Category: grandchildren

Australia · autumn · chocolate · David Austin roses · family · garden flowers · grandchildren · in my garden · roses

In A Vase On [Easter] Monday!

Joanne22 Comments

Our family Easter celebrations began two weeks ago this year. My eldest son and his wife are in Bali for the long weekend, while youngest son, his wife and their two boys are in Adelaide, so we had a “whole family” get together two weeks ago for Easter. This weekend I had my two daughters and their families here. So what with one things and another, it has been a busy time.

During the past two weeks also, we have had rain nearly every day, not huge in quantity, but enough to prevent me from doing any gardening. How frustrating! Yesterday, however, when the sun shone for the first time in days, I got all my washing done. I also put my empty “bunny” vase in place last night, ready to add flowers today for my contribution to Cathy’s regular Monday event, In a Vase on Monday.

And what did I awaken to this morning? You guessed it, more rain!

Between showers, I collected a few pretties to add to my vase, although my lovely Gerberas, which I had thought were finished for the season, are a tad bedraggled again. The weight of the raindrops tends to make their delicate petals flop downwards.

Raindrops on roses – (and whiskers on kittens – sorry, I had to say it!) – on the other hand always look so beautiful. This lovely rose is a long stemmed ‘Olivia Rose Austin’; all the other roses on the bush were short stemmed, so wouldn’t suit my bunny vase.

There were a few red roses, but I only chose this one as it is fully opened. I am surprised by how many rose buds are still on all of my rose bushes, given the time of year and the number of rainy days we have had.

The Tibouchina flowers look rather stunning with raindrops on their petals as well. They are slightly weighted down by the moisture, but being stronger petals they seem to cope. I should also mention that the green foliage in the background is a few stems of Port Wine Magnolia. It isn’t in flower just now, but the foliage acted as an ideal vase filler, to hold the flower stems in place.

Being Easter, I had to add a prop of Easter eggs with my vases. The little ones all know where Nana’s stash is, and know that a simple “please” when they visit will have me sharing their “special treats”.

I read today that in the USA, there are no chocolate Easter eggs; also, there isn’t a four day long weekend over Easter, which is what we have here in Australia. So perhaps in the comments you can let me know how Easter is celebrated in other countries? 🙂

When I turned the calendar page to April today, I was surprised also to see a picture on the calendar of cows. That’s not very Easter-ish, but I do love cows. The calendar has an Australian country scene for each month, so that might be something that might interest some of you. This stand in the main living area, where I keep my recipe books – well, some of them – has become my favourite place to display my vase of flowers each week.

I have a row of various coloured Impatiens in my front garden and they have survived the hottest summer days, and now the cooler autumn days very well indeed. When we have a fine day again I will take a photo of them in the garden, as they really do look lovely.

This small vase of Impatiens sits beside me as I write. They have been indoors for about five hours now and I have noticed that the petals, now dried, look much more lively than in this photo.

It is rather late though, so I won’t take another photo. Today was another busy day, complete with visitors – who raided Nana’s Easter egg stash while here 😉 – and I am about to call it a night. I am dreadfully behind in replying to your lovely comments and also visiting everyone’s blogs, but this week I expect life to return to the usual schedule for a while.

Thank you once again, Cathy, for hosting In a Vase on Monday. ❤

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. 🙂

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. 😀