A bit of pruning

We recently (in July!) had some pruning done in the garden. The main reason for this was a branch from the neighbour's Coral tree was leaning on the power cable to the house. We had seen it and noted it as 'work to do later'. After the rain a few of months ago, the branch seemed to drop lower thus the task suddenly moved to the top of the list.

The tree guys arrived at 7am and got to work straight away. They cut away the dead branches and pruning other overgrown branches. It was very exciting for the kids to watch all the actions and see how quick and high the arborist climbed up the tree. The garden looked so much better afterwards!

Garden invasion

Simon found thousands of these beetles in our back garden one day after Christmas. They were everywhere - all over the grass, on tree branches, bushes and in the air. Everywhere! I didn't witness this personally, I was too scared to go outside! A 'sample' was taken and we were going to take it to the garden shop and find out what we could do but google saved us a trip. Apparently, these are 'green soldier beetle', they can form 'mating' swarm in large numbers in a short time but tend to move on after mating. And they are harmless.

True to their words, the number f beetles in our gaden decreased in the next couple of days and they are all gone before the new year. We have our garden back!

Nearly harvest again

Our mandarin tree is full of mandarines again. They are green at the moment but hopfully will strat to ripe soon! Simon gave me a new task of doing a mandarin marmalade this winter. Better start researching for a nice recipe!

Turf

We finally made up our minds to get the back garden turfed by professionals. The date was set to be the Saturday of the October long weekend. We spent the previous weeks obtaining qutoes (4 quotes, 3 quotes were very similar and one was strangly cheap, we chose the most expensive one), deciding on grass variety (Sapphire Buffalo) and preparing the ground (killing weeds). The skip bin arrived the day before, but turf was delivered on the day (because it was quite wet the week leading to the Saturday so turf farmers couldn't cut any ealier).

Because of some mix-up, the turf cutter didn't arrive until nearly 8am, even though the grass was delivered and guys were waiting to start the work. But once work was started, the guys kept going and going. At one stage, it looked like work would not be finished on the day, but somehow everything got done before it got dark.

The garden went from this:


to this in under 10 hours. Amazing!


Now 10 cubic meters of "Forest Blend" mulch is sitting on the driveway waiting to be moved to their rigthful place in the back garden!

New door

Father-in-law working on the door frame.

When Simon organised a guy to come and cut a great big hole in our family room, we didn't know we would get pouring terrential rain for days afterwards, thus delay in starting work. The timing wasn't great either with this work started the day after Mum arrived and with Sam's birthday celebration(families coming) in the midst of it. Father-in-law worked hard to get the door in after the rain stopped (he's a perfectionist so work wa not fast-going). It's almost finished now.

Mandarin tree

My favorite tree in the garden!

Our mandarin tree is full of fruit at the moment. Most of the mandarins are still a little green, we picked a few at a time and let the rest ripen on the tree. The fruit is very delicious if only a little on the sour side. I made sure the kids have these mandarins as often as they want for the Vitamin C. Both Lara and Samuel love them. I've been back at work for 4 weeks and Samuel was sick for three of those 4 weeks. Sam is still taking prophylactic antibiotics for ear infection because of yet another cold. This winter has not started too well for us. However, every time I had one of our mandarins, I felt my own coughs getting better. A fruit picked fresh from the tree must have a lot of of Vitamin C I tell myself. Maybe this will be our secret weapon against cold and flu this winter?

Garden makeover (2) - prepare for retaining wall

8 tonnes of blue metal dust were delivered in 3 batches and layed in the back garden in the last few weeks. The rain meant little progress on some weekends. More blue metal and blue metal dust are ordered. Retaining wall blocks were delivered this week. These blocks will sit on the leveled blue metal ground after trenches are digged and pipes layed for irrigation. Work is behind schedule this weekend as we lost a worker temporarily due to hang-over.

Garden makeover (1) - excavation

We hired a guy with a bobcat to excavate a small part of the garden and even out the extra earth. We won't be able to use the back garden for a little while.
It looks like a war zone!

Mulberry bush

Our mulberry bush at the back of the garden is full of fruit at the moment. Simon had to tie and erect the lower branches because we caught Zebadee pulling at the branches and eating all the mulberries!

I want to try mulberry jam if I have enough berries(need 500g) unfortunately, the fruit don't turn black at the same time. Lara and I eat them while we pick so by the time we finish there is really not a lot left!

Work around the house

New back fence $1500 (our share)

New wires in one part of the house (replaced old copper wires) $1000

New Ikea kitchen cupboards $850

Considering/Working on:
Reverse-cycle air-con in bedrooms.
Heater in 2nd bathroom. (It's freezing there!)
Under-house ventilation.
Wiring in other part of the house?

Surprises in the garden

This weekend was very very warm so we stayed indoor mostly. We managed to spend about an hour in the garden late afternoon before the sun set. FIL continued putting up the trampoline while MIL and I watered the garden. Simon went back to the fences around the vege patch, and did some general weeding.
While walking around in the garden, MIL found a few plants we didn't know we had- passionfruit, blueberry, apple, almond and raspberry. The garden is also full of strawberries. Unfortunately, Zebadee eats them before they have a chance to grow big. Nowadays, Zeb spent a lot of time having her nose on the strawberry patches looking for strawberries!

Apple.


Blueberry.

Snaps around the house (2)

There are many very tall (and probably very old) trees in our garden. The three tall ones in the front garden are our favorite. Lara calls this "Totoro tree" - it looks similar to the tree where Totoro lives (from the movie 'My neighbour Totoro').


I like the branches of this nameless tree. These lovely trees make the front garden very serene and provoide great shade to the outdoor area where we spend most of our weekend.


This is a magnolia tree (I love magnolia flowers!) It has quite a few low-hanging branches and it is great for kids to climb. Lara often hangs off it like a koala. Jenny warned me not to trim this tree too much - 'flowering tree represents love' she told me.


We had lots of help from family, especially parents-in-law who come over, over an hour drive each way, every weekend and help with many things that need doing in this house (FIL is wokring on the pergola at the moment and MIL and I are going to recover the dinning chairs). Lara enjoyed joining in with the sweeping in this picture.


The front garden is tidier and a better place to play in, backyard is a little messy at the moment. Lara and her cousins played with the golf set outside before they moved on to the trike and scooter. They happily did a golf-pose for us when the cameras were out.

After our move ...

The first weekend after we moved in, the hot water system stopped working.
Lukily we found out on a Saturday and could easily get a plumber in. The hot water system turned out to be working, only the pilot light went out. It cost $150 to light the pilot light. To his credit, the plumber did help calling Energy Australia and got what he thought was the problem,gas regulator, changed. It took Simon 5 calls and being transferred from one person to antoher in Energy Australia to get this done. Nobody knows anything about gas regulator. Finally someone requsted the plumber to call them. They organised to replace(?) the regulator after talking to our plumber. The fact is, we are not sure if everythign's working properly. The pilot light had gone out again twice since then and we still have the problem that if we have the gas heating on, the flames on the gas cooktops diminish by almost half. This is something that still needs fixing.

The second weekend after we moved in, our oven stopped working.
The oven was working fine for a week and a half and I even did 2 roasts and baked a bread in it. To cut a long story short, we nearly chucked it out but luckily double-checked-it to make sure it was not the fuse and it was the fuse! So after a week with no oven, this old oven decides to stay with us in the mean time.

And yesterday, our fridge stopped working. This fridge is over 10 years old, and I was hoping it would go soon becaue I want a bigger fridge(be careful what you wish for!!). Being moved 3 times in less than a year proved to be too much for a hard-working fridge and it decided to go silently sometime yesterday. A new fridge and washing machine are being delivered today.

Hopefully this is the last of the appliances not working!

Flintstones carport

This 'Flintstones' carport was a safety hazard (it was leaning on one side and it was held up by a steel rope tied to the house!) so it had to go. FIL was hard at work for a whole weekend to remove this carport.

Roof is almost gone.


Four columns left.


Nearly done.


All gone.

Snaps around the house (1)

Lara playing in the chicken coop:


Zeb and the chickens got along fine. The problem was the fencing around the hosue and the chicken coop. We kept finding Zeb in the neighbour's backyard, front yard or inside of the chicken coop (eating chickens food and their poo!). Today we found Zeb lying in the chickens' house! I was seriously thinking about getting rid of the chickens after they pecked a couple of people and kept flying out of their chicken coop. Life is very busy when you keep finding your chickens and dog wondering around in places where they shouldn't be!

Lara entertained herself on moving day:


Moving day (removalists moving big items) was brought forward by 3 days for a variety of reasons, we then took what was left by ourselves over the next few days - it took more trips than we imagined. Moving early and getting sick (cold) meant we only painted half of the house. There are still many boxes in the garage and study, they will have to be sorted out slowly.

Simon's new vey important, had to have it toy - line streamer:


Nothing escaped the streamer!
Many neighbours came over and said hi. They all commented on how the garden already looked a lot better. We have some ideas about what we want to do to the garden. Exactly when and how we will implement these will take some time to work out.

Making progress

We took possession of our new hosue on Friday. We have been there whole day every day since then. There are so much to do!

We had 3 unexpected but welcomed visits on Saturday. The neighbours on the left told us a few things about this house - it was built just after the war by a physicist and his wife. It was a shame that the last of the original owners died last week so we wouldn't be able to speak to them.

We bought $500 worth of paint on Sunday. The colour was decided at the last minute (Stowe white won over Berkshire white at the end). Simon now has the big job of painting the whole house before we move in next week. Both Simon and I are a little run-down and Simon's coming down with a cold and wouldn't stop sneezing today.

The new tenants signed the contract on the weekend so we now have a date we have to move out. It feels like things are really happening whereas before it felt like we could move out next month or next year when there was no date in sight. Removalist booked today. We also took things there every time we went (the 2 places are less than 5 minutes away). We are making good progress towards moving.


Grand-dad working on the gutters. The condition of the gutters is not bad.
They just need a good clean.


Chickens having a feed. Lara loves the chickens and wants to see them all the time. The chickens were a little scared of us on Saturday, but by Monday they were picking the bag I had the food in as soon as I walked in. The chicken coop is pretty dirty (as well as the rest of the hosue) and it needs a good clean too.


One of the few photos I took of the inside was this blurred one.
Lara was probabaly saying 'Mum, Honey ate my cheese!".

Chickens, vegetable patches, lots of work

Houses we liked, the last house we rented or even the house we currently live in all have one thing in common - a large backyard.

It is no surprise that our new house has just that. There are several vegetable patches, 4 citrus trees and a chicken coop in the backyard. There are wired frames for tomatoes to climb everywhere you see and lots of strawberries in summer according to the real estate agent. The vendor will leave the 2 chickens currently living there so we will also have 2 pet chickens. The thought of fresh eggs every morning is very appealing (whether the chickens will lay any eggs with a dog around is another matter). Hopefully Zebadee and the chickens will learn to be friends!

There are lots of work to do both inside and outside of the hosue. But it's all very exciting.


Nice day to play in the garden.

ps I'm reading Barbara Kingsolver's book "Animal, vegetable, miracle" at the moment. This book is about the year Barbara and her family living on a farm and only buy food raised in their own neighbourhood, grow it themselves or learn to live without it. We have no green thumbs and will be extremely happy if we manage not to kill all the existing vegetables growing in the new house!