garden ramblings

 This part of the garden has waited almost 12 months to be prepared for planting and it finally happened recently. I hope my hydrangeas will spread and fill most of this space, allowing a small amount of space for dahlias and other flowering perennials such as peonies and lavender (see below). Down below are some of our neighbours' gardens which I really like and am taking inspiration from!

 after planting

 well laid out Japanese inspired garden

 love the messy unkempt look here

hebe and grasses are a great combination

garden work

It's been a very busy month, hence not much time for blogging. I've been out in the garden trying to weed it ready for new planting this spring. At last the sun has moved higher in the sky - our garden is quite dark in winter as the sun barely reaches it! So with all the lovely bright sunshine we can start using our garden again! yay!

hard-pruned weigela to promote new growth this spring

our Cordyline Australis died with the heavy frosts of January - so sad!

new agapanthus bulb sprouting (can you spot it?)

hard pruned all shrubs before new growth

garden work

We've finally cleaned up our messy garden (well most of it anyway) and the grass is establishing itself. In fact, the more we cut it, the more it grows. It's like a soft emerald carpet at the moment, but I don't expect it to be like that after the winter!

This is my new little hydrangea!

and one of my new spider dahlias!

garden

Our garden was extremely overgrown until it had a massive haircut - or should I say hack job - yesterday. I loved it being overgrown where all the plants spilled into each other. Now it looks bare and barren. On a positive note, the garden now looks a lot wider than before!

p.s. my husband made the Buddha head out of left-over bonding (plaster type stuff for walls) - not bad, eh?

Hallways and more snow

I had blogged about our need to get some new furniture for our front hall a while back... well, it still hasn't happened yet, so I have improvised with odd bits of stuff from around the house. It looks lovely in the morning with the sun flooding in through the glass front door, but this photo was taken today with snow still on the ground, reflecting a cooler light - beautiful, wintry, northern hemisphere! I love it!

more wintry landscapes and trees over our snowy garden office rooftop

evening sunset (well about 3.30pm) in our winter garden, complete with eucalyptus tree (please excuse my exceedingly ugly washing line)