Saturday looked like this! Just glorious and a perfect day for pottering around in the garden. What was really nice too, was that there we took plenty of breaks, a break for breakfast, a break for a cuppa and again for coffee, then lunch and even some reading breaks. Oh and we definitely squeezed in some gardening too.
The herb garden needed a bit of attention, some plants needed cutting back and some a good prune, the edges were in need of a good trim.
After: Take from the deck, looking down. It doesn't look much different does it really? Trust me we did do some work on it, in between all the other stuff!
The rose garden was weeded and I cut back the hedging, it has grown too tall and I need it to bush out and join together, or it wouldn't be a hedge would it. ;-D
I'm really pleased with the hedge, all from cuttings.
Looking down from the deck
When we made all the mulch the other week I forgot to show you where most of it went.
It went here on the Phallic border. It wasn't supposed to be phallic shaped; but after telling Joe how I wanted it to look and after clearly marking the shape, this is what he did!
Over compensating methinks!
There aren't too many things planted in there yet, this little cluster I particularly like, the acer is Ambers(goat) tree and the leaves are changing colour. The burgundy shrub, whose name escapes me right now, goes a deeper shade in the autumn. On the right is a cornus, or dogwood, when it's leave are gone the stems turn a vibrant red as do the stems on the acer.
Acer
Cornus
The giant Phallus from the deck
The bit of drama was a rather large fire down our road. I knew nothing of it until Sue called me and asked why so many fire engines were racing up our road? Her son Jak had seen them on his way back from Raglan. I'd even had a text from Natasha asking if their house had burned down?
Tucked away at the end of the road we were blissfully unaware of all the excitement.
Then Joe reminded me that one the farmers further down our road could have started to burn gorse.
He had done much preparation beforehand, clearing fire breaks with a bulldozer etc. The photos make it look like it's a pretty major fire, and it was but I'm pretty sure he had it all under control.
I whizzed off to Jan's to take photos, she had a good view of it all
The fire department were standing by, although I'm not sure the chap in the water truck (right) would have made much impact! Gonna need a bigger truck.
Oh and there was a bit of cuteness going on at Jans too.
Sunday wasn't quite so sunny as Saturday but it was still a good day to get jobs done outside. First we did some goat maintenance, their feet got trimmed and they all were given an oral drench for worms. After losing Ella a couple of weeks ago we felt they all needed to be treated. I did notice that we had another one, Emily, looking a bit poorly.
After they were done we took a trailer load of rubbish to the dump. Once the trailer was empty we went and got a scoop of garden mix, I have a few things that need potting up and other stuff to do that requires soil, one such job is described below.
In our garden, set behind the spa, is what Joe calls The Naughty chair, it's a stone 'thing' with four insets which we assume were meant to be seats. Each seat appears to point to north, east, south & west! Perhaps it was built for some ritualistic purpose! Who knows, anything is possible here.
I didn't take a before photo, it was full of weeds, so a mess. I had planted bulbs in there at one stage but they never really put on the kind of show I wanted them to, so they were dug out and will be planted elsewhere. I have a lot of succulents and intend to use them in another garden project soon. Some I've used here, these will just continue to grow, the agave in the middle will get huge and the surrounding plants will multiply, hopefully. Those naughty seats will have pots with succulents, the pots you see have just been left there because it started to rain. The black weed mat still needs trimming.
For some reason the big agave ended up off centre, so Joe will see if he
can wiggle it back to where it should be. The whole structure is on the
skew so the planting will never balance quite right but then we're all
on the skew here so it fits in nicely.
Our feijoa tree is giving us feijoas!
Woohoo, first year of fruit.
It's really hard to describe what these taste like, slightly bitter sweet, tangy & dry in the mouth!
People either love them or hate them.
They're a conundrum really, good in cakes, I have a recipe I want to try.
If you want to taste one then you'll just have to come visit.
The stripy crocheted thing is growing and the yarn stash is going down ....slowly.
And now for the bit of sadness. Above I mentioned that we had one goat looking poorly on Sunday. She had looked a bit brighter yesterday but as Michael was passing earlier he noticed she had died. Poor girl, RIP Emily.
And then there were three.
And on that sad note I shall sign off, it's time to sit in my chair and catch up on some TV.
see ya next time
