Before and After Concrete and Garden

Some more before and after photos of our yard.  Here is the back play area with the mango tree, tyre swing, tramp and sand pit.  Stevo and I poured that concrete with our bare hands and a concrete truck! 

And here is the before. Including the spare shed which we called the 'lean to'.  You can just see a glimpse of it around the corner of the house in the pic above.  That tree fern got ripped out and the garden and then we did the concrete.

Here is another before.  Those were our baby chickens we got for Christmas.

and after...  We made those big concrete pavers with the excess concrete, actually Mum did those.  It's a bit hard to see, but we poured concrete with Mary River stone for the aggregate (think that's what you call it) and as we laid the concrete I threw in some big stones.  Then after it set (more wrong terminology!) we ground back the top of the concrete to reveal the rock and a smooth surface, kind of riverbed-ish like.  Then we sealed it and it still looks great.

I have a collection of Broms happening thanks to Mum.

With the excess concrete in the truck, we poured a nice footpath, slab area to the clothes line, made those big pavers, concreted the inside of the chook yard and the landing at the gate and made an awesome potting up concrete slab attached to the big sheds. 

Garden Dam Exploring

This is my newest garden.

I really like cordylines at the moment.  I got most of these from a grower up near Noosa for a good price a couple of months ago, they are doing really well. 

I also got a couple of Brom's as well, I think this one was $10, its big and so glossy and green.  You can just see my shell collection amongst the leaves.  Thats where  we dump all the shells that do not have a hole in them and we sit and fossick through them for something to do.

This weekend the kids explored the dam (thats the dam you can see, we drained it and are now in the long process of cleaning it up and filling again).  It has a little bit of water in it with water lilly's and reeds and grasses and a few stray fish and other insects.

That you can catch with a basket with rope tied to it!

They caught about 10 little guppies, 1 or 2 very important Dragonfly babies (nymphs) including one that was shedding its shell, and some very interesting water dwelling beetles.

Here we are with the catch.  The dragonfly nymph was taken to school, since that is exactly what they are studying at the moment in grade 2- the lifecycle of the dragonfly.  And the beetles and guppies got released back to the dam today after a day of study in this container!

UPDATE: Munchie the Monarch Caterpillar is powering along and has doubled in size!  There are 2 more tiny caterpillar's now in view as well and  no more eggs that we can see left on the branch.

Monarch Caterpillar's

It is that time again!

Time to watch caterpillar's change to butterfly's!

Don't worry, we look after them very well, we just watch.

There is hardly any milkweed around at the moment.  We found a small shrub of it nearby to last's year patch.  There were some tiny caterpillar's on it!  Meet "Munchie". 

After this little guy grows up and makes the transformation, we'll be putting this milkweed branch back at the milkweed patch so the other eggs and tiny caterpillars we can't see can have a chance.  And this year, I am definitely going to try to grow a patch of milkweed, you'd think that would be easy given its a weed!

My Kitchen - Before and After(Better)

Here is my kitchen BEFORE.

That is, before we bought this house, before when the 'squatters' lived here, very very before!

Actually this photo doesn't really tell the full picture.  This house was a mess, a filthy falling apart mess but we loved the land and river so we bought it and we are slowly but surely making it beautiful.

Here is my better kitchen, much much better.  Not exactly how I want it, actually probably not really even close, but better!

All we did was rip off the disgustingly filthy brown tiles with feature scene over the cooktop and retile with large white rectangular tiles standing up on the short edge.  This way we hardly had any cuts and the grout lines are only vertical so it kind of looks like glass, kind of and only cost $60 since my clever husband did the tiling himself.  I bought some new handles, long stainless straight handles keeping in mind I had to buy them to suit the holes in the cupboards.  The old 'bow' handles were silverish with black happening through the wear on them.  When we moved in here, that very day, I ripped down every stupid stinking curtain, pelment and blind!  So the curtain in the before photo is long gone as is the arch over the bench (not in pictures). 

I think it is a pretty good transformation for next to nothing in cost!

Lastly a picture of the Montville Rose by my 4 year old Joey.  Yep that's a garden gnome, got lots of them and love them!

Frog Pond

Here is the first sighted inhabitant of our Frog Pond!  Isn't he/she so cute!

Yet Another Wrap Skirt

It's probably getting a bit boring, but here's another Versatile Wrap Skirt made with another old tablecloth.

Here's a few pictures from my garden, starting with my happy entry petunia's that are growing under the massive gums on our driveway.

My recent Hippeastrum purchases, love em!

A new miniature rose, so sweet.
My old wheelbarrow of Petunia's is coming along nicely too.

Pretty Stuff from the Garden

Mum and I are into roses and hippeastrums at the moment and we have picked up a few miniature roses each from Big W surprisingly. I got a lovely mauve (above), cream and a tiny tiny hot pink one that Joey picked out and is now "Joey's Rose"! We bought cheap enough terracotta pots and now they look so beautiful in the sun at my front door, I think I might go back and get myself a few more...
This is my prized Hippeastrum which I have been waiting so patiently to flower to see what colour it is since I had forgotten.

Check out the before flowering pic! Tomorrow we are heading back to the Hippe Farm to get a couple more special ones.
And this is just something that is looking sweet at the moment, a couple of old tea pots with some holes drilled in the bottom filled with Heartsies. I am on the look out for some more old teapots.
And lastly, some fresh picked flowers from Mum's garden on my hall stand. You can just see some Blue Forget-me-not's amongst the bunch.




Next up I thought I would show you: an update in my vegie patch and progress on extending the chook yard, still to come: before and after pic's of our house

My Garden

Since I have spent so much time outside this week, gardening my little heart out and I've loved every minute- I am going to share some pictures of what's going on in the garden at the minute- my favourite stuff!
This is my new rose "Just Joey", its a standard and I've planted it out the front of the fence in this little rocked section between the 2 driveway gates. This was Nanny's favourite rose. It is an orangey peachy goldy yellowy colour! Petunias in front of it.
This is something special! A gorgeous Hippeastrum, not sure what name, but def a named one. I bought 3 last year from the Hippe Farm nearby and plonked in, I love how they just come up amongst the other stuff. There is another really special one just about to burst out the bud, stay tuned for that!
Here it is ready to bust open!

And lastly a happy wheelbarrow of petunias, I pulled out the pansies, they were well and truly finished in here. I have made a pact with myself to 'flourish' my seedlings 3 times a week to give them the best chance.

Next up I thought I would show you: what my little piece of acreage looked like before we got our hands on it!

Tree Climbing

Having trouble uploading pictures and the order they are appearing, since blogger won't let me rearrange them on the page anymore, grrrr.

So the above collection is of my gorgeous mosaic butterfly Mum made me that hangs at the front door. A snippet of our new front fence made from recycled materials, cept the small dog wire to keep The Fox in and some pictures of what goes on here every afternoon after school: tree climbing and tyre swinging. We don't have DS's or whatever they are called!

My Mum's Garden

A bit back I mentioned that my Mum was very clever at sewing but doesn't have much time for it anymore because she is very clever at something else as well...

So she has the most amazing garden ever and just loves it! Actually Mum and Geoff, my step Dad have the most amazing garden ever. I took these pics the other day when we spent the day swimming in the pool and checking out all the tracks and hidey places. This place was once an overgrown 3 acre horse paddock with a dam in the corner. And now about 11 years later it looks like this!!

She has always been good at gardening even when I was little and we lived at 'Inverness' in the cottage, there was always a garden with flowers everywhere in beds surrounded by rocks, so neat. With stuff that grew in that area. She is good at that. Drive around your area and see what's growing is what she says and then buy that. She turned up at our place yesterday morning with a load of flowering trees for us and today we walked around our yard and figured out where they will all go.

There are ducks on the dam, pet ones, that get fed bread, and wild ones that join in too. This is the one and only duckling that managed to hatch and survive from 9 eggs in the nest on the bank of the dam hidden in a nest amongst the Bromeliades. We are hoping it survives, there are eels in the dam, so far it has escaped them and also bad dogs or foxes we think that usually get the ducklings or eggs before they hatch.

There are ducks, chooks, dogs, a cat, lorikeets and possums to feed, and... the birds...so I won't remember all of them but roughly: 4 eclectus parrots with babies Jim and Bob, Sun Conures, Finches, Red Rumps, Cockatiels, Burkes Parrots, Splendid Parrots, I forget the rest, they deserve a post of their own! But there is a whole lot more than what you see in these couple of pics, stay tuned...

Sunflower

Not so long ago we planted some sunflower seeds. And now look at what we've got!

This is the first flower of probably another 20, which are too close together, so next time we'll grow them in a line and make a sunflower fence.

This is a bag I've had in the UFO section since before Christmas, its a gift for my friend Sue. If she reads my blog before I give it to her tomorrow...SURPRISE!!! It's a bright yellow with colourful butterflies and an orange spot lining, making it very bright and happy.

See what a packet of Spring Flowering Seeds does...

For Mothers Day, amongst Worm Farms and Royal Albert tea cups I got a packet of seeds, which were purchased completely unsupervised at our school Mothers Day stall-so I think I did pretty well there. So they were scattered, actually dumped in one big clump over the top of the pansies and this is what happened.

Tags for my bags and other stuff, and a cute newly acquired tea cup and saucer (thankyou my bestest friend Kimmy) that just so happens to look perfect with this orphaned plate.

Remember this image...we are hoping it does actually grow into juicy corn, stay tuned for that one too.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs- not sewing related at all!

Ever since I was little I have been fascinated by Snow White! I think it may have started back when we used to go here...every time we went to Port Macquarie on holidays. Fantasy Glades is now closed unfortunately, my kids would have loved it, I think my favourite thing was the 7 Dwarfs house (you could go in, upstairs and everything, furniture the lot- all cubby house size!) and the coin operated cars- they were great, oh the Diamond Mine, I could go on and on, maybe it was because the people that ran Fantasy Glades were all Dwarfs themselves, I don't know but I loved it all! It first opened in 1967 and closed in 2002, imagine when it was sold all the stuff up for grabs.
We found this set at the markets recently, made from the usual garden gnome plaster and painted, we spray lacquered them all so they last a bit longer without fading and peeling. They are standing under the big camphor laurel tree near the kids play area.

Thanks for reading while I relive my childhood memories! I am going to dig up some old Fantasy Glades photos from Mum's!