I Had A Tree

I had a tree.

It was one of the reasons we bought this house.

It shaded the hammock.

In Spring it shed all its bark;

Enough to carpet the entire yard.

And rainbow lorikeets came to ravage its flowers.

The rest of the year it just dropped leaves.

It was a good tree.

But the neighbours built a house.

And said the tree was dangerous.

And broke their concrete.

I had a tree.

Rose Overload

When we moved to this house, there was in order of fifteen roses in the garden. Most were in these stone-ornamented beds on either side of the driveway, outside the front door. Ordinary rose bushes, the majority small and spindly and uninspiring. There were also a few in the far right corner of the back yard, covered in scale and this blah yellow-pink combination which I don't like at all.

I had four potted roses which I'd been attempting to kill with lack of water for a couple of years, and I added them to the back right corner (a little to the right of the scale-infested bushes, which I pruned back ferociously).

To all this I've added eight climbing roses, three bush roses, and a handful of floribunda (I much prefer floribunda). The most successful so far has been a rose called "Shady Lady" which flowers profusely and lasts wonderfully when cut. My climbing iceberg has also grown well, and I really love the look of the unopened buds, white with the faintest flush of pink. I like it so much that today I added three floribunda icebergs (two burgundy and one blushing pink), and am using the bricks from my BBQ demolition to create a kind of paved area around them along the left wall.

I am so very much not a methodical, ordered gardener, and roses respond much better to someone who remembers to fertilise them, and fight off the black spot and aphids. But I'm having fun.

Hard Yakka

Phew! This garden project took weeks, and it will be a while yet before I've planted the new garden and cleaned up completely. But the hardest part's over.

Deadly Weapon

If ever I turn my hand to Urban Fantasy my character shall use a sledgehammer as a weapon. Most likely a sledgehammer called Gabriel, or perhaps Peter if she's being subtle.

I'm in the process of destroying our shoddy backyard bbq using just such a sledgehammer, and the ease with which the bricks go flying suggests to me that even vampires would have trouble should they happen to meet 'Gabriel'.