big trees and bushes and need some ground cover. I also kept some hydranga branches to replant in the garden seeing they needed a huge prune too

 i can now walk past the hot water cylinder

(yes we have them on the outside here in oz-that will be a bit weird for you kiwis reading this!)

 this is where i transplanted some of the fern shoots. i'd quite like them to cover this barked area under the bushes so i don't have to weed it quite so much :>

on a side note i have this beautiful plant in my garden. right now it smells divine-a lemony smell-and it permeates the garden and i get a lovely waft of it every time i wander out the front door. i don't know what it is...can anyone help me please?

well that's me done for today.

my next project is the letterbox.

the grass always comes around it and it is a pain to weed.

i am thinking a cover of weed mat and new bark may be in order

cheers ears

pests or not?

whilst playing in my garden today i found this on one of my camelias.

the leaves look dirty and have white flies all over the under side.

when i touch the plant all these teeny tiny annoying little white bugs scatter all around me

what are they?

off to look at the www for answers

this plant is about 1 1/2 metres square.

they are allllllll over it.

can i treat it cheaply or should i just take to it and get it out of my garden?

cheers ears

...and so it begins...

sowing the seeds of a good friendship takes some time and some thought

i need to start some where

where better to start than with some thing that is easy and not much effort really involved

i figured it needs to be something i will see everyday and feel good about my efforts and keep going

hopefully today's efforts wont be covered by weeds in a months time lol

this is only the after photo i'm afraid. the before photo just had trees and a pretend tiny lawn thing. it was a patch of barely growing grass that was a completely useless waste of space and time and never got mown because it was always forgotten about-good thing the grass never grew huh?

so i decided it needed removing. the easiest and quickest and cheapest way is to cover it with weed mat and cover that with bark. well that was the plan until i realised i had totally under estimated the amount of bark needed. i added it up in my head and went "holy crap!" because i am supposed to be doing this the cheap way...hummmmm

so i changed course and went around the front garden taking the top layer of leaf mulch from around the plants and plonked that on top. woohoo!

now that lovely half wine barrel was free-yes free-because some neighbour had decided they no longer wanted it and had put ti out for council collection. i whipped up and ran away with it to put in my garden-SCORE!!!!!. my plan is to fill it with some lovely jubbly compost and bung as many bulbs in it as i can. to keep it cost efficient i may have to empty the vege patch of some dirt and transfer that to it and then add some compost or bulb stuff-does it really matter?

anyways today was very productive because i also managed this too. the garden at the side of our house is...ahem..cough cough...a tad over grown shall we say?

so i aimed for the gate today. i wanted the big plants chopped back-hydrangas and a camelia and some other trees i have yet to identify-and to weed the dirt around them. i also wanted to put some ground cover in so it would all eventually be maintenance free. so i moved some spider plants from the back yard and some ferns from further along the garden

here's how it looked at the end with plants in, path swept and garden watered

here's what the rest of the garden looks like so you can get a fair idea of how over grown it was today lol. i like it all bushy but not so much you can't walk down there. blocking out nosey neighbours is good though :>

and see here's proof of how dirty i got today-check out the dirt on those feet-uck!

okies that's today.

feel free to leave me any gardening advice-i know nothing so anything would be appreciated lol

more soon

making a new friend

my garden and i are not friends at the moment

i don't like mess (believe it or not) and my garden is a giant heap of mess. there are weeds every where. there are plants growing rampantly. there are plants dieing quietly. there are trees dropping their leaves into my guttering. there are paths somewhere under the grass and weeds and garden. there are BINDIS (rotten horrible nasty little prickly things in no way resembling bindi irwin at all)in my lawn/paths/driveway/everywhere.

it was a lovely garden...when we first moved in. and then the baby arrived. and then it was winter. and then i got lazy. and then life got busy. and then....<<insert random excuse here>>...you know how it goes. so this year...2011...i have a plan. i want to be my garden's best friend. i want to enjoy going out into my garden instead of shuddering every time i go near it.

what is my plan?

no less than 30 minutes a day. a little bit at a time. then hopefully the big enormous mountain of  a job that it is will slowly but surely be defeated and turned into a thing of beauty

stay tuned