A Visit from Mum

Mum has come to visit.
When we talked about what we would do while she was here, it kind of centred on gardening. Not sure if that's what she had in mind, but it seems to  be all I have in mind these days.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been emailing the people at
Winterhill Tree Farm
And on Thursday they delivered 4 lovely, larger trees from their specials:
A standard but very small Japanese maple
and another gorgeous fine leafed one
Finding this link made me want to buy more!
And two crab apples

The special meant that for $100 ea roughly, I got nice, larger and in the case of one of the maples, close to fully mature sized trees.
But that meant digging very large holes in this horrible shaley clay mess.

Saturday was spent summoning mental strength by visiting Bunnings (to buy pavers), Yaralumla Nursery (to try my patience) and Pialligo (for lunch and more plants)

At Bunnings I bought more of the small brick sized pavers and 5 large flagstones. I had it mind that it would be nice to have steps/path leading to the fish bowl inside the 'Japanese' garden.

By Monday evening, we had the feel of it, though more pavers (and plants) will be needed.

The trees were on sale because they were all compromised in some way. This one, nearly at full size, has obviously had a tough summer, so Mum trimmed off the damage.

Don't let those photos distract you, we were still on Saturday and hadn't even made it to planting yet!

At Yarralumla I tried for the third time to claim the plant credit that the Government allows for each new block. Each time I have gone, I have been given a different story about the evidence I need to bring. 2nd last time the fellow told me to bring the letter from the lawyer stating that I was purchasing the land. So I did.

This time the lady really just wanted to argue.

I really didn't.

It was clear that her intention was to win and I swear she was all but chasing me from the building with words. I just wanted to leave and not be made a spectacle of, but that wasn't what she had in mind. She told me that my letter from the lawyer didn't identify what date I settled on the block and she could not let me have my allocation without that date... but she would accept a rates notice. Which doesn't have the necessary date on it. So go figure!

Next time I will take my filing box and just keep putting documents on her desk 'til she gives up! That will be fun.

Then off to Pialligo. I said to mum; the last time I was there was the day Mark went back to England. I felt like I was at a funeral. And I probably looked as glum.

After an easy day Saturday, Sunday was time to get serious. 4 advanced trees to plant and 4 advanced holes to dig.

We rolled the fish bowl down from the garage as it was too heavy for us to lift. Once it was in place, we trialled the maples in a couple of places and finally were very satisfied with the the arrangement you can see above. But mum thought I should include some organic matter in the nasty dirt of Gungahlin, so off we went to Magnet Mart.

Bad bad bad Magnet Mart.

We left with:
4 bags of Moo poo
seasol
crow bar
Weeping elm
Olive tree that we are going to make into a topiary
Cale plants for both Mum and I
Diosmas for mum

So having managed to 2 dig holes, I now had 6 trees!

Weeping Elm beside its proposed garden bed. At first it was going to be a plain, straight bed with some greenery. Now it is going to have a focus and the bed will have to divert around the tree. The elm will sit centred on the lounge room window - making it a joy to sit there!

What worries me about the elm is this: Things in pots and I don't get on so well. We have had casualties in those waiting to be planted....

While I was busy getting the maples in, Mum dug a hole for the Olive tree out the front. We thought we might leave things at that stage, but as the sun was setting, and I managed to cool down, I got my second wind and planted the olive plus shifted a fair bit more of the dirt out the front to build up that bed a bit.

Then Mum took us out for Indian for tea.
2 things:
actually 3:
1. I love Indian
2. I was too tired to cook so thank heavens she took us out!
3. I was actually too tired to enjoy the food. I enjoyed the company though!

I took pain killers in the morning before I went to work. Oh my!

Then at 2 pm I left work, taking 3 hours annual leave, and joined Mum for more work.

She had been at it all the time while I was sitting at work. She had already cleaned the house and been grocery shopping and to Magnet Mart (twice). When I got home she was preparing dinner.....She's 72 and by night time she said she was tired......I am tired just typing all she did!

Mum's Olive Garden, with decorative cale

While mum created this garden next to the letter box, I was out the back digging holes for the crab apples. We asked Bill to help. Sigh
He is a good boy but...
He simply got over excited with the pick and he killed it. Split the handle trying to destroy a rock.

John took over with the slow and steady approach. Dropping the crow bar and digging the result away. I didn't get a chance to photograph Bill's moments of glory.
John said that he really enjoyed doing it. I hope he remembers that when it is time to lay the lawn. I don't think that will be this coming weekend as rain is forecast for Saturday.

John digging in his school uniform. Not the best idea but I was very grateful for the help. At least his shoes were more appropriate than Bill's thongs.

Two crab apples watch on

I have planted the first and John is finishing the second hole

This bed has become a corral for plants waiting to be planted. Plus mum has added some pansies for instant colour. The kids galloped around saying 'we have a garden'. It has been a long time since we have been able to enjoy that feeling.

(And it is funny to me that when the kids are 20, 17, and 13, they can still gallop and be excited. Miss 16 is however much to cool- though she has her moments! )

So by dusk we had all but the weeping elm in. It may have to wait until the neighbours boundary wall is finished before I can finish that bed. In the meantime I will shuffle the pavers around as I try to decide if the bulge in the bed to accommodate the tree will be a curve of a rectangle.

I am so happy with all of this!

A Saturday in May

All week I have been looking forward to today. Hoping first to see my Mark in the wee hours and then get back into the garden. Not so much of Mark, but plenty of garden is how it progressed!
I made a bet with him, he would be asleep in 20 minutes. At 23 minutes I was telling him a story about work and when I asked him if he knew what I was talking about he replied (smugly) "speed racing".

So by the smallest of margins he escaped the punishment which was to be flowers for me.

I sent him to bed and got on with my day.

It was very cold this morning, but by the time I got the first loads of washing on their way, it was warm enough to go out and dig in a T-shirt (and pants and shoes and socks.)

My hand, elbow and shoulder have been a mess this week and I have been wearing a wrist brace. I kept it on while I dug today and it worked very well.
Rather than do what I have done on previous weekends, I mixed the activity up a bit. First I dug two holes, for the deck-level retaining wall.

The photo was taken at the end of today's work but you can see the supported sleeper running at right angles to the deck. By running that out, and filling behind it, I have been able to give the deck a wide flat entrance. Before it was an uncomfortable step that increased towards dangerous.

Beneath the step I have planted a small garden and shifted my Christmas present pots. The idea is that corner of the deck is now clearly 'garden' and I hope people won't fall off onto it!


With the sore arm, I was conscious of not overdoing one activity so I took a break to water the front lawn, clean the front driveway and hang out two more loads of washing.

Looks a bit tragic, but I am confident it will come good

Then it was back to shifting dirt. I filled behind the steps and levelled the area off the deck. By the time that was done, i think I was about half way through the 5 cubic meters of soil that were delivered the day before ANZAC day.

Half a lot of dirt

I will probably take a few more barrow loads to the steps area as the soil compacts, then spread the rest out to make this front garden. if you look carefully in the photos, you will probably see the pittosporems and camellias that I am thinking of planting in this bed. The pittosporums towards the road and the camellias towards my bedroom. Zig zagging along the bed?

Don't hold me to it, I have changed my mind a million times already.

The other side of dirt mountain- Camelias? Pittosporums?

My weight gives the advantage of excellent soil compression when I tromp

The area is almost ready for the last stage and I am so keen to fetch the turf but I have a few reasons to wait:
The plumber is coming on Wednesday to install the sump at the front of the house. Until he is done, there is no point lawning. It will just get messed up while he does his business.
I am getting a large pot for fish to go down in the 'Japanese' garden. It is going to need to be dragged through the yard and the lawn is supposed to be 'no go' for most of winter once it is laid.
I am also thinking of getting a couple of 75litre pot Crab apples for the back yard. Same thing applies. Won't be able to drag them across newly laid turf.
And I don't really trust the building site next door not to wash their cement mixers out and let it run all over my yard or whatever. Today I went next door and heaved their ring lock fence back onto their land instead of it sprawling all over mine.

Small new garden of crepe myrtles and diosmas along black fence. A lot of pruning will be required for the Myrtles in such a limited space.

But progress is being made. From some angles it looks much better and in my mind I have already filled in the bits that aren't finished!

What you see

What I see

ANZAC Day Gardening

Long Story Warning

My new southern neighbours are Tony and Lucy. I met them by running my car, Jaffa, into their uncle's car while they were moving in.
I had moved my insurance from GIO to Bingle to save money and now I was facing the fear of finding out if that was a mistake. It was the Sunday night of the long weekend. I went to Bingle's website to find out what to do and it had an option to press 'ring me'.

And they did!

3 minutes later I was talking to someone with no accent, paid the excess and had booked my car in for repairs. They gave me a claim number so I could trot next door to give it to Uncle. He can claim it on his insurance and give them the number or if he wants he can use the number and claim directly from Bingle.
I was very impressed. (Not so impressed with Edwards, Bingle's repairer, who are going to take a week to fix what is barely more than a scratch on my car and replace the bumper bar.)

Anyway, I had made the acquaintance of my neighbours. Their kindness when I was distressed at running into their car was very much appreciated.

Since then I have had the chance to meet Tony and Lucy's dad, Mick. It turns out he and his wife run the Narooma Bakery. He seems like a very nice bloke and chatty.

He has got landscapers in to do their yard and yesterday, as I was driving off for work, he offered me their turf leftovers.That set the agenda for ANZAC day.

I ordered more dirt and it was delivered on top of the rolls of grass. 

Sigh.

Kate had tried to move them out of the way in preparation, but the delivery guy tipped it too close to the wall. So an enormous landslide of dirt fell on top of the turf.

This morning Bill and I got into it. Bill started by getting some loads of rocks to fill behind the other half of the wall and I joined him. (read 'took over'- the boy was wearing flipflops aka thongs and chosing the indidual rocks to pick up)

Rocks and Soil back-fill

Once there were enough rocks, I filled behind with soil and Bill dug a hole:

Bill's Aspergers Hole

Bill is very focused. And everytime any of the walls subsided, I would hear his wail. He is a funny fellow but I like him :P He shifted that dirt over to the area near the driveway.

Before long, I realised we needed to leave the main pile alone as there was more than enough soil in the landslide to level out the area where the lawn was going.

It was past lunch time so I sent Bill off to get some Turkish bread for our empty tummies. I kept shifting the dirt off the turf until it was free then attempted to level the soil. I think it is safe to say I did not do a very good job at the levelling.

In my defence:

• I was exhausted by now
• The lawn had to be laid or it wouldn't survive- it was already yellowing
• I was imagining I was in Biggest Looser and this was the digging challenge

Reduced evidence of landslide

Getting it done took precedence over getting it perfect.
(It isn't quite as bad as it looks in the picture above though.)

The lawn and Jaffa absence due to smash repairs

So I rolled out all the turf and filled in the gaps with soil so that the Sir Walter buffalo runners can fill themselves in. I gave Kate a bucket of soil to help me do that while I packed away the tools.

(Let me just say: by the time you have hauled rocks, dug and pushed wheelbarrows of dirt, raked and dug some more- picking up those turf rolls really is an effort!)

Plans and stages

 And so it is done! That much at least. Not in the order I planned but I am not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Thanks to Bill and Kate for their help and I have to laugh at Erin who has just found out we have a front lawn on Facebook.

Go and buy a cake from the Narooma Bakery and say thanks for me!

Gardening

Actually there is such a long story to tell, but all I have time for tonight is a few photos of gardening!

Crazy Lady

So!
When I wake up in the morning, Mark will already be flying to Australia.
o.o
Can you believe it after all this time?
Do you know how many stories of doomed internet relationships I have been told?
Do you think hearing them makes a jot of difference?

Mark and I are both smart, mature people.
So we have our eyes open.
We are both frightened.
And hopefull.
And excited.

I guess we both have a place in our thoughts that is preparing us for failure. But out loud what we say is this-
This is not the end or the beginning. This is the next part.

Will it be a failure if we decide that an internet relationship is all that we can have? In some ways yes and in some no. It will be horribly sad if it isn't leading us to something more. We have both invested a lot of heart into it.

The 'no' side of the argument is that Mark had been my closest companion through 3 of the hardest years of my life. That can't be a failure.

I hope I have done something for him that makes it worth it. But all I can remember is my increasingly irrational behavior as the tension has built over the last few weeks.

I hope he feels loved, admired appreciated. I hope he feels proud of who he is. If I am not the one for him, I hope he goes out and finds some one as gorgeous as he is and not some crazy lady in Oz!

Plans

Plans change.
Sometimes you get to make the choice.
Sometimes the plan gets changed for you.

I am planning the front garden.

Canary Crisis

Something has been bothering the canaries. A couple of times now we have found them quite badly knocked about. Last time two of them were on death's door.
Snowy and Pyro both seemed to have broken bones in their claws and possibly wings.They recovered at last though Pyro was still a bit wonky on his foot.
Then one night while Bill was up gaming, he heard a noise and went to investigate.
It was a fox.
Bill gave chase and  pursued it across a few blocks and was optimistic that it wouldn't return.
I didn't have the same optimism and last night my fears were proven well founded.

Again Bill was gaming. He heard a bang and went out. Pyro was in a very bad way. The injuries he suffered are beyond comprehension. We can only guess that he must have hit the wire and knocked himself out and then the fox was able to claw at him somehow.

There was no recovering for Pyro this time round so when I got up this morning there was a tissue box coffin waiting for me to bury.

So my day has been devoted to the birds. The cage had been partitioned when the two male canaries had begun a battle to death war. Now that we have only one cock-bird, I could remove the partition and all remaining birds can fly up away from the fox. The two bottom birds had always been much more hurt.

Then I set about turning 6 meters of calico into a cover. I pulled out my lovely husqvarna and set to:

6 meters of Calico previously used as a drop sheet for my painting.

 Each side of the cover can be lifted up and out of the way and the back and front panels wrap around the sides to help make it a bit more secure.

Somebody iron this please?

 I have 'tailored' it to perfectly fit over the peeked roof  and corners of the cage. One of the girls was quite impressed with my sewing skills 'compared to' hers. I pointed out that as it had been my career for a longish portion of my life, it would be a crying shame if our skills were on par!

Canaries scatter more then they eat!

I completely cleaned the veranda after the gruesome night's mess- but canaries are messy little buggers even when they are not being murdered! There is so much seed mess that we now have a colony of squeaky pigeons who live here. When we are in the family room looking, they will lurk over in the neighbouring block and pretend to eat the rocks there. As soon as you turn your back, you can hear the squeak of their wings as they fly over for real lunch!

And the mess they make after eating matches the canaries vefore efforts!