Backyard make-over!

The time has come where I finally made-over my yards ready for party-season! With the help of family and friends we were able to transform my dirt-bowl/weeds into this nice little zone....  

Yay! We got good soil delivered (as mine is orange clay) and some mulch and sand. The bricks were donated by Josh's mum who had them left over from when they built their house....over 20 years ago!! She was glad to see them go!

Give the plants a few months of eating super-charged nutrients and they will be huge. As you can see, the fences are still like eye-level so those neighbours be-gone at the back will eventually block out the house. I'm thinking of putting in another fruit tree in to act as a fruit wall along one side. I have a peach tree, dwarf nectarine, lemon, bay tree, a mystery stone-fruit tree which grew from a cast-aside pip thrown into the vegie patch at my old house. Also I have rosemary, mint, parsley x 2, lavender, and in my new vegie patch zone there is zucchini, eggplant, chili, tomato, and strawberries. We'll see how that all goes! I was thinking of taking out the half-dead passionfruit on the pergola post and putting in grapes, how pretty that would be!
Also was thinking of putting lattice on the fence above the vegies so I can grow beans or peas..... MM!

I'm loving the weeping cherry in the middle of the yard, that will look BEAUTIFUL next year all covered in white flowers :D hoorahhh.

All i can say is, wait until you see what I've been up to INSIDE!

it's about time...

HA! End Post. No not really. While that photo is indeed about time, the real message here is that it's about time that i pulled my finger out of my anus and started making some more progress on the house! I decided to paint, and the colour i wanted was one similar to what my dad used when renovating. It was picked for him because it complemented the blue laminate kitchen at his house, and obviosuly was the cheaper option as apposed to purchasing a new kitchen. And as my house is decked out with blue carpet (shudder) I figured it would match too. Luckily he still had about 4 litres left so i can use as much as i need. I think it looks much cooler....

I am going to do one more wall, as it looks funny just having that corner done. Now that I know it looks good, i'm going to amp it up! Wieew! Also, I have an electrician coming on saturday morning (7am) to install all my lights finally. I bought them sooo long ago! I was quite busy over the weekend!! I also set up the worm farm i got for christmas....

And here are my little wormy friends. I have 1000 worms to start with, and we'll see how they go! I think i can start feeding them now :)

After all that hard work, i sat down to a cup of apple and cinnamon tea in my new teapot and tea cup! Josh got me the teapot for xmas - he thinks it is garish but its the one i wanted, so he got it for me anyway just to make me happy :) what a nice boy! And i got the cup from my friend Claudia! It matches the blue ones i have :D awesome!

 Also, i did lots of cooking! I will post up the proper recipes in another post, but for now here is one dish i invented. I can't make it count towards the total 52 dishes cos there was no recipe, and i didnt really like it but i wanted to use my giant tube pasta i got from the Italian Deli in Williamstown...

 It fogged up the lense so i did a soap opera pose... as you do.....

Ok, yeah so it was one of those nights when i didnt know what to do... so i made bruscetta and also pesto (with waaay too much garlic - oops!!) and then sort of put it all together into a pesto pasta nest with baby bruscetta topping!

Visually it looks awesome but i didnt quite get it right. I might thik about it some more and attempt it another day :P I'll be back tomorrow with more food stuffs :D wooo hooooo!!!

what's been goin' on!

Ahoy Noahssss! Well, lately I have been a bit all over the place (what else is new?) and haven't given you news on a massive achievement! MY PERGOLA IS FINISHED! Woo-hooo! My Dad put the roofing on last week. He slaved away with Maki in the heat and wind trying to screw down the colorbond and laserlite sheets. Crazy! But yes, it is done!! So now, I can focus on the yard. The massive yard. And those horribly low fences!

I need to get some crushed rock and mulch and make a nice garden so it doesn't look so desolate out there. So looks like I can tick this pergola item off my list. I did help about 1%... BUT i did financially back it, and it ended up costing DOUBLE what I was told it would cost, so that has pushed all my other plans back :S So I think i helped it get built in a way haha... oh dear. I suck. Watch this space and hopefully i can make my backyard beautiful for you to enjoy! Anyway in other news, Josh bought me some lovely roses...

Lovely roses, bad photo! Sorry, I compressed it heaps for a forum, and cbf uploading it again! haha. Also... in other JOSH NEWS.. He gave Missy a haircut last night, and she is like Patchy McBaldy now. She had heaps of grass seeds and burs and knots. It is bonkers....

Aaaw little missy :) Yeah so TONIGHT I am trying out a new Vego restaurant - as part of my list :) I have to try 5 new ones. Luckily at World Vegan Day I got handed a business card for a BRAND NEW vegan cafe. I lost it though.. that's the bad news!! I'm sure it will work out :) Life always does... life... finds a way...

Project Update

Wow, what a busy weekend!! My dad came back from Sydney and began work on the pergola again. It's pretty tall, and it was scary being up that wobbly ladder :S but it will be totally worth it when it's done :)

This is still very rough, and as i had to go out in the afternoon I didn't get a picture of where he got up to. He got all the top beams in place so now he just needs to tidy it all up and attach the roofing!

The fences are so low, if i stand on tip-toe I can see 4 backyards over. What is this, the 50's? Fuck man. I want to get extenders on the fence or put up some lattice for a bit of summer party privacy. Hoorah! Oh also, another thing I'm working on is the rabbit hutch in preparation for getting a wee rabbit! Once the pergola is done hopefully that will be the end of loud noises and i can safely get my bunny! So Josh's sister donated me this hutch, and as you can see, it needs a little bit of TLC...

Josh tells me that he made this years ago for the rabbit :) Even more reason to hold onto it and give it new life. I don't have big plans for it as yet because I have to focus on making a chicken coop BUT i plan to sand it back and tack down the chicken wire and give it a fresh coat of outdoor paint. I bought a similar colour because it looks so bright and happy! Will get onto that ASAP :)

gettin' bizzay in the backyard

So. My backyard. This is part of my list of wonder so i spent another sunny weekend day getting busy to make it look nice. This is what it looked like about 2 weeks back...

There is 1 of everything there. And a low fence. Gross. When I say there is one of everything, i don't mean that the yard is abundant with plants... quite the opposite actually. Of each plant that is present, it is the only one. They are scattered about in no discernable order, and they make me sigh. *sigh* So... add a few donated trees, namely:

...lemon tree...

...port wine magnolia...

...something...

...and another something... all of which aren't looking too crash hot right now. Then to add to these donated trees, i had to get creative and work with what i've got! I have this MONSTER agapanthus plant near the back door, and a few baby ones scattered around it too. The good thing about this is that you can divide it. Little did i know that it would be nearly impossible to dig out haha...

But luckily my trusty family helpers came over again with power tools and upper body strength - both of which i lack. We (they) got the plant out and then we divided it up into little babies. As you can see it's pretty easy to know where to divide:

I was surprised by the crazy dreadlock matted root system:

Pretty similar to orchid roots imo. So as i was dividing those, my dad cut down the bottlebrush! Hoorayyyy! Ding dong the witch is dead!

and then he dug me some holes! Check out the difference between the soil in these 2 holes. One is soil and one is clay...stupid garden...

I got to dig one hole with the post-hole digger and it was crazy! You have to hold on so hard so it doesn't kick! Then i went and planted all the little agapanthus around to make it look nice and green! We also dug out these african grassy looking things that were basically a clump of dead tall reedy grass. The only good thing is that as it had died all the grass made some nice compost, and the soil around them was beautiful and mulchy. I took little clumps of it and put it at the bases of most of the new plants...

haha, i still have the mystery tree from my old house - the one that just started growing in the vegie patch. It is somehow still alive so i planted it and we'll see what happens! You can barely see it in the above photo, it's the little stick next to the lavender. I also have to trim those other big trees back. i wanted them gone but mum thinks they will look ok if i cut them into shape. We'll see!

ah yes, and here are my camelia bushes donated by my aunty. I chopped all the flower buds off so that all the energy goes into growing this spring rather than flowering. Hopefully that theory works :) Wow my body hurts just thinking about the work we did. We also planted some of the 5 billion agapanthus plants in the front yard, and got rid of a dead tree or 2 from out the front. It didn't even have a root system it was that dead. I'm surprised the wind hadn't blown it over sooner :O So here i am at stage 2 of the garden reno. I haven't spent a cent yet on it. I have been very lucky! Maybe next weekend I will buy some good soil and mulch and fertiliser to look after all the new plants! WEEE! Oh yeah and i found out that i will be getting back $1,900 from my tax return so looks like the pergola is a go-go! WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

List Update: July poem, Dish 1, gardens...

How-dee-do folks! Well it is now August, so let me just say.. WHAT THE FUCK OMG! How time flies hey? We all know it. I don't know why i bothered to say it really, it just took me by surprise...again! So in my list of wonder I challenged myself to write 1 poem per month and cook 1 new dish every week for the next year, well until my 24th Birthday on June 30. So I was out on Saturday night (July 31st) and it was about 10pm when I realised that I only had 2 hours to write my poem for July! ~*pAnIc MoDe*~ I certainly didn't want to start screwing up the list and letting myself down within the first week, so I was that idiot yelling "Does anyone have a PEN?!?!!" at a nice bar where surely nobody is carrying their usual bag of tricks. Much to my embarassment nobody had a pen....but everybody had an iPhone. It was like being interviewed on my way out of a court hearing, there were iPhones aimed at me everywhere. Being the noob that I am, it took me a good...i dont know... 3 hours to write this lame haiku:

Apples and friendship

Can be crushed into cider

Bulmers in my hand

It's a haiku so it's not meant to make sense. I was drinking a pint of cider though, that part is true! Thanks to everyone who offered suggestions that were actually a lot better than my ideas, it was a shame that I have to write the monthly poems (monthlies lol) on my own... a culmination would have been better by far haha. Seriously i'm so slow with iPhones.. and technology in general. Don't ask me how i'm able to maintain a blog, i just drool on the keyboard hoping that it short circuits and magic does the rest of the work for me. It's worked so far! Seona took a picture of me looking thoughtful writing the poem...and Ruari in the background crunching some big numbers...

Yeah I promise the August poem will be a long awesome one! YAY! Ok, now to the topic of food! What a great topic! I cooked my dish for Week 1 on Friday night. I have decided that I will cook a total of 52 dishes, but there are now only like 48 weeks until my bday so some weeks i will have to double up. Also, if I hit 52 new dishes before my Birthday i might think of some more! I made a list which is quite long :P Last week's dish was Creamy Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto Pasta:

I kiiinda winged it. I had a recipe for the pesto but it got soaked in sundried tomato oil leakage and got ruined! ROONT! Basically i made the pesto, cooked some onion, bacon and chicken, then added some white wine and pesto, then the cream. I thickened it with flour and a bit more cheese. It was yummo!

Ok now onto ANOTHER list item!! My aunty said i could have lots of her plants from her courtyard. There are so many!! I took quite a few but left some for another person who wanted some ferns etc. I might get more down the track cos she wants absolutely ZERO greenery. So here is the outside of my house before en-ay-thang has been done.

Yeah nice huh? *screws up face* I was in the gardens for 3 hours a few weeks ago mowing and toiling the soil cos it is like clay with some rocks in it for good measure. Pretty dissapointing. At the moment I am trying to get the grass to grow over those faded patches. It's hard work, I need to go out there and massage the soil in the moonlight, sing the grass and weeds sweet lullabyes. Once it looks a little thicker I'll give it a mow. It's weird having to think about this stuff- I never noticed it when i lived at home. So yes that's the before. Don't ask what's with the 2 random little plants near the front window - i moved them to the backyard. To the left of where i am standing there is a massive lavender bush and behind me the council just planted some frangipani trees :) After I picked up the plants from my aunty, we headed back home with a trailer full of: 1 lemon tree, 1 port wine magnolia tree, 1 big leafy tree, 1 tropical looking plant, 2 yuccas, 5 camelia bushes, and a bunch of mondo grass. Like i said there is probably more if i want it. which i do. Here is my dad helping to dig holes - much quicker and less painful than shoveling...

Here is the front of the house after the plants went in. Don't know what's going on with that curved and messed up Yucca. I'll stake it up straight soon.

I think it's looking a little better! The majority went in the backyard just because i want the front to look tidy for when i have to find new tenants down the track. I will probably separate the mondos a bit as they grow more, but i just needed to get them in the ground so they can enjoy all the rain that's coming! I couldn't take any pics of the back-yard as the sun had set and we were working in darkness haha. And that was Saturday arvo, and i havent been back there in daylight hours since. Maybe tomorrow arvo...or Wed morning...? Anway ~*^*~Funniest Home Video Moment~*^*~ ...when one of my helpers was filling up the water bucket, he turned the tap so much that the handle came unscrewed and the water pressure shot it up and hit him square in the forehead!! haha so bad, then the water was shooting into the sky higher than the roof - hilarious! If it wasnt so cold i would have stripped off and done my nude-in-public list item. Actually that would have been wierd - you know... family around etc... Yeah so that's how i'm going with my list after 1 week or so! I am excited! Who knows what i'll cook this week! Not even I do!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

chillin' with mr joshua

So, I don't really know why but I took some pics of Josh's new place the other day. I think they are cool looking, and it is a pretty unique house...that's probably why.. anyway. I stayed there on Friday night and consequently awoke there on Saturday morning (afternoon) with the sun shining bright. From the backyard you can see the staircase.

As the house is on a hill, you enter at street level onto the 2nd floor. The 2nd floor comprises of 3 bedrooms and a small loungeroom which is used more predominantly as a storage room/walkway. Off that is the door to the external staircase to take you down to the bathroom, kitchen and cellar. I have already mentioned the cellar before... Josh's step-brother sleeps in there, but it is surprisingly awesome depsite the low ceilings, lack of natural light, and the door leading underneath the house (I envision a dead hobo and some monsters on the other side)... or perhaps those are the reason why it is awesome...? The blue door to downstairs is tricky, the handle is so touchy that you have to work out the correct angle to hold the handle on, otherwise the door doesn't close and swings wide open letting freezing cold air in. The staircase is not my favourite feature of the house when you wake up in the middle of a winter night needing to go down to the toilet.

Things were different on Saturday morning though, i saw the house in a whole new light. I was laying out in the courtyard in the midday sun, with little Daisy napping on me. Josh went inside and was gone for a while. What I didn't realise was that he was taking stalker shots of me from the bathroom window:

But then I heard a noise and turned my head to see my camera sticking out between the louvres. Bit of a shock.

So then Josh came out and gave me my camera so I could see the stalker shots, and I decided to take a few shots from MY perspective:

Then I got up on my stool/bed to get a shot of the view. Josh's window faces out this direction so that's the view at night.

I want to get some binoculars involved one night and see what's going on in the commission flats :D I'll prob make binocular-contact with some seedy naked person over there and we'll both scramble away to cover ourselves up... or will we?

the outhouse (toilet) and the tetanus fence

the moss collection. I actually think it looks amazing :)

The wood collection for those frosty nights seated around the fire

the gate which i dare not use. i think it goes into an alleyway... but i'm not 100%

Josh hanging up his washing :)

oh and I have been meaning to post this for a while. The last time i stayed at Josh's house, I was antagonising him and he pinned me down and wrote this on me:

Obviously it means "I hate Robert Pattinson"... and I got quite upset about this. Mainly because he overpowered me much to my protests of "DONT DRAW ON ME, DONT DRAW ON ME!" as he lowered the marker to my flesh. And also because it is a complete and utter LIE! damn you Josh, damn you!