Easter Gardening 2013

It's the Easter long weekend. My plans are all gardening.

I nearly always have a small stock pile of plants on my front veranda ready to plant when time and enthusiasm coincide. However this approach has been backfiring. If I leave them on the back veranda, Ponyo eats them. If I leave them on the front one, I forget them and they bake in the western sun. So last weekend I had planted every single last potted plant. 

All the shops today are shut being good Friday so my gardening plans would have been thwarted if I hadn't cunningly accumulated a few more pots during the week. While at Bunnings nursery, I checked out the reduced plants. They had marguerite daisies in very large pots for $8- reduced from$16. I swiftly included them in my trolley however on reflection, I ended up leaving them. The reason? Daisies are pretty darn easy to propagate.  And those pots were pretty darn huge. I was going to have to dig an awful lot of clay to get them into the ground! So I bought a few smaller (and cheaper) ground covering daisies and that is what I planted today.

With Ponyo's help
(note the worn dog path with dog centred)

Things are coming along. I need to work on the back half of the yard now as the top part is pretty much in maintenance mode now.

April last year and almost April 2013- with the insert of computer generated lawn dream from last year. Reality is almost as good as the dream!

Looking towards the deck and over the top of the Japanese Maple courtyard

The Japanese Maple Courtyard- today I added some nandina. The taller one rather than the ubiquitous small one. I think I will buy a couple more tomorrow

Circles indicating where all the shrubs are that you can't see.

I have planted a load of things down along the fence now. By Easter 2014 I imagine this photo will look very different.
My next goal is to work out a path to go beyond the existing path that the dog can follow and that won't wash away. When I first moved in, Mum suggested covering the whole back yard in bark chip to keep the dust down until I was ready to put things in. So I see it strictly as a temporary thing.
I wonder if I could just have lawn through the centre. I would prefer that to be honest. Easier on the eye.

And so in my mind I imagine into the future again. I hope the 2015 prediction is a good one too!

Easter 2015?

Dream corrected for Ponyo reality