Spring 2014

Some recent photos of the front garden.  Overall I am happy with how everything is going. Our grass has greened up again and is back to looking lush.  This year has really just been about experimenting with different perennials. My favourites will be propagated and used more en masse next year. I have ordered more seeds of easy to propagate yet interesting plants, so there is lots to look forward to.

 A few weeks back I went on a road trip to Lambley Nursery with a neighbour where I was able to purchase a few grasses and perennials I've not been able to find in local nurseries. It was a lovely day and well worth the drive. The thing I love about their perennials is they are so easy to propagate by either striking cuttings or by division. It may take a couple of years but you can fill your garden quite cheaply with minimum skill and hard work. When you tire of a certain look it's fun and easy to start the process all over again.

Mobile Free - better than you would think.

What a busy month it's been. Tax, work deadlines, birthdays, school inductions and halloween have all managed to eat into blogging time. 

Something wonderful did occur during this time. My mobile stopped recharging rendering it unusable. Now, you might think how is that a wonderful thing? I too was initially annoyed at the prospect of being without a phone. My brother who had upgraded to an iPhone 6 offered up his old iPhone 5 but I had to wait three weeks. This gave me a few weeks of living mobile free and I have to say I loved it.

No longer was I a slave to technology. No daily recharging, searching in the bottom of my too large handbag or intermittently checking for messages through out the day. My time spent at the park with the kids meant I was 100% focussed on the kids not responding to texts and answering phone calls.  At home, I felt like there was one less thing to have to do and it felt great! 

I am no longer mobile free, David's argument of 'what happens in an emergency' won over my 'one less thing' argument. But it has planted a seed and got me thinking of a simpler time. A quick search online confirmed there are a lot of us out there who are maybe/perhaps rethinking the path we have been heading down and dream of a less complicated life. How much time do we spend attending to our gadgets and at what cost are we really paying in doing so?  

Ok, rant over :)

Now, Bill's progress. After planting the entire 10 seeds I have been left with 3 seedlings (well 2 definites and one possible maybe). The below pot on the right is the first seed to germinate, note how stunted it's growth is (Not promising). The Pot on the left was planted a month later and is doing a lot better. There also seems to be a mystery geranium popping up too which is kind of cool. The two larger seedlings I have planted out into the garden now so hopefully they will do a lot better than in a pot..

Speaking of pots, I did purchase several rather large ones for our back deck which is really just an excuse to buy new plants to fill them of course.  

Project no.2 growing sunflowers (the ones above in the terra cotter pot are fake and gifted to me from a neighbour) the photo below are real and appear to be growing like the clappers, whoever the hell the clappers are I imagine they are exceedingly fast and tall :).  So, on that note I will finish up and not even mention the mere 7 weeks to Christmas (gasp in horror.) TTFN.