and one more garden arch.. this time in the front..

  This week I finally put up my last garden arch. It sits at the entry of my winding side garden and faces my front yard.

 I took advantage of all the rain we had this week, which made the ground very soft and easy for me to hammer the bottom spikes into the ground.

 I planted 2 climbing roses either side called 'renae' which you can hardly see right now but am hoping this will be smothered in pink roses by summertime..and if you look closely at the drawing Amy did of my home in my side bar you can see that she drew in my arch way back then! 

and what's already blooming with spring only a couple of days away!

I'm loving it...take care, Maryann

garden feature...

Well, I just managed to finish another part of my side garden. This is the BEFORE ...
it's the section where the bare dirt is next to the yellow pot on the left hand side...this is looking at it from the front of the house...

Now after a hard day of back breaking work it looks like this...

I took it on myself and boy am I out of shape. It was pretty hot too that day so everything I did was in slow motion and I had to keep resting. I removed all the weeds, carried up the pavers from the stack we have waaay down the back of our property in 4 goes with a wheel barrow, added water saving pellets and lime as the ground here is very dry and hard. then put down all the mulch.

I would have liked some sort of pond or water feature round the urn but with neighbors ducks living next door they would probably end up living at my place. So I had to forget about that idea.

  I planted mondo grass (which I have tons of) round the outer edge and some bushes with pretty pink and golden foliage. (not sure what it's called) I am hoping they will join up and form a small hedge round the base.

Not sure about that pot on top, I have had it for ages and a lot of the paint has come off the bottom. I might have to paint it along with the pillar. To give the feeling of a water fountain I decided to put a reddish colored grass like plant on top. I like how it turned out, and can admire it sitting in my family room. 

take care, Maryann

front and side garden..hardscape finished

Well, I did plan on waiting to show you the front and side garden once all the plants were in but since this may take a little longer than planned I thought I'd show you the hard scape.. all the paving and rocks we put down.  I don't even have the plants to go in yet and I am also waiting for a downpour of rain to soften the soil to make it easier on these poor old bones to dig up the ground and add some compost. I can't even remember when it rained last.

this picture is looking from the back of my house, on the side, looking towards the front yard. We finished the gravel path and took it from the back and joined it up to the front.

the path takes you to my side verandah and down the sandstone steps to where my front rockery, retaining wall is.. Where you can see the pot I would love to do some sort of water feature there...or perhaps a statue..still undecided..

I had planted some pink and white pansies near the steps a while ago and so far they are withstanding all the heat we have had..(already!)

plants need to go in along the front of the verandah and along that dirt part you can see on the left, which is on the higher level..

here is a  better view from the top.. the soil is hard as a rock .. I may have to use the hose to dampen the soil as who knows when it will rain..

and this is the view from the front to the side garden, that mess of a garden on the left(where the yellow pot is) all needs to be dug up too...that's where all the large trees were that we had chopped down. I have so much sunlight on the house now it's wonderful ..I love it.. but so do the weeds unfortunately! I also have another arch waiting to be put up with a couple of yellow climbing roses somewhere along this path, probably right at the very front. Hopefully I can put some plants in soon to add some much needed colour!

take care,

Maryann

chop chop...

Hi girls, last week end all we did was chop chop and chop.  Trees that is. Living on acres and always being so busy we sort of become oblivious to the trees around the house. Ofcourse they are growing silently but surely... and then one day you wake up and say.." how did that tree become so big?!!!"

this tree was touching the power lines and it was massive, Fred had already cut most of it down here.

he tied up the ladder to the ute so he could get higher! CRAZY!!

It was a massive job cleaning up but here it is now so much more open with lots more light. A lot of my plants were damaged but I know it won't take them long to recuperate. Plus it's a good excuse to get some new ones!

we  are into Autumn here now and I have to say we have had more sunny days these last couple of weeks than we had throughout all of summer! I am loving it, so this morning I picked some roses to grace my little table on the verandah.

I'm not finished with the garden yet as I need to do some serious weeding and want to put in some more flowers for lots more colour. I am tootlly in the mood for some garden centre therapy today so I think I'll leave it here. Have a great week ladies, take care, Maryann