The garden – before and after

While we’re waiting for work to start on the kitchen, bathroom, and laundry (not in that order) at our house Pete and I have been busy transforming the garden. The next three pictures are ‘before’ shots.

After the chooks went to a much better home we brought in some raised garden beds and removed some extraneous things like the water cube in the corner. The previous owners had a little distillery in the garden shed. We’re quite happy to buy our booze from the bottle shop.

The raised garden beds were filled with purchased top soil before Christmas (who needs a gym?) and Pete edged the border with sleepers. We pulled out some creepers and plants which we’d found were weeds and shifted a few others like the passionfruit vine which now grows on the fence. We’d done some work in the overgrown front garden bed, too. Some of the bushed were too large for the space so some were removed and others were pruned. That work led us to discover some roses and other plants that were struggling. We pulled out one particularly thorny rose and did some summer pruning on a few others. One poor little bush was transplanted to the back border where it gave a huge sigh of relief and decided to stay.

The previous owners had a lot of stuff tacked up on the back fence, including a bicycle and a few garden dwarfs. They’re not really my thing but Pete likes them so they can stay. In fact, I added a couple more  when we fixed up the bicycle’s front basket. They’re cute.

The big dwarf on the shelf has been refurbished. Doc was a sad, faded mess but now he’s looking good. So now we have seven. No Snow White, but. Here’s the before and after.

For those interested, the plant is metriosideros collina (little dugald). Apart from that, we have planted two paw paws, a lime tree which will be espaliered, a navel orange, a bunch of tomatoes and some herbs. And rescued what I sincerely hope is a dwarf fig. We’ll remove the dragon fruit. We don’t eat them and we want that space to let the orange tree grow.

That’ll do for now. It’s not good weather for planting most things. We’ve had a number of storms and it has been warm and sticky enough to warrant air conditioning. Now we have solar power it won’t cost. We usually prefer to use fans and open windows but dripping with sweat is not a good look, as well as being uncomfortable. Summer’s not our favourite season.

I’m still slowly making progress on my next book. I’m looking forward to where the characters take me next :).