I've been channeling quite a bit of energy to our garden this summer. These days I get excited reading garden magazines and that is the level of dedication I'm talking about guys. This year starting June we have Daniel who comes to do our garden every two weeks and through him, I've learnt what we can do to improve our garden.
(I've heard that Anita in my German family has green fingers. My grandma back home too. This post is for you both!)
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| Reading garden magazines during tea time |
For a start, Daniel recommended buying some seeds to grow our lawn evenly. I got us a big bag of grass seed where he scattered them generously on the lawn. Then we got 6 big bags of topsoil for him to spread evenly on the lawn. (Note to self: we probably need 6 more bags) Thinking that was it, the next thing he suggested us getting was a long hose to water our lawn. I guess you can't forget about the water can you? I never imagined I would be buying a water sprinkler but yes, here it is:
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| That's our new gadget |
Watching it spray water from left to right and back to left is pretty therapeutic I have to say. I can stand there with my eyes fixated on this gadget and just zone out. It's pretty weird but when I showed our friends our gadget the other day, they said the same thing too! In fact Lolly was simply not moving for a few minutes staring at it do its thing. Lol.
As you probably remember we went to the flower show recently and bought a few potted plants which I got Daniel to help us plant. I excitedly did some online research and shopped for some nice planters and settled for these grey fibreglass ones. They were promptly delivered to us and I was pleased at how they look.
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| Gabby calls them my posh planters |
After that I persuaded K to drive us to the nearest garden centre to buy two more cube planters from the same series and transferred my two blue hydrangeas completing the look:
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| Love my patio now with all these colourful additions |
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| I guess I do like blue and purple coloured flowers which has K's nod of approval. |
On one Sunday afternoon we even jet washed the patio and realised how much gunk can be trapped in these concrete slabs.
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Hubby K hard at work. To be fair I was helping out too. It felt good to see so much gunk being removed.
Ahh cleanliness - this is my department. |
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| See the difference? GASP RIGHT? |
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| After 1.5h and a lot of water... See the difference? It's almost white. |
There is still much to do in our garden. New grass have sprouted and we have asked Daniel to weed a clear border on both sides of the lawn. A lot of weeds are also sprouting up and we have a huge eucalyptus tree with a low hanging branch providing too much shade on the lawn which perhaps is what's causing the grass not to grow well in certain patches. I also plan to get Daniel to clear one of the flower beds at the end of the garden so I can plant some daffodils and look forward to seeing some yellow flowers next Spring.
Friends have excitedly suggested turning the small concrete area at the end of the garden into a small hang out area with fairy lights. Ooh I love the idea! But I'm also mindful warm weather doesn't last long in this country (that said, we are having a heatwave this week - 32deg and we are melting). For now we are happy to sit on our patio amongst the blue and purple flowers. And I am dutifully watering our plants every two days. Every day if it's a hot day like today.
I've started to chat a bit more with our next door neighbour Keith, who is a retiree. He likes to do gardening stuff and today he told me he was helping the family (his neighbour next door down) to cut down a big tree. Yes cut a tree. Maybe 'chop' is a more apt word. He said the neighbours were quoted GBP800 to cut down that tree, and GBP1,000 to cut and remove the tree. So they decided to do it themselves with Keith's help. That's right, GBP 1,000 to cut and remove a tree in your garden. I was like "what?!" Labour cost for such home stuff is really expensive in this country. Ahh and that explains a lot of things. That explains why now at night the street lamp shines brightly into our guest room. To think I thought the council had replaced it with a super powerful lightbulb. No, it's because a tree has been chopped down! And of late we keep smelling smoke in the evening, like people starting a bonfire. ("So many BBQs?") So what them folks were trying to do was saw the trunk into smaller pieces and burn them bit by bit. Every week when the council removes the bins, they fill it up as much as they can.. and then they burn some more. Eventually they will finally finish disposing all the wood. Interesting, no? Keith kindly said if we ever want to chop down any tree in our garden he can help since he has a lot of free time and he needs to move around and exercise. What a kind neighbour! And I'm not even going into how he helped us clear our pavement of a dead fox last week. It was run over by a car and literally flat. While I was cringing hiding behind our car trying not to puke or faint.. he bravely lifted that dead animal with his gloves, put it in a bag and disposed of it. By what means I don't know and I don't want to know..
So much about kind Keith. What I want to also mention in this post is the amazing rose plants we have in front of our house. These rose plants are legacy plants, inherited from the previous owners. Daniel calls them the "established roses". This summer these plants have been surprising us so much and I am ever so excited to spot buds and see how they flower and burst into beautiful roses. We've been getting a bunch of roses in one same stalk which I'll share below.
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| That's a 3 in one stalk |
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| Another 3 in 1 rose stalk |
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| The most amazing too-many-in-one rose stalk. Can you count how many?! |
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| I counted 7 and then suddenly one morning I spotted another one a bit below the rest! Whoa! 8-in-1!! |
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I took this today. They have bloomed beautifully and I feel like a proud mama.
Not that I've done anything except to water them. |
This gardening thing is turning out to be an interesting and fulfilling hobby! (Don't think I'll get over my fear of bugs and slugs though...)
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