Month: January 2024

Australia · challenges · Changes · concepts · family · gardening · grandchildren · in my garden · inspiration · photography · seasons · subtropical climate

Karma’s Photo Hunt ~ The Hill Project

Joanne35 Comments

When Karma suggested a photo hunt for her blogging friends to join in on, I immediately knew which photos I needed to search for!

Last year, as I have mentioned before, I spent a lot of time revamping several of my garden beds. The hill directly opposite the front of my house was the largest project, a garden running almost the full length of the house. Plus, it’s on a sharp slope. We had tried to make the hill manageable previously, without a great deal of success – what I didn’t realise was that our first attempt at constructing a manageable and attractive garden was in 2010!

Here’s the first photo I found during the hunt –

15th April 2010, before the first Hill Project began.

As the photo shows, the hill was steep! So anything we constructed there would be a challenge to maintain. You will notice growing on the far right of the photo is a small pine cone tree. I decided this tree would be beautiful when fully grown, and would shade the front of the house.

19th October 2020 – the tree had grown!

The next photo I found during the hunt was taken in 2020. I had even convinced husband to extend the retaining wall out in front of the pine cone tree at some stage, to accomodate the tree’s roots. The original plan had been to cover the whole hill with drought tolerent ground cover plants, which may have worked well if most of the plants hadn’t struggled to get a root-hold on the slope!

By this time, husband had lost interest in helping me with the garden. Weed mat and mesh wire to hold mulch in place simply wasn’t successful on the sharp slope. I slipped down the slope when trying to pull out weeds. Also, by this time we had brought home potted plants galore from my inlaws house when we had cleaned out their property, ready for sale. It was a trying time, putting my inlaws into aged care facilities and dealing with my father-in-law’s declining health. I think it fair to say we had both lost our gardening mojo completely.

The day my seventeen year old daughter brought home a boy “she thought she might like” – nearly nineteen years ago – little did I know what an inspiration he would be to me in the years to come! I wrote a post about him several years ago, I think I called it A Man of Ideas or some such thing, as I had discovered he has a unique knack of getting into my brain, seeing the vision I have, then improving upon my ideas. He’s wonderful! So when we spoke about a possible solution to the most challenging part of my garden and threw around a few ideas, we came up with a solution that he was prepared to help me bring to fruition …

Winter 2023 ~ the Hill Project 2.0 begins!

First, the pine cone tree had to go. Next, the retaining wall needed to travel along a straight line once the roots of the tree were removed. What was I thinking when I insisted the tree stayed? Those tree roots were gynormous!!!

Three little people, along with the dogs, enjoyed watching Daddy – to the two little ones on the right – and Uncle – to the little one on the far left – hack away at the hill, essentially restructuring the land to accomodate our vision for a new, attractive, easy care, easy to access, garden.

The dry creek bed under construction.

During times of heavy rain, the far corner of the garden washes away in a stream of water which cascades down the hill. My man of Ideas suggested we construct a dry creek bed in that corner. This area of the garden is still under construction, but I think this photo, taken around October last year, shows the basic formation of what we have in mind.

And here’s the constructed garden –

The construction and planting is complete!

The height of the lower section of the retaining wall has been raised, another small block wall has been contructed and a wooden sleeper wall at the top runs along a hedge of Sacred Bamboo, Nandina Nana. It had to be a rockery garden to compliment the natural surroundings, so my son-in-law lifted the larger bush rocks into place with the mini-excavator and left several smaller rocks for me to play around with, to create the garden I had in mind.

It was a long process, but we did it! I hope my son-in-law realises how much I appreciate his contribution to everything he helps me with around the garden. Maybe the thousand times I have said thank you may have been a clue. 😉

So there are my before shots, before-before shots, during and after shots, Karma – you did say the rules of the photo hunt are loosey-goosey – right? 😉

There’s still time to join in, so why not follow the link to Karma’s Photo Hunt!

The second part of the challenge is to take a photo, one for each season of the same place, which I will join in also! I am eager to watch my new garden plants grow and change as the seasons progress. 🙂

Australia · garden flowers · in my garden · roses · subtropical weather · summer

In A Vase On Monday ~ Pastels

Joanne33 Comments

When I went outside to collect flowers for a vase yesterday afternoon for Cathy’s In a Vase on Monday meme at Rambling in the Garden, I was swarmed by a thousand mosquitoes! Okay, maybe not a thousand, but when you have your hands full of roses and can’t easily swat flying insects that are after your blood, it feels like thousands. 😉

So it was a matter of cut and run. I had waited for the showers of rain to ease before going outside, which is undoubtedly why there were so many active mozzies in the garden. Once in the vase, I decided to wait until today to take photos as the house seemed so dark with the overcast weather. I shouldn’t have waited: we have drizzling rain again today and the house is once again dark.

Last week, the pink Gerberas had only spent flowers, but this week I was able to cut several to bring indoors. There are also plenty of buds opening, so I may even bring in more to add to the vase later in the week. You may also notice some lilac-coloured Society Garlic blooms behind the Gerberas.

There are plenty of pale pink blooms on my Souvenir de la Malmaison rose bush. I wish I’d had longer to choose some to bring indoors, but by the time I reached that part of the garden, I’m sure the mozzies had told their family and friends I was there!

I love the delicate combination of Lavender and pink Gerberas together. When the weather improves, I would like to bring in more of the two for another vase. 🙂

Roald Dahl roses have a weeping habit, as is evident in the way they droop down the vase. By the smile on his face, they seem to be keeping my little duck ornament happy. 🙂 The Roald Dahl rose bush is also covered in blooms but again, I needed to try to outrun those mozzies!

From my kitchen window this morning I spotted a newly opened Hibiscus flower, so I zoomed in on it and caught a photo early. The rain will probably make the flower droop by tomorrow if this weather continues!

I do believe that as much as I enjoy all flowers, pastel colours are my favourites. 🙂

Thanks again, Cathy, for hosting In a Vase on Monday. 🙂

cooking · family · gardening · grandchildren · grandson · memories

School Holiday Activities

Joanne16 Comments

Besides growing flowering plants in my garden, I also have areas where I grow fruit trees, vegetables, and herbs. My poor veggie garden is looking rather neglected these days, however, due to the heat. A few days ago I brought in the last of my beetroot plants, which I have now pickled, leaving just a lone rhubarb plant to fend for itself. It is actually fending very nicely, but I am keeping a close watch on it. I picked a few stems about a week ago and stewed them with two large apples off my tree – yum!

My kids grew up watching me bring fruit indoors for jam-making and often climbed the trees to reach higher fruit for me. I once had an amazing kumquat tree and made the tastiest marmalade from the fruit. I also grew starfruit, lemonade fruit, grapefruits the size of which you would never find in the stores, mangoes, lemons, and mandarines. Some trees have gone to heaven and have since been replaced.

One fruit I have never had any success growing is strawberries. We have the climate for it, they grow, but the visiting birds and animals always get to the ripe strawberries before I do!

Not to be deterred, when my favourite seven-year-old asked if I could make strawberry jam with him during the school holidays, I found beautiful ripe strawberries at our local store. My son – his Dad – knew I would relish the task, given my past history of making jams and chutneys when he was growing up.

My grandson had an even better idea – could we make bread also, to put the jam on, he asked? I knew we would both enjoy our day in the kitchen making both. 🙂

Short, seven-year-olds need a chair to stand on to reach the stove, so he was able to climb higher, and was fascinated watching the strawberries turning somersaults as they bubbled away in the boiling pan. So was I! I explained everything I was doing, step by step, and found my student to be an extremely willing assistant.

As I had not made strawberry jam before, I decided to make a half quantity, just in case it was a complete flop. It produced three jars of the best strawberry jam I have ever tasted! Even his Mum, not usually a fan of jam, announced she now apparently did like it! 🙂

The bread recipe I used required two, two-hour sessions of rising! I chose a Paul Hollywood recipe for a white loaf as that is what my grandson prefers and we alternated between jam-making and preparing bread dough for the next rise. After sharing the jam and bread with his Mum and little brother when they came to collect him, the loaf was nearly all gone!

Later, when I spoke to his Mum, I told her that he was a willing student who could undoubtedly give her complete instructions on bread and jam making if she asked – she said he already had! Lol. 😀