The sun shines, garden progresses

More free time lately and better weather, so more trips to Bunnings and more work. Sleepers now fitted in place, more pavers purchased and laid, although we are still levelling. We discover that the pavers are more fragile than they look, one has chipped and one has broken in two during the levelling process. Back to Bunnings. We need another half a sleeper anyway, not to mention bags of good soil to go in the newly edged bed. Also still need to source some gravel to put round the pavers, something Bunnings doesn't have.

And now for the garden

After another visit to Tasmania, we return at the beginning of May and continue work on the garden. The climbing rose which blew down over summer is re-growing rapidly, but urgently needs tying up before it blows over again. Bit by bit we dig up what was left of the brick paved patio and brick path to the garage. Bricks are packed into the trailer and carted off to become part of a friend's barbecue.
We make yet another trip to Bunnings to buy sleepers to edge the deck and pavers for a new path.
Now we need to level the area where we plan to lay the pavers - in the process we discover there are still a lot of roots left from the calistemon we removed last year, and these need to go if we are going to get the path level. Much work with mattock, spade and axe and we have a barrowload of firewood to give away.
The holes resulting from our root excavation mean that more work is required to get the path area level, but this week rain has stopped play. When the weather improves we will fix the sleepers in place, do some more levelling, then start laying sand, gravel and pavers to complete the path.

Back, and busy again

After spending the summer in Tasmania, we return to the house at the end of March. In our absence the deck has been built, and beautifully stained by our house-sitters.
We spend a very busy week getting the garden into some kind of shape, buying deck furniture, which includes a flat-pack storage bench which, after erection, not only provides a very comfortable seat but also a place to keep the Weber and gas bottle which we cooked on all through the renos last year.
Here's Peter sitting on it, with coffee and newspaper.

Rain stopped play

A showery week prevented us from putting another coat on the fence. But we did get the garage tidy enough to put the car safely off the street before heading to Tas. Scheduled on our return: fitting of blinds, rendering of the wall, and building of a new deck.

Fenced off and walled in

Fencing continues on Friday and the following Monday. In between we reduce the height of the wall between us and the house behind by knocking off four courses of bricks.
Then a pause in proceedings before a big day last Friday. Brickie comes and closes the gap between us and the other building site, fencers came to cut the fence on the other side to the prescribed height.And a nice man from Uretek comes to inspect the side wall of our Little O'Grady street property which is also the boundary of the garden, and gives us the good news that although the wall is leaning a bit, there is no risk of it falling down and we don't need to worry.
Sunday we paint the fence - fortunately before the massive storms that came through on Sunday night. Waiting for the weather to settle so we can put a second coat on.
Progressive pictures:

Fencing continues

Fencers returned on Wednesday with a skip, and used their digger to remove all the grass and weeds and some of the topsoil from next door's garden beds. Neighbour worked with them to clear rubbish until they had filled their skip. Garden not yet totally clean but an unbelievably great improvement on the jungle it was a few days ago.

Thursday, the actual fencing restarted, after about a week's break while work was done on the neighbour's side. Here's what the retaining wall half of the fence looks like...

... and note how tidy next door's garden looks.

All over by Christmas?

No, not World War 1, but the final stages of the renos.
Today we put up the last pictures. A number of them have moved from their previous locations, and we are enjoying being surprised to see them somewhere new. The last light fitting went up, so the pictures are also all suitably illuminated.
Peter has been doing some artwork around the edges of our floor tiles where there were some bits of bare concrete, and although the colour match isn't perfect, it looks good.
After further consideration, blinds have been ordered for all the windows, and we hope they will arrive and be fitted before we head off to Tas at the end of October.

We finally selected a fencing contractor who started this week on the replacement of the fence on our south-west side. An issue for this project was the presence of built up vegetable gardens and very large, very old fruit trees close to the fence on our neighbour's property, which were the principal cause of the collapse of the old fence, and a potential danger to any new one. Somewhat to our surprise, rather than being concerned about the impact on the trees/garden, the neighbour is taking advantage of the absence of a fence and the access through our other neighbour's property to do a complete transformation of his garden. On Monday our favourite tree fellers will come and remove all the trees along the fence line, and the fencing contractors will use their little bobcat to take the top layer off the raised beds (including the grass and weeds currently growing there). Neighbour has been out in the garden today doing some clearing up himself - we think it is going to cheer him up to have his yard back under control. We lent him a shovel and made encouraging noises.

Not sure what the birds and possums are going to do when the trees go. We will also miss the shade they provided in the summer, but we can replant some greenery on our side to compensate. And if it gets hot this year before it grows high enough, we'll just pull the new blinds down and/or head off to Tasmania to sail.



And now we can see lots of things that aren't really all that attractive...