Apr 18, 2011

I Heart Gardening

Okay- confession time. I have just discovered I have a love of gardening. When we first bought the house the gardens were seriously ghetto. The front of the house was covered with some seriosuly gross plant life and we have some horrible plants in the backyard. One of the first thing Mr A's stepdad did was rip into the trees with a chainsaw. So they got rid of that problem (only for the trees to rear their ugly roots later... which took a whole lotta manpower/tool power and determination to get them out).


Before: The front of the house- ghetto style.
We had a family gardening day to remove the ghetto-ness out the front, and in its place I chose the extremely difficult to kill Agapanthus- which require little to no attention and little to no watering. Plus they are green all year round. I like green all year round plants. However, we are currently in a battle against world war weeds out the front and a combination of onion weed and god-knows-what has been testing my paitence ever since. I guess it's my fault for not properly sifting the soil before planting. So I am building up the energy and courage to tackle that one soon.


In our backyard I have been a little more determined. My gardenias I planted in September-ish of last year are flowering (albeit the ones that Ringo hasn't ripped all the leaves off- I've had to replant two whole plants already as they were ripped down to the stump). I love gardenias and I love the fragrance SO much. Here are some which are currently sitting on the buffet in the kitchen in an old pasta sauce bottle.

Before: The Horror!

So over the past few days I have been on a gardening frenzy. To begin with I randomly bought a Ficus (Weeping Fig) tree from Bunnings because it was $31 and I knew that was pretty good for a standard type tree of that size, plus I also love Weeping Figs. We chose to plant it here because they can sometimes have an invasive root system and we didn't want it anywhere near pipes. Plus it will hopefully block out our neighbours. We also planted some more beloved Agapanthus next to it. Mr A had been trying to grow grass there after Ringo took it upon himself to do a little gardening in the form of digging. The Aggies will look awesome after they thicken up.



Now that I was on a gardening roll- I couldn't stop there. Seeing as I am on school holidays I thought it was the perfect time to go all out. Next came the Chinese Star Jasmine climber up the colorbond fence, alonside our side neighbours. All I did was screw in some of those self-tapping steel screws and wound round some wire. Talk about SKILZ.

This is the before:
BEFORE
And this is the after... Give it a few months and the whole fence will be covered. Jasmine is really fast growing.
AFTER

After that I was pretty exhausted. Ripping up grass is insanely difficult, especially when its good quality buffalo grass. Over the next two days I proceded to plant 9 Murraya Paniculata next to the Ficus on the back fence. This should grow to 3m in height and again help to screen out our neighbours garage (remember our house is the front of a battle axe) and help 'soften' the backyard. Here is the before:

BEFORE: Gotta love the old hills hoist. Its awesome because its huge and you can hang so many loads of washing on it. But its in the wrong place- so it looks like we'll be searching for some alertnate washing line options.
And the after... I can tell you this was hard work. My body was hurting for days after!



And so that finishes todays guided tour of our backyard. There is definitly more to do... !

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