Twas the night before Christmas

Well actually it was the weekend before my parents arrive for Christmas......

Not much time for a wordy story as I am now fighting the clock to get ready for Christmas. I am up at the crack of dawn blogging because that is the only time left.

I needed to get the garden to the next stage. I begged the kids to help. My shoulder has been a complete cow for months now. But despite unhelpful kids and shoulder, I was determined to get this done before mum and dad arrive for Christmas.

So I got up on Sunday morning and went flat out. And when I didn't finish, I got up Monday morning and did some more.

And when I didn't finish, I got home from a Christmas 'do' and worked some more.

And by then it was 10pm and too dark for photos ops.... hence the dawn blogging!

Now for the photos!
First the before and after progress collection.....

See... progress!

The front view

Really should shift the hose for the show off shots!

Garden Hazard

Erin, Ponyo and John

A happy picture of an adored pup. A face of calm puppyiness?

What this picture doesn't reveal is that the dog is a maniac.

This week I estimate he has eaten about $100 worth of camelias. They were the large camelias I bought to replace the small ones he ate earlier.

He has eaten a Japanese maple and has started on his second.

He ate a pistachio tree.

And the top out of the lilac tree.

The very expensive ground covering wattle has been reduced by half a couple of times now.

And he mowed down a magnolia tree.

This weekend I think it will be fence building time where a section of the yard will become his  own yard while we are out for the day. I simply can't afford his tastes!

Happiness is a new shelving unit

So I gave myself a super long weekend to rest my arm and it turns out I couldn't sit still that long......
On Tuesday I headed out to find a Chinese Tallow tree and came home with two shelving units.

Lovely Shelves and Lovely Little Jazz

Back at the old house there are still a few things I haven't moved across, primarily because there is no room. Now with these shelves I am hoping i have room for some more of the 'stuff'!

A month has passed

It is a month since the kids did the great job on the side garden.

Since then my arm has steadily got worse despite physio but it seems to have turned the corner now. Fingers crossed.
That's the short story: The long story is that I went to the doctor who asked me what hurt, what happened and could I lift my arms- no more than 5 minutes of his time. He sent me for an ultrasound then another doctor got the results and after 3 minutes of chatting, prescribed a steroid injection into my shoulder.
So in 8 minutes of consultation, I was sent off to do something I don't feel comfortable doing.

Meanwhile I took myself to a physio. Who spent 30 minutes or so working the various angles of freedom and restriction of movement then set to with massage, heat, buzzy thing and ultrasound. And follow up exercise. The progress then was great, not so great and now good. I have stopped the exercise and sought a work place assessment as I am positive that typing make it worse. I am not doing vacuuming or hanging up washing. 

Mum came and helped plant a pile of plants. She is impressive. I plant as many and have to spend an hour blogging to congratulate myself. She just thinks she should be cooking dinner because I have been at work!

The less I do the better my shoulder gets. But there is a limit to what I can ask the kids -and mum- to do, so yesterday I set out to mow the grass out the front.

My Mower, though I paid quite a lot less for mine.

I bought the mower on ebay: I should have realised that it wasn't going to be simple. 
No fuel: Of course and no can either.
No oil: again, naturally.
Two set of instructions: One for the engine and one to assemble everything else.
Assembly instructions are not for what I have in front of me and in broken English and some diagrams bad enough that I can't even tell what they are supposed to represent .
The seller has been helpful though so I have over the last two weekends got it sorted and I headed out yesterday to mow for the first time.

Not the lawn mind you, but the ragged nature strip. Probably called nature strip because all that is growing there is what Nature gave it. 

Looking down the hill at my first mowing: Not first ever for me, but first  for my new home.
And look at that sky? I love Canberra.

My mower is turbo-charged. When I hold an extra leaver, it engages and powers itself forward. I didn't realise that when I bought it and in the context of this buggered shoulder, it is a God-send.

Looking up the hill: See that building that looks like a McDonalds drive through? That is the monster that cost me so much angst with the mean builder.

The mower is HUGE. I think about 4 paces up and down my yard, and it will be done. In my head when I was buying it, I was resisting my compulsion to buy the smallest-cheapest. In retrospect though, with a buggered shoulder, tiny garden and limited storage, I really should have bought the little one. Never mind, I have a very manly lawn mower and I am sure I am impressing the neighbours with all my gardening antics.

As I began gardening, shifting so much soil, I imagined all the neighbouring gardeners (all men- I don't know what the ladies are doing) thinking, 'look at her go, who would have thought that chubby old thing would have that in her'.

When it was lawn time, 'She is a determined one, you got to wonder where she gets the guts to keep going'.

And out there with the lawn mower, I liked to think I became one of the boys.

I suspect instead what they have been thinking all along was, 'hope the weather holds, I might get to sit outside and have a beer when I am done'.

Like Dr Phil says, 'You wouldn't worry what people think about you if you knew how seldom they did it'.

Anyway, whether they know it or not, when I mowed the front lawn, I was feeling mighty proud because I have taken my garden from raw builders muck to mowable and that is a pretty cool thing.

The hay fever that followed was not so cool

ahhhh shooooooo

Monday, Sunny Monday

So there are all these plants that need holes dug and it turns out my arm isn't suffering from imaginitis, it might actually be tendinitis.
Imagine my delight to discover the kids holding a working bee.
I am thrilled!

And I have been talking to their father who was looking for a dining table. Well I haven't been happy with the look of the one I have. The oval shape is inefficient for the space it takes and the unstained chairs are frankly never going to be stained as I am just no good at it. So I offered my table to Andrew and very promptly have found myself a new one :) Well a second hand one actually.

Sunday, bloody Sunday!!

I have had a day! And don't worry this story ends up ending happily, but in the middle, I get so bloody mad I created a scene!
The morning was spent pottering around virtually. I played a few games, looked at dining tables, Christmas presents and driving lessons for Miss 16.

Eventually, I got out and swept down the back veranda. Here is what you have to visualise: woman with broom swinging it back and forth with a dog wrapped around it. Ponyo thinks sweeping is an outrage and must be prevented. It isn't efficient to sweep that way and the broom is quite heavy with a dog attached!

With that done, I cleaned down the dust and grub covered outdoor table, lit the BBQ and cooked sausages for the me and the kids. As this has become a regular thing there has been a build up of fat in the bottom of the BBQ and I ended up with the first few sausages blackened rather than cooked. Ponyo got them. Lucky dog. He went back several times to like the rim of the bowl in case there was any remaining grease.

After lunch Kate and I went off to the Yarralumla Nursery to collect the allocation I am entitled to as a new home owner.

Now this is something that should be straight forward, but hasn't been.

Trip 1: I visited last summer and asked the question about how to go about making my collection. I was told to bring evidence of my address. A bill or something and my driver's licence.

Trip 2: I bring along evidence and licence and am told I have not brought the correct things. Specifically I have to bring a correspondence from my lawyer about the sale of the land. 

Trip 3: Armed with a very thick letter from my lawyer about the settlement process, the contract etc, I thought I had it in the bag. Not so. The letter did not prove that I bought the land, just that I was going to. Sigh. I was given a brochure with the requirements.

Trip 4 (today): I read the brouchure. It mentioned a bunch of things I didn't have and few I did. I don't have a mortgage so I had no bank papers, I don't hold the certificate as they are in a safe with the lawyers but I did have my rates notice. I didn't know if they wanted the entire 6 pages or not, but I wasn't leaving anything to chance.

I thrust the wad into my hand bag.

I thought a moment then went and got my entire filing box of all documents related to the home and put it in the car.

I arrived. I presented the rates notice. And the girl refused to acknowledge it as sufficient. She pulled out her brochure and showed me that it said one of the other documents 'AND the rates notice'. 

I pulled out my brochure, given to me last time and pointed out where it said 'OR rates notice'.

She wouldn't budge. I asked whether she was serious. Was she seriously going to send me home-again-to get more papers when I had on three occasions now made this 50km round trip. She assured me there was no other way. I said she must surely have discretion. No customer service based business could be so short sighted to give her no discretion. She insisted. (And returned my raised voice with her own) By now I was seething and assured her that I just knew they were going to mess me around. I stormed off to the car and hefted my box of files into the store. And one by one, I stacked every conceivable document I have ever received from either government or lawyer about the house. She quickly took what looked like a random sample and set about arranging my allocation.

I was rude and mad and ashamed and so bloody angry to have been treated like this. I told her it was very unfair to have me standing there looking like an idiot when all I had done each time was bring what I was told would be sufficient.

Well I made myself calm down. I was disgusted with my temper and the situation too. Kate and I went about choosing the plants. They were very expensive so the $220 would have been much better spent at Magnet Mart, but I wasn't about to look this bad tempered gift horse in the mouth because it was bound to bite me!

When we got to the register, the girl was keeping her head down doing her very best to avoid my eye. But though it cost me something to do it, I caught her eyes and apologised to her. If the system is so inflexible, then it is not her fault. And it was one of those things. I guess she immediately saw that I was a human. And apologised to me in turn. And you know, that makes all the difference.

Sigh- I am such a hot head. I hate it.

So, we left the nursery with $220 of plants that were not exactly what I wanted just at this moment but had considered wanting eventually. I bought nearly all the Correa Dusky Bells they had. I want to encourage all the wrens and nectar eating birds to come and play. 

Correa Dusky Bells

And some hardenbergias to sprawl under the natives I have planted down the back. 

Hardenbergia

A few more diosmas. I love diosmas. There are so soft and lush and hardy and I can prune them without needing to know anything about pruning.

Diosmas- Natures most sensible border plant
 

Here is my theory on gardening. Pick something you like and plant lots of it. Then it looks like you know what you are doing because it is a 'theme'.

So in my garden I want: Diosmas, Japanese maples, crab apples, correa, camelias, pittosporum, agapanthus and I am going to start getting connifers.
The house ended up with a brick that is kind of pinky/mauvish which I don't like to be frank, but I am going to pretend I do. Already I am building up a pallette of purples and pinks in the garden.

Weeping elm in the centre and a row of camelias.

I love autumn colour but it comes at a price: Autumn colour means a winter grey garden.

So I am thinking hard about the balance of deciduous and evergreen. 

So the weeping tree, even when bare should be attractive so I have placed it opposite the lounge window..but with evergreen plants either side. A row of camelias. I will probably plant the correas in between the camelias. Imagine sitting in that window in winter, enjoying the northern sun and little birds just meters away.

Or maybe it will just be a very silly dog eating my plants :P

Ponyo finishing off an entre of Camelia en Potte

Long Weekend Gardening

On Thursday I ordered my turf from Canturf.
They called me 4 times to make sure the order was all set. The final one on Friday checking if I was sure given the weather.
I was sure: The forecast was for rain clearing on Saturday (6%) and fine Sunday/Monday.
Were they sure? Because there seemed to be some hesitation about whether the equipment was going to manage given it was raining.

Anyway, very early Saturday morning it was delivered after a deluge of rain the night before.

I got not one, but two certificates of authenticity to go with the grass. I never imagined you could get inauthentic grass.

I got all sorted into my gardening gear, loaded three rolls of grass into the wheel barrow and sank 10 cm into the mud. And it started to rain. Again.

So I went and did laundry for the day.

Sunday!

Starting late to give the ground time to dry out, I was back at it by 10 am. About 11.30, my bum was aching and my arms and just as I was wondering how on earth I would finish, Bill arrived to offer a hand.

Once there were two of us, it was so much better. It's fun working with someone else. I don't remember it hurting after that though it took another two and a half hours.

Side yard after all the heartache

Bill talked and talked and talked. It's just lovely and Ponyo was an attention seeking piece of Pest. As soon as I had one roll down, he was trying to eat it, roll in it and poo on it. Trying and succeeding at all.

I have to admit that of all the many things I can do really well, laying turf is not one of them, but it is good enough. The dust will be settled. With water it will establish and with time it will be fine.

Today, being a long weekend, I got another day in the garden. Stiff and sore I was much slower but still had plenty in mind to do.

I started with three bags of agapanthus. One of my favourite plants. Mum and dad had dug up a huge clump at the front of their place in Narooma and sent me home with a large portion of it. So today with secateurs and the knife from my lawn trimming, I prepared the aggies and then got digging.

A border of Aggies

Then it was time to do some cleaning up. After all this gardening there is dirt everywhere and aggie scraps and leaves and mulch and more dirt. 

Ponyo thought the whole process was for his personal enjoyment and he kept me company a lot of the time. Often appearing between my legs (not so convenient) looking for a brisk patting- which I couldn't resist giving him. He spent much of the day in the front yard and unlike Rusty, resisted the urge to chase cars. And came when he was called... mostly. And chased the water as I tried to water-in the plants.

A picture of progress

All up, I am knackered. My busted arm from falling a month or so ago is aching. My hands are so tired I am pausing in my typing. Ponyo is 50 shades of filthy. But I will officially call the long October weekend a success!

As well as eating dirt and chasing the sprinkler, Ponyo ate the top of my newly bought lilac tree. Grrrr