Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Red Sky Sunrise


Red sky at night, sailors delight. Red sky in the morning, sailors warning.

Monday, June 21, 2010

Latest happenings

 Finally....--> The fencer arrived on Friday and with his crew installed our post and rail fencing. Some of the wire is quite crooked but as it's following the natural ground line there's not a lot that can be done. Hopefully once there are some plants inside the fence area it won't look so terrible.

 Down the side of the house.
                                                                                                           Manchurian Pear in the foreground.
Still need to do some sand shifting and turning over of the rich soil before the lawn can go in.


This is the gap next to the driveway. We'll be putting in some double gates so that if we need to bring anything large into the front or side yard we don't have to do it from around the back of the block. You can see the new house that is almost finished across the street.



                                                                                                        Our temporary back gate.
The fencers left us some fence wire 
so we thought of a use for it.



On Saturday Mum and I went to check out the plants at the local hardware store. I returned with a port wine magnolia to plant and two 50m rolls of chicken wire to fasten to the inside of our wire fence to stop the rabbits getting through it. ( my "next weekend" task)

Then later in the day DS1 and I went to the plant nursery in town and purchased a small liquidambar styraciflua tree  which Mum and I then planted out the back. Yippee.

Monday, June 7, 2010

A year on and I missed it.

I was just thinking about when we got the keys last year and realised it was early June. After some fast blog checking I discovered it was 1 year ago last Friday. Of course we didn't move in straight away. The anniversary of that is not for a few more weeks.  Still thousands of dollars worth of work to be done to the house and grounds. ( mostly grounds).  But there are somethings we've spent the $ on that haven't as yet been done.  We really had better get our act together during the holidays next month.
July holiday list:
Painting if it's not too cold.
Make and hang 2nd curtain in main bedroom.
Purchase and plant x3 silver birches
Attempt to rabbit proof the front fence ( assuming it gets installed in the next few weeks)
 Make sure lights are finalised and builder's electrician is  booked to install them( if they aren't in by then)
Complete ground works for lawn and get it installed
Plant some garden plants that have been languishing in pots for 2 years..
Organise a few more tree holes so a further 8 trees can be planted.
Organise an electrician to install the garage lights we've bought and also an external power point near the power box.

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Next

It's a long weekend here and while I hope to get a little bit of gardening done most of the weekend will be filled with report writing as it's "that" time of the year for teachers. I was talking to a Canadian teacher I know and it's reporting time for them right now as well.

Updates:
The Developer appeared on Wednesday and planted some"substantial trees" as per the council request.   NOT!  He's planted two rows of a shrub that grows eventually to 2-3 m. Right now they are  on average 40cm tall. Hmmm All that waiting and delaying fencing for this.

What was most amusing is he just appeared and started fiddling around.  Not knock on the door. No hello I'm here. It would have been pretty obvious someone was home too.  Hubby just happened to look out the door and see him on our property preparing to dig some holes.
Photos today when I am actually around in daylight hours as I leave before it's bright enough to take photos and have gotten home too late to  take photos this week. 




Kunzea baxteri: is a member of the Myrtaceae family and is known as the Crimson Kunzea.
Kunzea baxteri is a small to medium shrub with spreading, sometimes erect branches. The leaves are linear, densely crowded, mid-green and about 15 by 3 wide.
The spectacular, bottlebrush shaped flower heads are 10 centimetres long by 8 centimetres wide, deep red, scattered to profuse and very conspicuous. Blooms usually appear between March and September with sporadic flowering at other times. The Crimson Kunzea is one of the showiest species of the genus.
Tip pruning will improve foliage density and flowering.
Kunzea baxteri is a native of Western Australia and was first cultivated in England in 1838.
Plants growing in colder areas are best grown in sheltered shrubberies as they may be damaged by frost.


hmm We have frost! Somehow these don't sound like the significantly substantial  tree he was meant to plant.  He used a post and dug tiny little holes. Plus he is supposed to water them.  He had been meaning to install some sort of reticulation and had discussions with us in December about doing this. Well he hasn't and it hasn't rained since he planted them so Dh was down the back yesterday giving them all a water.   We were expecting a bobcat or other digger type because the trees were meant to be huge ones.  I'm guessing he wanted to save lots of $ as he would have found loads of rock and it would have been hard and expensive work.  Drats! as  we had a cunning plan to replace some of these trees with things of our own choice later down the track knowing that the holes had been dug and the rocks removed.  These will be hard to remove. They will find there way through the rock and make it difficult to replace with established trees of our own choosing later.  DAMN! Still at least we are rid of him. But given the size of these trees he's now planted we didn't need to delay fencing at all. So I'm really not happy.


Lighting:
Another disappointment as it seems the lights we wanted to buy are discontinued. It seems a similar light is made by a couple of other lighting companies so hopefully we'll be able to find something. But we did find a spotlight track we really liked and possibly a large light for the lounge room although the price from the lighting shop for the 3 light version  is a bit higher than  the same light in the 5 Light version  from an online store....hmmm