This is a bit late since I’ve not done much in the garden in the past week or so.

Last weekend I did a lot more cutting up of branches on the shrub/tree that was reaching out across our bedroom window at the front of the house. There are still a couple of far reaching branches to be sawed off but it doesn’t look too bad now. But now our bedroom window  is quite visible and they looked particularly dirty. I started to wash the outside of the windows until I realised it was actually more dirty from the inside. I have managed to wash the upper part on one side but there’s the bottom panels left and the other pane of glass. Our windows are two panelled ones that slide open. At the bottom of the bedroom window there are more panes of glass right to the floor. These parts of difficult to reach because of a chest of drawers on that side of the room so I haven’t gotten back clean that up yet. It also became quite obvious we need to replace the 20 year old cheap blinds that are looking tattered with curtains. I’m hoping to find something suitable at a low price to have something up there. Meanwhile the bedroom is getting a lot more light these days. And the front yard looks a lot bigger since there is less covered ground than there used to be. I still have a lot of shrubs to cut back out in the side and corner of the yard (we are on the corner of the street) to get things really looking tidier. I will likely wait until after the flowering is done to get out there and hack those bushes down…well I do plan to get rid of a couple out on the corner that have gone out of control in size.

Meanwhile, the Scientist has moved the two shrubs on the back all of the house to the front yard and moved the frangipani to the side of the driveway. There’s still a hibiscus and a solanum plant to move away from the patio area but he decided it was going to be a bit much to see everything die at once should none of it survive. Since the move, the frangipani looks just fine. It didn’t have any leaves on it at the time anyway so perhaps that was a good thing. The other two were severely cut back but it looks like all the leaves are falling off the one. I am not too bothered at this point. I think there’s a bit of new growth coming out so it should be okay if I am correct. The Scientist thinks the new growth was already there so time will tell whether it all falls of or not. I feel pretty confident it will all grow back for this plant though. The last one is hard to judge. It has lots of needly sort of leaves instead and they all look quite wilted right now. There’s a similar shrub already out there that has stalled in growth. I think it’s mostly just a different color but it never got terribly big so I am unsure if this will do much better. Just have to wait it out and see if it will survive. It’s a native so hopefully will recover.

Our tomatoes are doing really well so far. We got wire and plastic frames to train them up and all but the beef tomato one have grown heaps since they were planted. I am hoping the small one is just taking more time to grow since it will be bearing the heavier fruit if it survives. Then there’s the purple cayenne pepper plant that I planted about a week ago. I haven’t seen one that color before, which is the main reason I got it. I plan to get some other chilli plants so we can have a bunch of different varieties for cooking purposes.

After strong winds blew for much of yesterday, we have a carpet of red on the side of the house where all the bottlebrush flowers were blown around. I didn’t get a photo of it but it looks quite cool. If it lasts, I will try to get a decent photo of it.

I finally got the front yard mowed on the weekend. This took a lot more time than I initially planned but it got done, for the most part. The area to the side of the driveway took quite a while because the grass was really long. Also, there was grass of other varieties growing up against the fence and that was a real mess. So I spent a lot of time pulling all of that out and cutting it down to a proper level. It looks heaps tidier.

The rest of the front yard didn’t take quite as long, mostly because I left the tall grass around trees and the mailbox. It was just too late to try to do more than just get the mower over the area. It also looks heaps better.

Yesterday I went out to work on the area around a bottlebrush next to the driveway. This shrub/tree is quite pretty but we were naïve when we planted it too close to the edge. Now the bricks on the driveway are all askew as the roots have grown out. We need to redo that part of the driveway at some point because it creates such a big bump when pulling out of the driveway. The area around the tree took a really long time. I discovered that underneath all the grass there were hundreds of these tiny plants that grow from some sort of bulb. We’ve had these plants around for years but they seem to be taking over the whole yard. I spent a long time pulling out as much as I could and removing it to the clear area near the street at the other side of our house (we are on the corner). If only they would just grow there but I doubt it gets enough moisture to sustain them. I also got side-tracked by the clover that’s growing near the mailbox. I wasn’t really trying to do the weeding this time so had to stop and move to the other areas I wanted to attack yesterday.

Today I didn’t spent quite as much time outside but I went after a bunch of dead branches on a grevillea shrub that has been at the front corner of the house since soon after we moved in. It was a housewarming present so it’s particularly sad to see so much of it has died. It’s quite a monster of a plant, though, growing out and out and out. It looks like one side is still alive and mostly well, so we will be cutting off the half that isn’t. this will leave a huge space in front of our bedroom window so we will need to find something to put there at some point. Whatever it is, I plan for it to be more compact. While cutting away the dead branches, I found there was easy access to a bit of a hiding spot in the midst of the bushes. It’s been there for years but access more recently has been more difficult due to overgrown shrubs. Still we find a lot of trash there so assume kids are hanging out in there some of the time. It’s a neat little place, aside from the mess left by “visitors”. Most of the dead branches are really dry so I plan to put as many through the shredder this weekend as I can. This is particularly important thanks to the early onset of hot weather this spring. Already we’ve had two days over 30 C and tomorrow is supposed to be the same.

We bought some tomato plants on the weekend and I have planted them in a planter box that was shifted after the patio roof was installed. Immediately after filling it was appropriate planting soil and the plants, the dogs managed to jump in and have a lot of fun. They then proceeded to bring all the lovely odors into the house. I have move another pot that seems to have been their stepping stone, of sorts, and that seems to have brought that to a stop.

I think we are going to look at organising the paving for the patio in the next week or so, It’s getting a bit close to time for the 21st birthday next month of Game Fanatic and it would be nice to have that done so we can shift some of the activity outside to make it less stressful for him.

The Scientist also spent considerable time on the weekend cleaning out the gutters. We found a scoop at the hardware store to make it easier but our gutter is too narrow. Fortunately it was only a few dollars. In the end he used a plastic spoon which was better than nothing. There were weeds growing in one part, and he has cleared out that side of the house. The rest will get done some other time but is probably less urgent as there aren’t so many trees around to cause problems.

That’s what I tell myself about anything I do in the garden. Since my knee surgery over a year ago, my garden activity has been pretty limited. This was understandable for the first several months after surgery since it was hard to get up and down. Now that my knee is so much better, that is less the issue and it’s more  a matter of being out of the habit of doing anything.

Yesterday I went outside and realised there was need to clean up dog messes so I got my little spade and an old plant container to get around the yard quickly. That took a while but then I found myself pulling out weedy grass from around bushes. All the shrubs along the back side of the house have been overgrown with couch grass so it required a bit of work. I abandoned my original task (which was mostly done anyway) and devoted most of the remaining time to clearing out that mess in the shrubs. The worst place is right up against the house as the grass’ roots run rather deep and I have to really rip the stuff out. On a positive note that grass has often died so it isn’t always resistant to my efforts. I managed to get most of that cleared out and also pulled up quite a few weeds that have sprung up in the back yard. It’s always the nastiest ones that seem to grow so quickly too. Of course I was doing all this without gloves and my hands are now feeling a bit battered from the abuse.  The good part is there is a small area that looks a lot better. I’m hoping to go off to a nursery in a local shop today to search for one more plant to replace one that died well over a year ago. The stake holding it up was still there but evidence of the plant is long gone.

That’s what I did for much of the afternoon. I started around noon by going out to mow some of the grass in the backyard. I also pulled out the line trimmer to clear out some of the edges, then came across our clothes hoist (a rotating clothes line, essentially) that was rendered nearly unusable by the bottlebrush shrub/tree growing into and over and around it. I eventually pulled out a pruning saw and clippers and lopped off several limbs. It’s less shady but the clothes hoist moves again and can be raised high enough that I don’t bang my head on it. There is also space to hang clothes again.

I eventually got to some potential garden beds that had been overrun by the weedy couch grass. That was the hard work of the day because some of it has grown into the concrete around the base of the house. I had to leave some bits because they were just too hard. But I cleared enough to plant the bell pepper seedlings and four tomato plants. I’m hoping to get good results after all the work I’ve put into the garden this year. I do have cherry and grape tomatoes starting to grow. Several are on the plant that survived through the winter and has grown into a monster of sorts. I also planted some lettuce recently and hope that will grow well. I had to put out iron pellets to get rid of the snails in the area. I have a red mustard plant growing beautifully since mid-winter but the snails kept eating the leaves and I’ve not been able to use it. I had to break off most of the leaves to find all the snails and still I found another one the next day. I think they are all gone now and the plant is growing rapidly. Lastly, my chillies are doing quite well so far. One is a black pearl chilli and looks really nice in its pot. I might have to use a thin stake soon to keep it upright but it should do well based on what I’m seeing so far. The habañero isn’t growing as fast as I’d like but it is improving…oh and I also planted some bean seedlings but they aren’t growing all that well so far. Only two of the four seem to have survived.

While looking around the garden I found that a wild vine of some sort has a flower that has bloomed. I’m not quite sure what the plant it but it’s growing near the area where we previously planted passionfruit vines (that never did anything). I’ll have to identify the flower tomorrow to see what we might expect next.

Note: I just looked up passionfruit flowers and that’s definitely what’s growing so wildly. Funny how it never grew much all the time we planted it. There are two more vines growing along the back wall near the cherry tomatoes.