Chookie's Back Yard

When You Have Chooks...

2012-01-21T21:20:00.001+11:00

When you have chooks, they come to see what you're doing with the camera. And if you are holding a trowel, they will come and "help" you with your digging. Lizzie here was helping the Geek dig up weeds in the garden today. She was so comfortable working with him that she wiped her beak clean on his shorts.

When you have chooks, they leave some of their food behind, so you get surprise plants.

When you have chooks, they poo all over your patio.

When you have chooks, they hide their eggs in places that they think are secluded.

They are often wrong.

Bog Garden Planted

2011-12-23T20:33:00.009+11:00

Below are some typical bog plants for this part of the world.

Dianella longifolia, the Pale Flax-Lily, which has beautiful blue berries:

Isolepsis nodosa, the Knobby Club-Rush, for the margins:

Mazus pumilio, Swamp Mazus, is a ground-cover with pretty blue flowers a bit like snapdragons:
And then there's the Bracelet Honey-Myrtle, Melalauca armillaris. It's not from my area, really, but the endemic Melalaucas are unsuitable for this position. I need something small, which will take on a tree-shape rather than a shrub-shape, and not scratch people. I'm hoping the position is not too wet as M. armillaris tends to be found in heathlands in high rainfall areas, not bogs. I've built it up a bit but am hoping it will tend to soak up water like other Melaleucas do.
I put a Dianella at each corner and the Melaleuca is on the hillock in the foreground.

The rushes are planted notionally around the edges of my pond, but it had been raining so they are actually in the water at the moment.

I have recycled some concrete edging in the hope that the lower Dianellas won't be washed away.
Another view, with long shadows cast across the pond.

I love the shadows cast on the wall by my Shasta daisies too.

Bog Garden Construction Started

2011-12-10T21:32:00.001+11:00

There has been more rain since my last post and of course many more activities, so I only managed to pop out to start on the bog garden today.

I dug out a shallow circle in the middle of the triangle today, but there is still so much standing water that only the top edge is visible. I removed some more concrete from it and perhaps the drainage will improve now it's gone.

My plan is to plant each corner with sedge to provide a marker, so nobody walks into it by mistake, and a small shrub in the uphill corner (species undecided as yet). The Sprig has requested edible plants so I'm considering water chestnuts and mint in addition to native plants.

I am also considering building a small wall on the far side so that less driveway runoff enters the area. This bed has been waterlogged for two months, after all. Didn't smell the best when I was digging it up.

I've been digging elsewhere in the garden as well.

This grille is one of the entry points to our vast retention pit, where runoff from our driveway, patio and garage roof collects. Note that the water is very high and the soil is not level with the top of the grille, so we've had overflow around the shaft. This isn't much fun to step in by mistake, and the unevenness of the ground is rather dangerous. I've now made the area surrounding the grille level. There are plenty of uneven areas in the back yard for me to dig up for fill. At the moment the soil is soft enough and the weather cool enough for it not to be a great chore. I had not expected to do this work until autumn.

Preparing for a Bog Garden

2011-11-27T21:00:00.000+11:00

We had only 45 minutes of sunshine in Sydney last week. The local rain gauge says we've had 137mm since the start of the month, more than one-and-a-half times the average. That's La Nina for you!

There's a new garden bed between my newly-concreted driveway and path. Well, there would be if I had added any soil to it -- it's just clay and a few weeds. And 137mm of rainwater.

Our builders came back this week to deal with a few issues and The Geek was solemnly warned that this reservoir so close to the house was a Bad Thing, because the house is downslope. Initial excavations today have revealed some thin concrete inside the bed, which may have reduced the speed at which this water drains into the subsoil. I am not hopeful that we can keep the area dry in the long term.

This water is runoff from the driveway. We are going to have a recurring problem here. The subsoil is clay and if the soil is saturated, the excess water has nowhere to go. If I were to mound up a garden bed on top of it, either the soil would wash away or the plants would drown. I am going to have to allow for temporary flooding but want the excess water to be taken up by plants. Now how does a frog habitat sound?

What do frogs need?

Most common frogs don't require standing water; temporary ponds are enough
If there is a pond, it should have gently sloping sides as not all frogs can climb
Frogs need plenty of cover: shrubs, logs, tussock plants and so on
They frequent moist, shaded areas and can roam some distance from water sources

What do tadpoles need?

Tadpoles do need some water
Tadpoles need water that isn't entirely shaded -- they eat algae, which grows in sunlit water
Tadpoles need oxygenated water. Duckweed and Azolla tend to decrease oxygen levels and will need to be removed.
Tadpoles also eat the fungi and bacteria from decomposing plants
Tadpoles are sensitive to manure

What do people need?

Not to have frogs singing under their bedroom windows. This location is away from our bedrooms and not too close to the neighbours' bedrooms either.

My plan is to create a dished depression in the middle of the triangle, add some leaf-litter and shelter, then plant the whole area with bog plants. I imagine clumps of sedges at each corner as markers for people using the paths. Nobody wants to fall into a bog, garden or not!

The Australian Association of Bush Regenerators has put together a list of Frog-friendly Sydney plants here. I am particularly interested in these ones, as they are known to grow in my area:

Hydrocotyle peduncularis (Native Pennywort)
Persicaria decipiens (Knotweed)
Knobby Club-Rush (Isolepis nodosa)
Common Rush (Juncus usitatus)
Mat Rush (Lomandra longifolia)

Stay tuned!
If you are interested in encouraging frogs into your garden, I can recommend the following websites:

FATS, the Frog And Tadpole Study Group of NSW
The Frogs Australia Network has plenty of information for Australians about frogs.
The Backyard Buddies programme helps children identify andd conserve local wildlife of all sizes.

How to Remove a Banana Grove

2011-11-14T18:10:00.000+11:00

Last week I started my first renovation of my poor mangled garden. Our grove of bananas is poorly placed, so it was time to chop the bigger trees down and move the suckers (the babies) to a better spot. I had about eight trees to remove:

Before you start, there are a couple of things to know. The first is that bananas are pretty easy to chop down by just shoving a spade into the trunk repeatedly. More importantly, they are full of sap which stains your clothes irretrievably. Never wear clothes you care about when either harvesting or felling bananas! Look at the copious sap here:

Leave the felled banana plants somewhere out of the way to dry out. I'm planning to use the dry leaves on my potato bed later.

Bananas produce suckers rather like succulents produce pups, so you just have to split them off from the parent with your spade and try not to pull off all the roots when you dig them up.

Try not to plant them too deeply; you'll see a bulge where the soil level ought to be.

As with any transplants, water them in well but do not fertilise. I gave them some seaweed tea this morning; it's thought to reduce transplant shock. Time will tell whether the 35-degree day has beaten the seaweed tea. Fortunately, our next few days should be more comfortable.

I'll probably remove the tea-tree and a bottle-brush a bit later. At right is a curry-leaf tree, Murraya koenigii, which will probably stay put. Behind is my potato bed, part of my new vegetable garden.

How Annoying!

2011-10-30T21:49:00.005+11:00

It appears that the camera batteries are dead, so I can't take photos of my garden for you today. I'll have to leave you with a verbal snapshot:

I poured boiling water on some bindies today. Yes, they do prefer compacted ground, so they've been easy to spot. Various other weeds are also colonising our patches of clay. Unfortunately, we've had some Cobbler's Pegs come in. Under the Hill's hoist. Of course.
Our cool damp spring has even encouraged some grasses to begin sprouting.
This year's vegetable patch will primarily be in my new herb bed. I have tomatoes, cucumber, and pumpkin in already with the herbs, and planted some beans today.
My tomato seedlings (three colours of Zebra tomatoes, and 'Reisentraube' and 'Broad Ripple Yellow Currant') are up, but not yet the chillies, eggplant or capsicum.
The choko has not been as aggressive as hoped -- yet. Nor have my 'Brandywine' tomatoes really taken off. I'm a bit worried as they won't set fruit once it gets very hot.
Lizzie has been laying reliably.
The guinea pigs have escaped and are living wild in the long grass at the end of the back yard. They appear quite happy until they see humans, whereupon they look noticeably guilty.
The 'Iceberg' rose is flowering its heart out.
We finally concreted in our new letterbox today. A pity the front yard is a disaster area!

Garden Visit: Government House

2011-10-09T14:42:00.000+11:00

Last week, I had an Elvish Rest Day. Tolkien's elves, you may remember, did not sleep, but rested their minds by thinking of beautiful things. That is what I set out to do.

Government House, in Sydney, is the official residence* of the Governor of NSW. The grounds are open to the public, or so they tell you, but in fact you can only view about half the gardens unless you wish to risk official wrath. I visited with my iPhone last week, so the photo quality is somewhat lower than usual.

Like the gates?

Construction of Government House began in 1836. Due to economic problems, the building was not completed until 1845, though it was in use beforehand. There have been many additions and alterations since; the porte-cochere dates from 1872.

I love the curve in this gate:

Part of a covered way from the House to The Chalet.The Chalet is Federation-era and I suspect the covered walk is too.

On the far side of the covered way was this beautiful border. Very much Sydney in late spring: irises, osteospermums, shasta daisies, sages, anemones and wisteria. The Harbour Bridge is visible in the background.

I also had a good view of the gubernatorial Hills' hoists*.

This glorious verandah on the eastern side is also a late addition, from 1879. The residents at the time found the sun too bright and hot in the eastern rooms. The verandah opens on to a formal terrace with flagged walks and a central fountain.

The terrace, alas, is closed to the public. I would love to have been able to see the plantings.

And what can you see from the terrace? Practically to South Head; the ship is moored at Garden Island Naval Base. Note the change in paving; I'd say this crazy-paving dates from the 1920s. Two Norfolk Island pines flank the path. These majestic trees were used to mark great estates all across Sydney.

This low wall surrounds the terrace. The pots contain venerable Agave victoria-reginae specimens (at least I think that's what they are) -- appropriate for a residence built in Victoria's reign. More Norfolk island pines define another axial view.

Details from a sunny tapestry bed of alyssum, lobelia, red ranunculus, primulas, and perennials not yet in flower. The gardener is a genius!

At one corner of Government House is this scene, common to older Sydney gardens: a Moreton Bay fig (these were preferred to the local Port Jackson Fig, which doesn't have such vast buttress-roots nor such large, deep green leaves), with underplanting of Bird's-nest ferns (Asplenium species) and cliveas. There's an elkhorn up in the fig, too. Cliveas are still the plant of choice here for dry shade.

The western facade: all Gothic Revival. No castles in the colonies! Were they pining for them?

Gothic Revival style was used on Government House because of the building below. These stables for the future Government House were designed by Francis Greenway for Governor Macquarie in 1816, but the Home Office put the brakes on Macquarie's ambitious public works programme before he could commission the main building.

The stables became surplus to the Governor's requirements in 1916 and it has housed the Sydney Conservatorium of Music ever since. The shrubbery above, in the Royal Botanical Gardens, is actually a green roof over some classrooms. It has a beautiful view too.

Front of 'the Con'. The tall cabbage-tree palms (Livistona australis) are endemic to the area. They are often found standing naked around older buildings like this, but naturally grow in mixed wet coastal forests. I am not sure what the shorter palms are -- they seem too slender to be Phoenix palms (Phoenix canariensis) which were widely planted here a century or so ago.

It was lovely to spend a day by myself looking at beautiful things!

* Government House has not been used as a residence for 15 years, though it is used as the venue for Vice-Regal functions; this meant it could be used for many more community events as well. The State Government announced a few days after my visit that Government House would become the official residence once more, in part because it is expected that the next Governor will be a person from country NSW. I hope that means that we will see the Vice-Regal undies flapping on the Hill's hoists again.

How It All Began

2011-09-11T21:26:00.002+10:00

It's time to look back.

How can one recall all the factors that have led to the conception of a design, then brought forth a renewed building?

I suppose it all began when we bought our postwar cottage. It was well-built and comfortable and, I remember saying, it would be easy to extend from the kitchen/dining area, into the lovely north-facing back yard. Not that we wanted to, of course, but it would be possible.

But we bought in October, so one of the disadvantages of our house did not become apparent to us for a good six months. While the back yard was full of bright northerly light -- in fact, a bit too much light for comfort in summer -- the house did not make any use of it. Here, count the windows on the back yard side.

One for the dining room, one for a bedroom, and the other two rooms getting that premium light are... the bathroom and toilet! And that's the laundry in the middle, shielding the rest of the house from light and heat. It's a lovely house in summer, keeping its back to the sun. There are big windows on the street side to catch the cooling southerlies. Most of the time, it's a cool, well-ventilated house.

Winter is considerably less pleasant. Cool becomes cold, and ventilation becomes draught. The occasional overnight minimum of -3 C won't sound like much to Europeans, until you realise how Australian houses leak air. Every room has wall vents open to the outside -- and you can't close them. Our windows and doors aren't made to be airtight, and our thickest winter clothes are thin by European standards.

Then I found this amongst the building books at work.

This excellent book is still in print, and is a helpful guide to energy efficient thermal comfort for Australians (particularly in our major cities). I don't know how many times I borrowed Warm House Cool House, fascinated by the possibilities which would make suburban housing so much more liveable. One of my first decisions was that if I ever extended the house, I would need a concrete slab on the northern side of my house for thermal mass in winter, and big windows to let in winter sun. But this fit in with the location of the maybe-extension anyway.

In summer, of course, I'd need to have my slab and window shaded with an external pergola smothered in passionfruit vine. But that's what Sydneysiders do with passionfruit plants: if it isn't a pergola, it's a verandah, and it will have a passionfruit vine. (The choko vine goes over the shed and dunny.)

Then the news of the Greenhouse Effect reached the general public. I'd heard of it, of course; John Seymour mentioned it in his 1987 book, Blueprint for a Green Planet, which I had bought. (I suppose John Seymour had better take some credit for this extension too!) The populous parts of Australia were in drought. I never ran out of cloth nappies for the Twig, because the washing was never rained on.

At the same time I was pondering my own wealth. Unlike many Australians, I'm aware that I'm wealthy on a global scale and on the national scale. It seemed to me that to consume water and energy excessively was unbecoming for a follower of a famously homeless man.

Of course, a major extension is also expensive. You can do a cheap extension, but it's usually ugly, made of cheaper materials, uninsulated and generally tends to result in more consumption later, whether because of increased running costs (eg heating uninsulated rooms) or maintenance and replacement of the materials. We didn't want that. We wanted to do something that would be beautiful and long-lasting. There are plenty of cheap extensions in our area as it is not a wealthy part of Sydney.

Like many gardeners, I've been aware for quite some time that water ought to be conserved (and that there are better things to do with stormwater than push it all out to sea), that artificial fertilisers and so on are not healthy foods for soils, and that pesticides and herbicides often create more problems than they solve as they damage biodiversity. I have a basic understanding of soil chemistry. I love fresh air, sunshine and flowers and didn't want to be breathing in too many outgassed chemicals from glues and paints.

Michael Mobbs made me aware of the ubiquity of PVC in the building trade and the possibility of replacing it with other materials. I even considered leaving the town water supply as he did, but decided that the costs and disadvantages were prohibitive.

The ultimate frustration with our house was down to the simple fact that a house that was comfortable for a working-class family in 1946 was not always a good fit for a middle-class family in 2011. The kitchen was built for the rationing period, and for a family who might have risen to an ice chest, not a modern fridge. The back yard was not a place you took your few guests; it was where you grew your vegetables and hung your washing--the home barbecue had not yet arrived in Australian culture. There was nowhere for us to sit outside, really, until a volunteer mulberry grew to shade the home-built carport. The dining table didn't quite fit into the dining room and we didn't quite fit into the lounge room, either.

Eventually, we went to Archicentre and used their flat-fee service to develop a concept plan. We liked it so much that we retained the architect, Peter Katris, for the project. And last night, we slept in our renewed house for the first time.

Here's the short version of the list of reasons for extending as we did:

Easy to extend this particular house
Allow for modern use of space: outdoor entertaining, computers, etc
Provide bigger kitchen and lounge room
Provide better articulation to back yard, and an outdoor sitting area
Improve thermal efficiency of house: better access to sun and light, and better ventilation control
Replace inefficient/non-functioning appliances
Improve stormwater management and conservation
To beautify the house and maintain the heritage of our street
To minimise the use of certain plastics where practicable

I'll post more information about some of our decisions later.

Details from my Kitchen

2011-09-03T17:05:00.001+10:00

The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things. (Plato)

I feel like that child today, as I see daylight in my completed kitchen.

The upper cabinets.

Lower cabinetry.

Enjoying the contrast between the E0 birch ply and the red hardwood.

I didn't know my builders were installing this metal edge. I've seen the tiles just stop in some kitchens, but mine have a punctuation mark.

Steel handles from Hafele -- comfortable, strong and recyclable.

Red timber, steel edging, speckled grey tiles, 'Nougat' Caesarstone: I am so pleased by the colour combinations.

The character marks in recycled timber -- nail holes:

A borer track through the recycled timber:

Light glows through the quartz on the bench edge.

The timber shelf between the kitchen and family room. I keep stroking it.

End grain on the timber shelf between kitchen and family room.

Transformations: The Kitchen

2011-09-02T20:44:00.001+10:00

Here is much of my hideous, badly-organised, tiny kitchen. We had the enclosing arch pulled down before the shot was taken: the original kitchen was a room 11' wide and about 6' deep.

The original kitchen was, I suspect, far better designed than this cheap replacement. If you had a tiny kitchen, would you put in a double sink smack in the middle of your only run of bench space? Would you then put the stove in the middle of one short side? There was no elbow room! Moreover, there was nowhere to put the fresh fruit, or indeed anything that ought not to go in the fridge. You can see in the picture below how much room there was once we'd put in the microwave, toaster and electric jug. Add the crock for utensils and I had barely any room for food preparation. Not to mention the depressing colour!

In the dining room next to it, there were some projecting walls that made it impossible to use our rectangular table comfortably. We kept the table pushed in to the wall until we had guests, then had to weave our way around it to come in and out. We decided that all those walls would come down and we'd have one big room.

Isn't it a relief to chuck out cheap, nasty junk?

And because we were extending outwards from the kitchen wall, we left a big open space where a window had been removed. It's about chair-rail height.

Here's what it looked like after the plaster, balustrade, lights, Marmoleum and painting were finished. It already looks like a comfortable space.

Next thing was having the kitchen carcases installed. They are E0 birch ply. I counted thirteen layers of ply, but I might have been wrong.

It looks pretty nice without the bench top or doors!

Here's what Caesarstone looks like in 'Nougat':

And here is how it looked when the appliances and counter were added:

The last thing to happen was installation of the panels of Recycled Mixed Reds: Australian native timbers recycled from demolished structures. Species include Red Mahogany, Forest Red Gum, Blue Gum, Rose Gum, Bloodwood & Southern Mahogany. Jimmy the Joiner is pretty sure we have some Stringybark as well. As the timber is recycled, there are all kinds of 'character' marks from borers and nail holes. Greener Kitchens sourced the timber from Thor's Hammer.

Now let's just have that Before shot again:

And here's the kitchen complete:

Stay tuned for a follow-up post in which I point out its excellences in detail!

Lighting

2011-08-22T20:52:00.005+10:00

Lighting is really difficult! Illumination is like sound; it has so many qualities that finding what you want is more luck on the part of the consumer than anything else. Lights can be more or less strong, more or less directional, and it simply isn't something you can work out in a lighting shop, surrounded by other light sources. Some spotlights, for example, are really for security lighting; others are less concentrated and will provide comfortable light for outdoor dining.

Lighting shops, in my experience, are usually filled with astonishingly ugly fittings. Some years ago we discovered Beacon Lighting. Their shops tend to be at least 60% attractive fittings, and even the unattractive ones aren't that bad, except maybe for this one:

How on earth could anyone think this was attractive? Let alone practical! But I digress.

We ended up with the following, all from Beacon Lighting:

Kitchen	Triple LED spotlights on bracket, LEDS for under wall cupboards
Family Room	LED downlights, stainless steel Typhoon fan
Study	Laconia pendant
Entry	Recycle a fitting
Kids' Playroom	Rocket light
Stairs	Project wall sconce
Patio	Sentinel spotlights

HTML Tables

And here are the problems we encountered along the way.

Choice: it's hard to know exactly what you want, and whether it will provide adequate illumination. In some areas, like exposed outdoor lighting, the range is very small. This can mean you choose very quickly, or that you go away thinking, "None of the above!" Even without the returns we made, several shopping trips would have been necessary just to decide on fittings. On the positive side, Beacon were always very accommodating with returns and so on, and their staff are friendly and helpful (if occasionally short on technical knowledge).

Vue from Beacon, for our kitchen, was an easy decision. Few of these rail-type fittings have such clean lines:

The second was supply: lots of things had to be ordered in for us as the Beacon stores don't hold very much stock. And the most convenient Beacon store is 20-30 minutes away, down the motorway. We had to come back for these Sentinel lights for our patio:

Thirdly, we had a problem due to inadequate technical information. The LED downlights were 62mm, not the standard 80mm. The fact that they had no user-replaceable parts wasn't mentioned either. Seriously -- once the LEDs failed we were supposed to pay an electrician to remove the fitting from the ceiling and throw it away. This sounds very wasteful to me even if the fitting is supposed to last 30 years -- for one thing, what if one light fails long before the others? Is anyone going to gamble against Murphy's Law?

Of course we didn't know about the size until after our electrician had drilled the 80mm holes in the ceiling. He replaced the downlights with standard-size, user-replaceable LED fittings, which were cheaper than the ones we had found. Light fittings are expensive and it's worth seeing what your electrician can get at trade prices, especially things like downlights, which all look the same and which nobody will actually be examining closely.

Next, the Laconia pendant's glass shade was broken when the electrician opened the box. Bad luck, I suppose, but it meant a trip back to Beacon for another one.

Then we looked at the light fitting we planned to recycle, and discovered that the rod kit for the old fitting had disappeared during the building process, leaving us with the bowl. Our electrician, understandably, won't fit the bowl to a fitting it wasn't designed for, so we are waiting to hear back about a rod kit that will fit.

The Domus lights, which we bought from OzLighting, have a transformer which must be set 60cm above soil level. For most applications, this is fine: you attach it to the house wall and run the cables where you want them. This won't work on an island bed, however. Guess where we want it? Our electrician is getting a suitable transformer for us.

This is one of the fittings that didn't cause any dramas. Of course, we haven't tried putting a globe in it yet!

Transformations: Laundry

2011-08-20T22:36:00.002+10:00

We had a couple of problems with our old laundry. First, there was the manhole. The shape of the room meant we couldn't get a long ladder in, so we had to use a folding one, but the ceiling sloped. I was unable to reach the frame to pull myself up into the roof space. My husband could easily reach the manhole, but it was really a boyhole: my husband's shoulders were too broad for it! So in all our time in the house, we had never been able to inspect the roof space.

And that sloping ceiling was asbestos fibro, of course. Only one thing to be done with it...

So we asked for a new ceiling and manhole, as well as having the tiny room next to it incorporated into the laundry space. I was never keen on the blue paint, either, and it clashed with those old kitchen cupboards.

Here's the new level ceiling, painted.

The room had to be brought to modern standards, so our builders installed a waterproof membrane on the floor. Old Aussie laundries are just concrete, which of course is porous. The blue bits in the picture below are the membrane; it has been covered with a cement bed here.

Of course some local residents became curious about what was going on.

Next, the tiles went in; nothing fancy.

Another problem with the old laundry was the double sinks, which leaked dry no matter which plug you put in, and the home-made cupboard underneath which was unusable due to the tiny door being posiioned right in front of the waste pipes. I was glad to see that monstrosity go!

But there was a little oopsie, when we realised that the laundry floor was now quite a bit higher with the waterproofing, mortar, glue and tile... so much higher that our brand new laundry tub was not going to fit under the taps! The choice was either to move the taps (which in effect would involve re-plumbing this room entirely) or to dig out the tiles. The tiles have been taken out. Can you tell?

And my choice of paint colour was just slightly out: I wanted the colour to match the doors of the old cupboard. It is a little greener than I expected. Still a pleasant colour, though.

I can't wait to be back using it again! Our rented house has a washing machine, which I call Amityville due to its uncanny noises and the weird dirt it puts on my washing. It is a Simpson SWT552 and all the criticisms you read about it online are true! I can't wait to use my new Fisher & Paykel!

Transformations: Herb Bed

2011-08-18T22:40:00.003+10:00

As you all know, our patio is L-shaped.

Our new herb bed, which encloses it, has weep holes on the outer side. Our builders advised painting it with a bituminous waterproofing compound to prevent damp when people might be sitting on or next to it.

This kind of planter needs to be well-drained, as the soil at the bottom tends to become sour if left to its own devices. We used broken brick and tile at the bottom, then Re-Agg (recycled concrete in aggregate-sized particles). A special planter box mixture went on top.

The white spiky thing in the middle of the bed isn't an aerial: it's electrical wiring for garden lights.

The fun part was planting it, of course. So far, the herbs are Coleus amboinicus, chives, savory, sage and thyme, and Russian garlic (the last after I took the photo). The flowers are a deep-blue lobelia and Veronica 'Oxford Blue', and my sons' strawberry plants.

At the bend are two plants. The first (just visible at bottom right) is a choko, which I hope will grow over the pergola fast enough to give us shade this summer. The rosette of large leaves is Echium candicans, Pride of Madeira. It should grow to fill the corner and produce wonderful blue flower spikes. I fell in love with this plant when I first saw it in Mildura, and again in the Melbourne Botanical Gardens.

I had to make one more change to the garden bed after the chickens discovered it and scratched the mulch up everywhere-- it now has a layer of light mesh over the top! Not attractive, but at least the plants won't be uprooted every time my back is turned!

I'm looking forward to adding a few more herbs: my rosemary has yet to be added. Oregano, marjoram and tarragon are definitely required, but there's a whole thyme family to consider...maybe a pineapple sage... bee-balm... I've always fancied a houseleek to protect against lightning... maybe I'd better stop now...

Transformation: The Stairs

2011-08-14T21:37:00.001+10:00

The original steps from my house to the garden, via the porch, were at right angles to the door. How convenient...

(The only difference in this final photo is the addition of tan-pink Marmoleum on the steps.)

Patio & Driveway

2011-08-05T21:53:00.002+10:00

It's always fun when a digger turns up! Apparently Lizzie, our Rhode Island Red, was inspecting the bucket when the driver turned the engine on. She is reported to have departed in haste!

Now some before-and-after pictures of the new path and driveway:

The patio.
Reinforcing mesh being inspected.

The final result!

Yes, that's coloured concrete: it's 'Honey Mustard', like the family room.

From another angle:

The colour was the Geek's choice, and I think it's pretty good too.

Originally, we were going to have a spray-on colour -- a uniform colour, as we hate stencilled concrete. The concreter, though, was worried about the colour choices available as there was nothing even close to the 'Honey Mustard' we used on the family room slab. He proposed we mix in the same colour here. As the volume is small the colour wouldn't cost more than the spraying. Of course, the colours look different as the family room slab has been polished to expose the aggregate; it's redder than this, but this is a better outdoor colour anyway.

A Full Tour of my Paint Choices

2011-07-31T21:25:00.004+10:00

It's lovely to see you here! Please come in!

Our front door is Manor Red to match the exterior paintwork and gutters. The inside woodwork is China White and the entry walls are Clotted Cream.

Please peep in again at my study. I'm so pleased with how the Cuddlepot looks!

Let's look in the older part of the house first. Because the boys' playroom faces south (no direct light), I wanted a nice sunny colour that didn't look too much like egg-yolk. This is Sundaze.

In our bedroom, I wanted something peaceful but fresh-looking: Spring Green. It looks like it will go nicely with the beech wardrobes.

The boys are thrilled with their Harbour Blue walls. This is a north-facing room so even a dark colour won't be too dark.

The bathroom and toilet next door are both painted in Diorite. Those are floor tiles on the wall -- when we retiled, the only wall-tiles available in all of Sydney were off-white! Boring!

Now let's head back down the hall to the new bit. Lots more Clotted Cream and China White on the way.

The next stop is the enlarged laundry, the only place where I think I've made a boo-boo. This Mint Circle looked just like the colour on the old cupboard doors, but it's just a little too dark and a little too green. Can't win 'em all; at least we've had professionals do the first few coats.

Back to the Clotted Cream in the family room (and in the kitchen, behind the wall -- nothing to see there yet).

There is a story to the Clotted Cream.

Many years ago, my work moved to a brand-new building, painted mainly in off-white, but with feature walls in fire-engine red, midnight blue and mustard yellow. In sunlight, it looked fine, apart from the mustard yellow (ugh!) and the too-startling red. Problem was that whenever clouds came over, the off-white turned a gloomy pallid khaki. It was quite depressing in wet spells.

I was determined to prevent such a problem from occurring in my house, so when I picked up all 150,000 off-white paint chips, I first discarded the ones which I Just Didn't Like. Then I checked the appearance of the rest in the new family room in sun, light cloud, and rain, and gave them a rating from one to three, with one being the best. The eight chips with the best results formed a shortlist, and I had a hard look at them in various lighting conditions before deciding on Clotted Cream. I was struck by how some colours which looked lovely on a sunny day could become bluish or brownish on a cloudy one. If you are choosing an off-white, take care! Other colours seem much more forgiving. Of course, if you are doing the painting yourself, you can take your time and use sample pots.

Lastly, here is a view of the Mallard Green on my pergola. I needed a strong colour to stand up to the dark brick and Manor Red guttering. The Ivory fascia and soffits are just visible.

I'm sorry I can't offer you refreshments or even a seat today, but I hope you have enjoyed the tour.

Is it Spring?

2011-07-29T23:10:00.002+10:00

After a quite staggering amount of rain over the last few weeks, today was everything a sunny winter's day should be. Except that I think we might have turned the corner to spring!

A Whiff of Paint

2011-07-26T22:00:00.004+10:00

Remember the paint colours I chose last month?

Despite atrocious weather in Sydney last week, the painters managed to do an external coat of Ivory on the windows and eaves. The white downpipe will be painted Manor Red to match the guttering.

The Geek says the return to original paint colours has aged the house. In a nice way. At least, I think that's what he meant. Meanwhile, I'm immensely relieved at the way the study has turned out (it's not quite complete here; the woodwork needs another coat of China White).

I feared it might look like the inside of a nappy, but fortunately, it looks like cocoa powder.

The boys are thrilled with the Harbour Blue in their bedroom.

And here is a single coat of Clotted Cream in the family room. You can see more Clotted Cream above the picture rails in the other rooms.

Hope you have enjoyed a sniff of my new colours! I will give you a proper tour once the painters have finished.

This post is a part of the Paint, Please link party at Modern Country Style.

Eryldene

2011-07-24T22:21:00.002+10:00

If you visit a garden on a gloomy morning after a rainy week, you can get lucky. We were when we visited Eryldene yesterday. The rain held off, mostly, and numbers were down, so we were part of a small tour of the ikebana exhibition in the elegant house and had the garden mostly to ourselves -- great when a pair of boys need to let off steam after being indoors the whole week!

It's one of Sydney's most famous gardens, and the house is the only unaltered example of William Hardy Wilson's domestic architecture. Hardy Wilson felt that the Georgian style of house (from our early Colonial period) was better suited to Sydney's climate than the Arts-and-Crafts style of his day, and with a house like this one can see his point. Eryldene has the lightness and symmetry of Georgian architecture, modernised for 1913 (which, of course, no longer seems modern to us!). The house still has the furniture the Waterhouses used, mainly 18th and 19th Century pieces with an airiness and delicacy that match the house. The proportions are delightful, and the house is complemented by the current ikebana exhibition. (While Professor Waterhouse's gardening fame rests on his detailed work on Camellias, his wife Janet was devoted to ikebana, so it was lovely to see so much of it in her house -- I am sure she would have loved it. )

View from a sleepout to the front garden. This sleepout is now part of a cafe run by the volunteers of the Eryldene Trust. I can recommend the (plunger) coffee and mixed cakes.

View to the side garden from the same sleepout. The Sprig declared this to be "just like a picture," and how right he is.

This temple, designed by Hardy Wilson, is on a side axis in the front garden -- plenty of formal symmetry in this garden...

... but informality too. This path is behind the temple and runs very close to the street boundary -- but you'd never guess while you're walking on it!

The camellia walk runs up the eastern side of the house, and the collection her will interest even non-camellia enthusiasts. (Isn't it funny how sometimes a genus can take hold of a person?) Note the little path off to the side: there are little side-paths throughout the garden, subverting the formal structure. My children are keen to see me replicate this idea at home. A pity we lack Eryldene's acre of ground!

Hardy Wilson designed several different structures in the garden over a long association with the Waterhouses. I love this walled fountain (1921), particularly the low bubbling jet in front. Note the Asian influence: both Hardy Wilson and EG Waterhouse were Sinophiles.

The tea-house, on the edge of the tennis court, was built in 1927. We'd call it fusion, these days.

Somehow, I've never felt entirely comfortable about this moon-gate. I know it's part of a tennis-court fence, but the metal tubing construction always seems wrong to me, no matter how practical it is.

I do love one other feature of Eryldene: camellia flowers floated in bowls of water throughout the garden. I don't know if it is typical of large gardens of the period, but it's pretty.

So is this formal path.

(And yes, that little structure in the background is what you think it is. When the house was built, the area was unsewered.)

Garden tool enthusiasts will be sorry to hear that The Old Mole is closing, as the people involved are retiring to other projects, particularly travel. However, Richard Bird was at Eryldene with his beautiful tools at sale prices, and I picked up a few of them. I'll show them off another time.

Return of the Hill's Hoist

2011-07-17T23:33:00.010+10:00

That black stake towards the right is important. It is an X that marks the spot.

A day after I hammered it in, our builders replaced it with my old Hill's Hoist. I hadn't realised how big my clothesline was until I measured it -- each arm is eight feet long ( I would have guessed six feet), giving it a diameter of 5m. You need to allow at least a metre from any obstructions such as fences, so that your sheets can fly out in high winds without snagging.

Suddenly, my back yard feels more homelike, more like my little bit of postwar Australian suburbia. But not entirely. Here's a shot (taken by one of my children) of the Hill's Hoist in its original, convenient location: in line with the back door and close to the house to save steps.

The people who would have lived in my house first would not have ever had a back garden. They had a back yard, used for drying clothes, growing vegetables and fruit, and keeping chooks. These were not things you invited visitors to see, hence the prime location of the clothes-hoist.

These days, we cherish our outdoor time as our jobs are sedentary, and want to show off our back yards. Yet I still wanted the Hill's Hoist, so where could I put it?

My vegetable patch seemed to be a little too hot in summer: I had problems with plants suffering sunburn and dehydration. I'm moving my Hill's Hoist there, into a spot where it won't block views from our new doors. The vegetable garden will be closer to the house and water tanks, but you'll have to stay tuned for more about that.

Nursery Crawl

2011-07-15T20:51:00.000+10:00

While a few interesting things have happened on our house this week, I'm starting to think about my poor half-destroyed garden. My new herb bed is filled with broken bricks and tiles, recycled concrete aggregate and planter box mix, and it's just sitting there looking at me, all ready to go...

Well, I thought I'd just see what's out there* in the nurseries up Dural way, which is where you go for interesting nurseries if you live in Sydney, so last Wednesday I spent a chilly (maximum 11 C) grey day by myself doing just that. Here are all my stops, in order:

Flower Power, Glenhaven. Just like the smaller Flower Power nurseries in Sydney: a full range of plants and inoffensive indoor-outdoor decor, but not particularly interesting or inspiring for obsessives -- Enfield is a better place to go. I also became dubious when I spotted Dietes grandiflora and D. bicolor in the 'Native Plants' section -- they are from South Africa. A nice general nursery, but with all the competition up the road, it might be struggling. The cafe was full. I am wondering a little about the "eight themed display gardens" advertised on the website, as I didn't notice them at all!

Hargraves Nurseryland. A well-known family-run nursery, with a delightful layout on a sloping site. Beautifully-tended plants attractively arranged, and a definite nod to the cooler climate of the Hills District in the selections. Browse and enjoy. No cafe -- the big signs saying CAFE out the front refer to the next-door neighbour, but if you have already parked in the nursery parking area there are signs saying Strictly No Exit This Way (as it would block their In driveway), so it was either tramp down the steep hill on foot or continue the journey. Off I went. (Website warning: contains music)

Swane's Nursery. Possibly Sydney's best known nursery, again a family business. Swane's staff will always say hello, even if they're not in customer service. Signs indicate which plants have been "grown by Swane's" (ie, on-site) and note their lower carbon footprint. The retail nursery looks pretty big when you are in it but is only a small part of the Swane's site. I remember walking right down to their dam when I was a child, past plants being readied for sale, but these days there's a gate with a No Admittance sign (when I was a kid it was just obvious we weren't in the retail section). As usual, the rose garden out the front -- guess the Swane's speciality -- is in apple-pie order and there was a vast selection of bare-rooted cultivars for sale. July is our coldest month, the time to plant and prune roses. With few people braving the bleak day, the wrens happily flitted through the garden, chirruping away, just as they always have. It might be the nostalgia factor -- I used to come here regularly with my Dad -- but I find it hard not to buy here. Lunch in the cafe, which used to be their sales office: leaf tea in a plunger (hooray!) and rustic vegetable-and-bacon tart with salad. (Website warning: poorly-organised and buggy)

Dural Garden Centre. All that's visible from the road is pots, because this is also the premises for Pots Online. There is a wholesale nursery at the back and the retail stock I saw was mainly herbs, though there was a greenhouse for shade plants. I was not quite sure whether I was supposed to be in the back section or not, as it had a wholesaler's look but there were prices up on the rows. There were a few herbs officially for sale. It also had a big cafe of the type that doesn't put the prices on the blackboard. I didn't try it, but it looked appetising, and was warm and buzzy despite its size.

Engalls Nursery. The website says they specialise in fruit trees and roses, but I would have said fruit trees: five types of fig alone! And I didn't count the citrus, but it was obvious that much of their land was devoted to it. A small nursery with an impressive array, and I'll be back here next time I want a fruit tree.

Geranium Cottage Nursery and Cafe. Another small specialist nursery which imports new geraniums and pelargoniums from Europe. I admired their display of scented geraniums; I think the full set were there. But the really lovely thing about it was the cafe with the fire in the grate and the Devonshire tea (leaf tea again, hooray!) I had while sitting beside it. I think the local jams, honey and eggs on sale in the old shed are another reason to visit it again, even if I'm not after any geraniums.

* One brown boronia, one echium, two different strawberries to trial, then from the 'priced to clear' area a couple of pansies, a lobelia and a veronica. All from Swane's. I was GOOD, I tell you.

Bifold Doors and Chokoes

2011-07-08T13:47:00.008+10:00

We have reached lockup stage now. All our doors are in, including the bifolds for the family room. Aren't they lovely?

In winter, the sunlight will stream in to warm the slab in the family room. In summer, the pergola will be covered with vines for shade. In fact, I already have a choko (chayote to some) growing on the windowsill towards next summer. My long-term plan is for a passionfruit vine to cover the pergola, but even if I plant one as soon as I can, there won't be enough of it to provide shade this year. The choko vine, however, will be luxuriant in months.

The choko vine and the passionfruit vine are staples in Sydney, though chokos -- traditionally grown over one's shed -- are much less common than they were. The newer dwellings don't have enough space for a choko vine, for one thing, and secondly, a lot of us grew up eating chokoes way too often! I saw some nasty big yellowish ones at the shops today for $3.99/kg, way too much, and at least twice as big as they should have been. Of course, the one I bought was even worse: I could see it was starting to sprout, which was why I wanted it! I don't understand why greengrocers persist in selling such old chokoes.

I saw the aggregate and the planter box mix being wheeled in this morning to fill the herb bed, but I can't really plant my choko until the pergola is painted. I might sneak in a few late bulbs, though. Or if I can find my strawberry plants... if they've survived... I might pop them in.

Lots of Glass

2011-07-03T19:12:00.022+10:00

The first glass installed (apart from replacement of cracked panes in the older part of the house) was the window in our family room. The saw is set up for cutting the window architrave, but look at all those glass doors!

Here's the architrave installed. Note the picturesque view of our future driveway and the fence.

Here's where some of the sliding doors went:

The idea is that we can use the garage as extra space for parties. Handy in wet weather ~~or when the kids take to playing country music~~.

The other doors are aluminium bifold doors for the family room (as the Geek says, not quite as nice as the cedar ones, but considerably cheaper). There will be lots of sun coming in to our family room, especially in winter, to heat the concrete floor. The house won't be quite so dark or cold. This frame was installed on Friday, so I suppose the doors will go in on Monday.

In the meantime, Lizzie keeps an eye on the materials stored in the garage.

We have found evidence of her inspection visits in various parts of the house, but we won't elaborate...

Excited About Stormwater

2011-06-30T20:10:00.001+10:00

Look at what came in last week!

This big tank now sits against the westerly wall of our laundry and new family room, where it will insulate us to some extent from the sun. The colour is designed to match the new gutters. The white PVC sections will be painted to match.

At the far end of the big tank is an overflow pipe to our second, smaller tank, which is against the westerly wall of the kids' bedroom. The overflow from this tank will discharge to the gutter. This is called a "charge system", as it relies on the pressure of water behind pushing the water in front uphill to the road. Our Council does not want people to use pumps with stormwater, because pumps tend to fail during storms, which is when you really need them.

We've had a few light showers in the last couple of days and it's exciting to think that we can store a bit of our rainwater. Mind you, it isn't much: only about 5000 litres. Any heavy downpour should fill the tanks, based on the roof area.

The only disadvantage of this system is that (unexpectedly) the discharge pipe is visible through the window. This is a westerly window and therefore usually has the blinds drawn, but I will have to work out something so that it isn't quite as hideous. Maybe a Star Jasmine?

I was also excited to see the installation of our surface drainage for the driveway. Note that the garage doors have also been installed; you might see a common theme in the colour! Colorbond 'Manor Red': it's everywhere!

Isn't the drainage for the patio exciting? No?

Well, it gets awfully muddy here if you don't have proper drainage.

Flooring Decided

2011-06-26T19:00:00.004+10:00

We have finally made all our decisions on flooring.

I wanted polished concrete in the family room for a number of reasons:

the slab is thermal mass for the house and covering it with another layer would insulate it from the sun
polished concrete requires no maintenance
it will link visually with the concrete patio just outside

My concrete will not be given a really high-gloss finish, lest the room feel like a shopping centre. I'll have a satin gloss. The concrete is coloured Honey Mustard and contains Nepean River Gravel, which includes white, yellow and red quartz. We've asked for the slab outside to be sprayed a similar colour.

Up the steps and into the kitchen and entrance we will have Marmoleum Real in 'Tan Pink':

As you can imagine, this is a related colour.

The study, bedrooms and hall will be given a woollen carpet: Channing in 'Tunic'. This wollen carpet is a textured cut-and-loop with tiny deep blue squares on a greyed caramel background. It looks good with all our paint chips, and the blue-grey element is picked up in the Marmoleum.

We're just having plain white tiles in the laundry/toilet, which will go well with the mint-green walls.

Of course, we'll have to move our boxes out for the carpet to go in. I'm not looking forward to that!

UPDATE: According to Green magazine's article in this month's edition, we have made good choices.

Soon I Will Have a Kitchen!

2011-06-23T21:52:00.002+10:00

It's at least six weeks away, and it will be a while before we move back in, but still... Soon I will have a kitchen!

image courtesy Greener Kitchens

I love the fancy refrigerator that the computer program has given me! Mine is white and considerably more modest. (The splashback won't be those trendy tiles either.) Now, remember my old kitchen?

Just in case you've forgotten. See the spot where the builder's fridge and the four drawers are stacked up? That was my food preparation area, next to the stove. The equivalent area at the other end of the kitchen held the microwave, canisters and fruit platter.

It only occurred to me recently that when the kitchen (the room) was built, Aussies still had rationing, so the lack of room wouldn't have been so painful. I also believe that the original kitchen was considerably better planned than this, its replacement. It would only have had 45cm deep base cabinets, so there would have been a slightly longer (if shallower) run of bench.

The cabinet doors will be made of recycled timbers in reddish shades, with "character" -- that is, old nail holes and the like. And to think people artificially distress their furniture... The carcasses are going to be marine ply rather than the usual MDF-and-melamine. The standard new Australian kitchen these days costs $10,000 (without appliances) and is guaranteed for only 10 years. When the kitchen is removed, all the cabinetry goes to landfill. Now imagine my city, with its three million households, and the amount of landfill generated by three hundred thousand kitchens every year. What a waste! I am hoping my kitchen will last a fair bit longer. On top, we'll have Caesarstone 'Nougat'. Together, our counters and cabinets will look a bit like this picture.

Remember that I liked green tiles? We considered a green glass splashback, but it is an expensive proposition. Tiling is about a third of the price. I went back to the tile shop where we bought our bathroom tiles, and the lady there asked what other surfaces I was planning to use. As soon as I said "Caesarstone in 'Nougat'," she went straight to a white tile with a fine grey fleck, which will go with it beautifully. I had a look at plain white tiles, but they were too stark after that first 'perfect match'. But there is a green feature tile up my sleeve if we have room to use it.

The flooring will be Marmoleum. That's the trade name for linoleum, that lovely old-fashioned material made largely of natural materials like jute and cork and linseed oil. It's not as cold, hard or environmentally unfriendly as vinyl, nor does it outgas. It's antibacterial, biodegradeable, and lasts at least 30 years.

God willing, this kitchen and I will gently decay together!

Summary:
Timber cabinetry: recycled mixed reds
Benchtop: Caesarstone 'Nougat'
Splashback: 600x300mm 'Inca' (white with fine grey fleck) ceramic tiles
Painted walls: Dulux 'Clotted Cream'
Floor: Marmoleum (shade to be determined)
Appliances: TBA. We will lean heavily on Choice.

I've joined the Modern Country Style link party to show what I'd love in my kitchen in the future. And it's nearly here! The kitchen man was measuring up last Monday!

Paint Colours

2011-06-19T22:18:00.009+10:00

A few hundred shades of off-white later...

Centre: Clotted Cream (living areas and above the picture rail in most rooms)

Clockwise from top: Cuddlepot (study); Diorite (bathroom and toilet); Mint Circle (laundry); Harbour Blue (boys' bedroom); Mallard Green (pergola); Spring Green (main bedroom); Sundaze (boys' playroom).

Ceiling and cornices in Ceiling White, as usual, and the architraves, picture rails and skirting boards will be in China White gloss. The woodwork was initially stained and varnished, and all the walls would have been painted cream, going by photos of similar houses on Picture Australia. The picture rails and skirting boards, however, are a bit narrow to be so dark. The previous owners painted them with the wall colour, but that looked odd. We're hoping white looks a bit less peculiar.

Outside, the windows, fascia and soffits will be painted in the original pale primrose colour, which for some reason was known as Ivory.

All colours from Dulux.

Mostly Indoors

2011-06-18T22:20:00.002+10:00

Our rest on the Queen's Birthday long weekend consisted of packing our remaining goods and chattels (mainly books and some toys) so that our former library could be made good and skim-rendered. We had major cracking in that room, but a lot was hidden behind the bookshelves. Here it is after being repaired.

We're getting a new ceiling, as you can see. When John got up to scrape it, his trowel went through the plasterboard. Three cracked tiles on the roof had been directing water on to it for years!

The renderers also came to do the family room walls. I am intrigued at how you can "see" the masonry as the render dries; I suppose the brick absorbs water at a different rate to the mortar.

I had a lovely chat with Jason the electrician, who advised me on a better placement of external lights, how many downlights I'd need, and so on. I'll have to do a separate ~~whinge~~ post on lighting. I was intrigued by the little panels he used to organise the wiring. The renderers plastered right over some of them, but that's no problem -- as they are steel, you just need a magnet to find them again.

We're also putting a skylight in the darkest part of our house: the linen press. It is so annoying to be unable to see whether you have grabbed a blue or a green tablecloth! And as the cupboard runs to the ceiling, there is no room for even an oyster light in front of it. Skylights have some disadvantages -- they allow convective heat transfer, for example -- so we chose a small tube-style light.

Because there was a batten running down the middle of the hall, Louie asked me which side of it I wanted the skylight on (naturally I said the side away from the cupboard, which would allow more light into it). The next day John just cut the batten, saying it would look far better if placed in the middle...

Lastly, here is a shot of my herb bed. It has been lined with a bituminous waterproofing membrane and I asked the brickies and tilers to chuck in any broken bits. Over this layer, I plan to have a layer of 10-20mm recycled concrete 'gravel', then planter box mix. I did wonder if I ought to have a layer of geotech fabric under the planter box mix to prevent the fines clogging the weep holes, but Stan, the gardener from work, assured me it wasn't necessary.

The lack of opportunity to work in the garden is getting to me. I found myself in a nursery today and restrained myself... if you don't count the three plants from the bargain table...

All About Bricks

2011-06-13T21:24:00.002+10:00

Our house is built of bricks called Eastwood Reds.

The Eastwood Brickworks closed some years ago, after being in operation about 80 years. My Dad lives near it and I remember occasionally hearing blasting in the quarry when I was a child, then seeing the dust rising. But why is our 1946 house built of Eastwood Reds, Sydneysiders will ask, when the closest brickworks was in fact at Homebush? It turns out that the Homebush Brickworks was closed during the war. I imagine the manpower that was left was simply moved to a smaller number of brickworks -- after all, there was very little building going on.

There is, of course, a problem when you try to match bricks: the clays are always different colours in different places, and even at different times. And as you can see below, it's difficult to match bricks from pictures. These samples are from the Austral website, and are of their Hereford Bronze and Shorthorn Mix respectively. The actual bricks are significantly darker.

We initially selected Hereford Bronze, finding the Shorthorn too dark when we received the samples. Our original bricks are rather gingery in colour, with a darker range of shades used below the floor line. Then we hit a snag. After a couple of weeks of being told they were on back order, Austral confessed that the clays for the Hereford shades had run out. They had to break into the Shorthorn pallets to find lighter bricks to make up our order, so the result was rather darker than we had anticipated. As most of the bricks we see at the back are new, it doesn't really matter. I think they tone quite well with the old pinkish-grey commons to the right:

And even where one sees both old and new together, the new looks rather like our darker subfloor bricks:

But scroll up to the top again. They don't look like the photos from Austral, do they?

The New Roof

2011-06-11T20:33:00.003+10:00

One of the unexpected and significant expenses of this extension is the complete replacement of our roof. When John and Robert demolished the kitchen, they discovered they were being rained on. Inspection revealed that the tiles were at the end of their lives, after 65 years. The builders tell me that the hot sun gets them in the end. I also wonder if wartime production restrictions might have produced lower-quality terracotta.

Last Monday, the tilers started work. They started tossing the old tiles off before breakfast...

...and were finished by the time we were ready to leave for school.

Then they had to remove the old battens for the sarking. Most older houses in Australia do not have sarking, but it improves insulation slightly (R=0.5) protects the house from leaks if a tile shifts, and improves the wind resistance of the roof. For those who aren't familiar with the term, it's another Scottish word that has made its way into Antipodean English. In Scotland, "sarking boards" sit on the rafters, and slates are fixed to them. In Australia and New Zealand, we put a moisture-resistant layer of fabric on the rafters, and hold it down with the tile battens. This is what it looks like from underneath:

Sarking and tiles are both visible below. The reason is a bit embarrassing. Apparently you don't ask Wunderlish for X amount of tiles: you tell them the area you need to cover and they send you the tiles. Except that they were short by two pallets, so the tilers had to wait a few days for delivery. I am sure they would have been finished in two or three days otherwise.

When I came home after shopping on Friday morning, the tilers weren't there. I wondered if they'd gone off for lunch, but no -- as I was unloading, the truck pulled up with another pallet of tiles! Either someone's measurements were out or Wunderlich's formula isn't that good! By the end of the day they were all finished and gone, and I was admiring the result:

Then the rain started, just in time to test the new roof!

After Rain, the Surprise

2011-06-05T17:46:00.001+10:00

On Thursday morning, as the clouds rolled away to the north, my husband told me there was something next door I needed to see. Now. So I climbed the ladder and looked over the fence.

All I could say was "Wooooooooow!" Robert was up on a ladder, putting the finishing touches to their work. He turned round with a huge grin -- hadn't realised I'd spoken so loudly!
During all the rain this last week, he and John had been cutting the treated timber pieces to size and shaping the ends, so they were able to put the whole pergola up on Wednesday. Suddenly, the whole area has become graceful.

I could look at this picture all day!

Where do Builders Go When it Rains?

2011-06-04T08:07:00.002+10:00

The start of this week saw some of Sydney's worst weather in a long time. When it stopped raining, it started pouring! People had to be rescued from their cars in several suburbs because of flash-flooding, and open ground turned to mud all over Sydney. I didn't expect our builders to turn up, as they plainly couldn't work on the roof in such poor conditions.

But they found a few other things to do. One I didn't realise would come so soon, but the bad weather made it a good time to cut timber under cover. More on that in another post.

It was a surprise to see they'd managed to put in our steps, as this area isn't covered. I suppose they did it between drenchings! They have also covered the beam over our old back wall with the bulkhead (the blue bit).

They also laid the footings for our two rainwater tanks. Hooray!

Starting on the roof

2011-06-03T20:08:00.003+10:00

After the brickwork comes the roof framework. These trusses turned up late last week, and John and Robert put them up with great speed.

Our extension is really taking shape now!

I love the pattern of shadows here and looking up at the blue sky through the woodwork. You might notice a bulkhead framework in this photo.

Then there is more excitement as a truck with a forklift arrives...

... and unloads our new roof tiles, on a rainy Thursday morning!

Garden Wreckage

2011-05-19T21:55:00.011+10:00

Builders, even nice builders like ours, inevitably damage a garden. Machinery and goods have to be moved in and out, new drainage lines have to be dug (Oh! Farewell, Salvia 'Black Prince'! sob). We also had a huge new pit drain installed, which ran further under my vegetable patch than I realised. I knew its length; I hadn't realised the width! In the left foreground is a mound of reasonable soil from the vegetable patch, taken from the drain area. The bare earth on the right-hand side is mostly clay.

And the only thing coming through the clay is onion weed.

Apart from the occasional nasturtium and borage.

My damaged and unmaintained vegetable patch, however, still has a few surprises. The leeks and red silverbeet are still going, along with the sorrel and a Tuscan kale. I wasn't surprised to find volunteer parsnip everywhere, because that's what parsnip does. What did surprise me was the chervil on the far side of the garden, and feral Florence fennel everywhere!

The other surprise is our sneaky Banskia spinulosa. This plant has been sitting there for years, refusing to flower, growing nicely but not a "candle" in sight. But now we aren't looking at it, what has it decided to do? Hmph!

The Walls Go Up

2011-05-14T17:48:00.003+10:00

Over the last two weeks, the brickies have been at work. It's exciting to finally see the real proportions and scale growing up from the flat concrete slabs, even though rain slowed everything down a bit. Our face bricks are the solid kind with frogs, and can absorb their own weight in water. Once wet, they cannot be laid as they will sink in the mortar bed, so they have to be left a day or two.

The garage walls were started first, and the internal wall to the laundry was done.

Then our new family room walls started going up.

We climbed in and out via our family room window a few times.

The garage was finished first. Our builders pointed out that the wouldn't normally use face brick on the far wall, as nobody will see it from the side, but with our doors, face brick was essential. I'd never have thought of it.

Then at last the beam over the back door went up.

They had to brick in above it and do my herb bed...

Then it was done! Here is the view from the kitchen.

And from the back yard:

Thinking of Kitchens, Part 2: Layout

2011-05-06T18:10:00.001+10:00

Somebody is bound to think that I have put style before substance in listing Style ahead of Layout when discussing my new kitchen. The reason is simple: my new kitchen layout has so many constraints, there's not a great deal of choice available to me.

Our kitchen is going to be eat-in, for a start. The effect will be something like a farmhouse kitchen. I've noticed that when you look up farmhouse kitchens, you tend to get anything but the kind of kitchen found in actual farmhouses, which is something like this:

Now this picture is not from a farmhouse either! But the layout is typical: a table in the middle, used for both meals and food preparation, and the perimeter of the room taken up with kitchen benches, appliances and storage. My kitchen will be like this, but there's room for benches on only two adjacent sides, if you look at the initial plan below.

As it's expensive to move plumbing and the like, we're sticking with the sink (and dish-washer! Hooray!) under the window, and putting the fridge in the corner. This is the short wall (3300mm, previously the long wall). The long wall (3600mm) will hold the stove and under-bench oven, and there will be a run of cupboards above the bench.

I'm planning to centre the stove on the long wall: I am right-handed, so I will be preparing food to the left of the stove. The one thing I've craved all my married life is room for cooking preparation, and I will have it!

Immediately, I hit an additional constraint. Did you know that your gas tap needs to be accessible via a cupboard, in case of emergencies? Bang goes my idea of under-bench pot drawers to fill the long wall. I need a 400mm cupboard to the left of the stove. Putting a 400mm set of pot drawers to the right will give us a symmetrical, if not brilliantly useable result. Further to the right, more pot drawers. I imagine I'll be using them for food storage rather than pots.

I was planning to have wall cupboards on the long wall only. The first kitchen designer suggests mirroring the widths of the under-bench cupboards in the wall cupboards. I suppose I could do something slightly different there, but I wouldn't want it to look odd.

Secondly, the builders tell me it will look strange to end the base cabinets at the dish-washer, and have suggested building around the fridge -- putting in a side panel and that inaccessible little cupboard on top (I'm not very tall). I think this will interfere with the window too much, but I haven't come up with any other ideas.

In the meantime, I pop in just to enjoy my less-ugly kitchen space!

Thinking of Kitchens, Part 1: Style

2011-04-30T10:27:00.006+10:00

Well, it's kitchen time. Despite the fact that I hated my old kitchen's inconveniences for years (and the inconveniences of the previous two kitchens!), I've not had a really good picture in my mind of what I do want.

Klopf Architecture (I could live with this one!)

Following the advice of Modern Country Style, I pulled out my clippings file and narrowed it down. One advantage of having spent years thinking about redoing the kitchen is that I have a lot of clippings! Then I went through my Houzz kitchen file as well.

But it's turned out that I don't have a huge range of ideas when it comes to finishes, colours and the like. Having looked through my collection of kitchen images, there are two combinations I like. The first is white cabinetry with timber countertops. They make me swoon.

spaces design

But timber countertops are pretty high-maintenance. If not sealed properly, they can rot around the sink. Guess how you find out it's not sealed properly? When it starts rotting around the sink. And white cabinets? For a garden-to-pot cook with two boys?

That left my other option: timber doors with something more durable on top.

Soorikian Architecture

But this is my favourite colour combination so far: timber doors with a white countertop and green tiles. Pity that architecture firm is so far away.

Soorikian Architecture

So when it comes to thinking about elements of my kitchen, my list is:

Ease of cleaning and maintenance
Very simple door profiles
Timber and other natural or natural-looking materials
Solid colour, no patterns
A leaning to green and blue colours
Elbow room for cooking
No glitz, no tizz!

Exploring King's Tableland

2011-04-28T23:19:00.019+10:00

On a nice clear Easter afternoon, we headed out to Wentworth Falls for a short bushwalk with the boys. Unfortunately, so did everyone else -- so we went to a less well-known spot not far from there.

King's Tableland was named by Governor Macquarie for its sublime views.

It's fascinating for some other reasons. The top of the tableland is a tesselated sandstone pavement. Smooth pavements are far more common.

Where some areas have worn away, little pools form (with tadpoles!). These pools were used by Aboriginal people long ago for sharpening axe heads: they would dip them into the water, then sharpen them on the stone by the pool. Here are the results:

These are supposed to be 150 grooves or other signs of Indigenous use of the area, but we didn't see that many. We spotted this wounded Praying Mantis instead, out in the open, perhaps dropped by a bird.

Below the tableland is an overhang with rock carvings. Carbon dating has established Aboriginal use of the area to 22,000 years ago. The carvings that we found were small and very faint indeed, just a few pairs of kangaroo footprints. There are many more, but the area was in deep shade. A morning trip might have allowed us to see more.

Down the slope was this lovely young Sydney Red Gum, which had just shed its bark, as they do in Autumn. Rain has turned the shed bark a glorious deep orange. The Twig was fascinated by the little pool inside the trunk.

Nearby, these spectacular mushrooms:

And yet more orange tones in this Banksia spinulosa var. collina. I sound very knowledgeable, don't I? Banksia spinulosa holds its flowers above the foliage, making it quite a distinctive species. It is a probable parent of the 'Giant Candles' cultivar, which does the same thing. There are two variants: B. spinulosa var.spinulosa has black styles, for which reason it is sometimes called Hairpin Banksia. B. spinulosa var. collina has orange styles.

I am sure a botanist will turn up and tell me I have this all wrong now. In the meantime, let us look again at the view:

Lots of 'Making Good'

2011-04-17T20:28:00.001+10:00

Lots of good things happened this week.

Firstly, our loans officer rang me at 8:25 on Monday morning. The poor man had been sick for a week, which is why he hadn't returned our calls. I had another talk to him later in the day, when we spent a while at cross-purposes before discovering that the payment permission slips should have gone straight to him, not to the solicitor's. We had been given two envelopes addressed to the solicitor, so naturally had sent everything there. My builder reported at least four apologetic calls from the loans officer, who must have worked very hard indeed that day to get everything done.

The next morning, at 6:30, I received an SMS from the builder. "Just to let you know that the payment arrived in full." It was worth being woken up a bit early for that! We were approved in principle for a loan and signed up for the building contract on the 12th of February, and here were the first two progress payments on the 12th of April. I don't believe this was the fault of our loans officer: we sent our initial loan application in on the 23rd of February, but didn't get the legal stuff until the 24th of March -- and that's the loan salesman's fault.

Meanwhile, the builders continued to turn up each day and work hard. You might remember they took out some sections of internal wall. In a full-brick house, this leaves you with something like this at floor level:

So you have to insert something to make it flush with the floorboards:

Then there were some major cracks to be dealt with. A combination of drought and the two giant wattle trees gave us one crack in the house that was big enough to see from one room into another. With the return of the La Nina, the crack had closed up -- but not exactly aligned, so some of the plaster had lifted. The loose sections had to be removed.

Moreover, a previous owner had left paint peeling all over the house. Subsequently, the paint was inexpertly scraped back, but the irregularities weren't filled -- they just painted straight over the surface. You can see it below, under the cornice (well, the cornice has been removed, but you know what I mean!). More light in the house has shown exactly how bad it all is. The cornice is gone because the builder isn't satisfied with the state of the hall ceiling .

The builders have skim-rendered almost every wall in the house because of the irregularities and cracks. This is what it looks like -- everything's a rather fashionable off-white!

I presume the painter who went right over the holes and scratches was also the one who didn't prepare the woodwork before painting it with cheap acrylic. The woodwork would have been stained and lacquered, so the acrylic paint chipped off as soon as you looked sideways at it. I don't like the wall colour on the skirting board, either.

You can also see remnants of the original floor stain above: Aussies had japanned floors between the wars, with rugs -- wall to wall carpets were almost unknown. Postwar shortages and restrictions put carpet out of most people's reach, so it was back to hard floors, especially for public housing like ours. Our house had wall-to-wall carpet when we moved in (a bit is just visible at left, an impractical too-pale beige), but it's nice to see the original finish here.

We will be recarpeting, however. Our experience in the next-door rental, which has painted floorboards, is that they are tremendously noisy * -- and this end of the house is bedrooms.

Lastly, this item is the lintel for our back doors. Of course, we still lack the bricks!

* I suppose it could be something to do with my boys' big Aussie feet...

Of Welding, and Various Problems

2011-04-10T19:34:00.013+10:00

Just to keep you all fully informed, this is what the electrowelding unit looks like. It is in the middle of a weld here. The weld just to the right of the current one has already been done. If you enlarge the picture, you might be able to make out the little yellow tab that has popped up between the contacts to indicate that the welding is complete.

In the past week, we've also had the load-bearing steel beam put in to hold the roof up -- the builders installed it before we were even ready for school last Monday morning. When we asked how they'd managed it, they told us they'd had some strong men in who'd had lots of Weet-Bix for breakfast. Or maybe it was a chain block.

Then the concrete edge needed trimming.

Next came plumbing and gasfitting. Here is the gas bayonet for our barbecue. We won't be slinging gas bottles around!

And here is my new garden tap. The line to the old one was leaking. This tap will be out of sight from the patio but because it is at the end of our future garden bed, it will be handy for watering anywhere in the yard, as well as being close to the barbecue.

The drainage trenches are gradually being filled in, and we have talked about surface preparation for painting the interior. Unfortunately, the house was painted in cheap acrylic with no proper preparation of the surface, which was in poor condition to begin with. Beware the house that is "freshly painted" for sale!

Of problems we have a few. The Hereford Bronze brick we selected is no longer available as the clay colours have changed. We understand that Austral Bricks staff are physically going through a similar colour brick to find those that are a close match to the Hereford Bronze (but a bit darker) to fill existing orders, and we may or may not get some of those.

Secondly, we have been having trouble with our bank. Our builder is still waiting for his first two progress payments, and is now talking about charging us interest for lateness. I will keep you posted.

Requiem for a Garden

2011-04-07T13:30:00.004+10:00

When we first moved in, our next-door neighbours were an elderly Scottish couple. They had lived there for many years, with vegetables and fruit trees filling their back yard, but as Bill's health declined it had all gone a bit wild. A giant plum tree bloomed that first spring we were there, filling the air with petals that whirled like snow in the breeze. A mulberry tree overhung our yard, and I could see citrus. Cath gave me bags of her own home-grown oranges from time to time. "If you let the frost get to them, they're sweeter," she'd say, in her Edinburgh accent.

Cath and some other girls had been singing in the street to encourage people to attend a World Evangelisation Crusade event when Bill saw her and thought, "I want to meet that girl!". They eventually married and came to Australia, where they raised three daughters. Bill asserted that they came to Australia to get away from the rain!

Bill was from Glasgow. Both Bill and Cath had the Two Tongues, so I don't think their families had been in towns very long. In its heyday, Bill's garden must have supplied them with most of their fruit and vegetables. But I must not let you think they lived some kind of suburban idyll in the Lucky Country. They had first landed in Rockhampton, a real shock to people used to a much cooler climate, and there had been years of hard work and little money. They had the grief all migrants know for relatives sick and dying far away. While I knew them in their serene later years, their lives were made hard for a long time by serious persistent sin by one of the couple. Devout Presbyterians themselves, it was bitter to find that their daughters were not believers, perhaps due to that sin.

My abiding memory of Bill is of him smoking his pipe and reading Berkhof on his front porch. He died clasping his wife's hand, bidding her, "See you!" in Gaelic, as he slipped into Heaven. Cath was heartbroken, but she continued to love the people around her. She knew everyone in the street and cared about them all. Colour, creed and lifestyle were never a barrier to a woman who wanted the world to know Christ. Two years ago, she was reunited with Bill.

And the garden? It deteriorated gently but inevitably, along with the health of its owners. The plum-tree blew down in a storm after we had had a few springs to enjoy it. Some of the other trees were taken out over the years, but there were still half a dozen citrus left when Cath died. The mowers kept coming, but they don't look after fruit trees. Finally, the house was cleaned up and sold. The owner readied it for rent through a hot summer, after which all but two of the trees were dead. The rest was grass, humps in the lawn indicating where fruit trees had once been tended.

Now we are renting Cath and Bill's old home while our own is extended, and I have very little to garden with -- just my herb troughs,

and the two remaining fruit trees, which were definitely the worse for wear.

The lemon tree had a healthy population of stink bugs (the only healthy thing about it), and both it and the orange tree had dead branches, and grass growing right to their trunks. You can see I'd started mulching them here.

Isn't it satisfying to get rid of stink bugs?

Pruning is pretty good too. Here's how things looked after mowing, mulching, and the heavy pruning had been done.

But it's not the garden Bill and Cath knew.

“All people are like grass,
and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of the Lord endures forever.”

Drainage with Nerd Cred

2011-04-03T20:20:00.003+10:00

This last week has been all about drainage. I didn't catch any photos of the little trenching machine, but it was about the size of a ride-on mower. Here is some of the work it did:

Drainage pipes aren't terribly exciting, of course, though important. Most of them look like these -- PVC pipes, which are here connecting to the sewerage line from our future toilet.

I asked for polyethylene pipe to be used instead of PVC where possible. PVC, though it is ubiquitous, creates dioxin during the manufacturing process and requires the use of poisonous "blue glue" at the joins. It is also hard to recycle, as it is a thermosetting plastic, and releases chlorine when burnt. However, I was surprised to learn that as they are brittle, PVC pipes are usually only guaranteed for 10 years. We have mobile clay soil, so even at a practical level PVC isn't suitable for stormwater here. Polyethylene is considerably more flexible (Vinidex assert that PE pipes were the only ones to survive the Kobe earthquake! I suppose clay soil will be all right, then) and even better, can be recycled.

What I hadn't realised was how you join PE pipe. See the O-rings in the picture below? And the two protrusions on each one?

These pipes are electrowelded! On Monday, a little electrofusion machine is arriving from Melbourne* to put a current through wires in each ring. The inside surface of the O-ring melts, fusing the join, and a yellow tab pops up to indicate the weld has been successful. After the job is complete, the machine will print a list of the welds performed and whether it thinks each was successful (the rings are barcoded). We feel that the amount of technology used to ~~nuke~~ solve a simple problem gives this method real Nerd Cred. (And while using HDPE pipe doesn't cost much more than PVC, the O-ring electrofusion couplers are expensive.)

Of course we also found a minor problem this week. Our gas line is too close to the surface to meet the current code, and it's got at least one bend in it, like this one. This section of the pipe was attached to the concrete driveway -- another no-no these days -- and broke when the concrete came up. Our builders suspect that there is more gas-pipe snaking around in peculiar places, and they are planning to hand-dig the driveway so they don't hit it.

* Melbourne seems to be way ahead of Sydney in the green building area, which is TOTALLY absurd. Where are the green builders in Sydney?

Pouring the Slabs

2011-03-20T21:43:00.000+11:00

There is nothing more fun than watching a concrete mixer being unloaded!

The mixer is dropping its load into the hopper of a concrete pump, and the pipe runs down our driveway to these guys:

They were pouring the slab for a future herb bed. Love the use of a whipper-snipper motor on the concrete poker (for getting the air bubbles out). The wizard's staff in the background is for use with a laser leveller.

The bolt cutters are for cutting the reo, then there is a trowel machine and the last item is a bullfloat (I believe).

It looked like this when they had finished: the slabs had been laid for the garden bed (foreground), garage (at left) and a special coloured slab for our family room.

But over the weekend, it's been raining. I love the reflections here.

Here's our Honey Mustard slab. The aggregate is 10mm river stone -- quartz and some other stones in white, yellows and browns. You'll see it later!

We worked out a new method of ingress when we were told the concreters were coming.

It's important to be able to feed the chooks!

There has to be Pink Spray Paint

2011-03-18T21:06:00.001+11:00

I suppose pink does show up rather well when you are using an excavator.

This week we have had the trenches dug for the foundations. The pile of fine gravel was shovelled over each of the areas to be concreted, and the trenches were sprayed with pesticide.

The next time we looked, the formwork was down, along with the plastic, which is a moisture and termite barrier. I assume the gravel was to prevent punctures, much as one beds an above-ground swimming-pool on sand. The construction seems to fill the back yard!

Over the plastic goes the reinforcing mesh, or as it's called in Australia, "reo".

We learnt a new word. The mesh is held at the correct height with these little plastic chairs.

And it's exciting to look at our future family room!

Necessary

2011-03-16T20:20:00.004+11:00

This is what you think it is.

It is the waste pipe for our second toilet. Our builders had to cut the concrete away to install the pipe and connect it to the sewer behind.

Below is something a bit less earthy. It's the framing for our future study, or as the Council call it, Bedroom 4, and the framing for the wall that will end the run of cupboards in the kitchen.

That's exciting too, but a necessary is necessary!

Good Riddance to the Kitchen!

2011-03-14T21:08:00.009+11:00

When we bought our house, our kitchen was newish, but the silver colour was peeling from around the plastic cupboard handles. It was also an unpleasant grey-blue, with wall paint in the same shade, and a fluorescent tube to make it all just a little bit more depressing. Last of all, it was small. While it was 3.3m wide, it was only 1.8m deep. The sink and stove broke up what little bench space there was, leaving me only a tiny work space -- and I like to cook. An arch separated it from the dining room, which was painted the colour of a pumpkin's innards. The contrast between the pumpkin and the grey-blue was... unspeakable. And the dining room had a fluorescent tube too!

Some things changed quickly. One of our first actions was to sponge the walls of both rooms in Taubman's Candelabra, a warm cream. It calmed the pumpkin, warmed the blue, and united the rooms. Unfortunately, the spongeing is linked indelibly in my mind with listening to the Dragons choke on the Grand Final!

Our next adventure was when the dining room tube went. We discovered that we had had a Sword of Damocles over our heads... the fitting had only been held together with sticky tape! Out went the old fittings, and in came some new ones from Beacon Lighting. And really, that was how things stayed. We lost a few cupboard doors along the way, but here is a picture of the kitchen after removal of the stove and drawer unit at right. The fridge would have been on the left. The wall, which hemmed the kitchen in, has been removed.

We had a few other walls which jutted out into the dining room and made the space difficult to use. They've gone now too.

But best of all was to see the whole lot gone!

Good riddance, ugly, inconvenient, runty kitchen!

Enter the Bobcat

2011-03-14T20:53:00.002+11:00

After demolition, there's always mess to clean up. In our case, there was gravel on the driveway that needed to be put into the retention pit, the spoil from the pit, and then the bricks from the house.

Enter the bobcat! The driver is bringing gravel from the driveway to the pile.

Then he'd move on to grab some spoil, which he'd take out to the truck (just visible at the top of the driveway in the photo above).

He was very quick indeed; it was difficult to take photos. By the end of the day, my back yard no longer contained a huge heap of clay.

Another view:

The two pit drains are only just visible above, but this is what they look like close up. Not great, alas.

Demolition

2011-03-02T20:06:00.006+11:00

By the time we left for school yesterday morning, the door-frames had vanished from our laundry and box-room.

And they'd begun demolishing the inside walls.

All that's left in our laundry is the old cupboard, an original. Curved corners were in fashion in 1946; we have a curved corner in our lounge room which unfortunately will disappear with our renovation.

The wall which hemmed in my kitchen disappeared. (It's not my bread. One of the builders must have had a sanger for lunch.)

Goodbye ugly grey-blue kitchen! On the other hand, having a builder bowl up on a Monday morning and ask, "Could you empty your kitchen today? We'd like to demolish it tomorrow," is a shock. Both the Geek and I work a full day on Mondays. Following it up with multiple trips between homes till late at night is not the best way to spend an evening. And we were profoundly grateful that my boss lent me a trolley from work. Kitchens hold an amazing amount of stuff, and now it's gradually being moved into place in our rental kitchen.

Today, demolition moved to the outside. The wall between the kitchen and box-room is gone, along with the back porch. So is all the fibro: the laundry ceiling and soffits. Fibro of this age contains asbestos, and is now classed as a hazardous material. Half the back wall of the kitchen remains, because it will form part of a waist-high wall between kitchen and family room.

Our house is double brick, where the weight of the roof is borne by the house's external walls. With this section of wall gone, the roof needed shoring up.

In the meantime, I'd better do something about the state of our current house...

A Couple of Days with an Excavator

2011-02-23T21:58:00.009+11:00

The Sprig was pretty happy when the little excavator turned up.

But it had a couple of big jobs to do. The first was to dig up my friend the Hoistus hilli, for later transplantation.

The second was to dig a retention pit, for drainage of surface water from our new driveway and patio. Our block slopes away from the road, so there is nowhere for it to go except the back yard (there will be a charge system to deliver rain from the roof to the stormwater drains).

The pit is at least a metre deep and 1.5 wide, and about 7m long. Note the heavy clay subsoil.

Here is a shot of the retention arrangement in progress. It had to be certified by our engineer. I shall now await his bill.

The big wattle tree (and some smaller shrubs) for years hid the ugliness of our two sheds. Here they are again, naked to the world.

And here is a shot of spoil from our Heffalump Trap, new pipes, and a whole lot of rubbish on a trailer. The rubbish is the Ugly Fibro Shed, and the Ugly Fibro Lean-To, which used to hold a gas hot water system at the back of our laundry. Good riddance!

Work Begins

2011-02-18T18:11:00.002+11:00

Louie the builder rang me and said that his team would be turning up at 7am on Thursday to look at the back yard and begin setting out. I hadn't really grasped what this meant, but when two men turned up with chainsaws I sent the boys out for their final climb on our large Parramatta Wattle.

The sound and import of the chainsaw sent the Sprig into howls at breakfast. "They're cutting down my climbing tree!" Between the two of them, the noise was deafening. You will remember that we were misinformed about the size that these wattles can grow to. While its shade and climbable branches were welcome, the solar hot water system has been shaded somewhat and there was quite a lot of cracking in the house during our dry spell.

Once it was down, our builders estimated it at 13m tall.

The boys also removed the mulberry tree that shaded and disguised our carport, which had been too narrow to use. We had stuck a table (collected at Council cleanup) under it and used the area for outdoor meals and messy craft.

The pile of brush from the two trees was enormous. The fun of climbing in and among it helped the boys deal with the sorrow of losing their favourite tree yesterday.

Once the mulberry was gone, the carport could come down.

So to recapitulate, the scene at 7:30 on Thursday morning was this:

This morning it was this:

We Are Go for Launch

2011-02-13T18:52:00.006+11:00

We have talked to the nice man from the bank, and he was happy to lend us more money. We've signed a contract with Louie, our builder, and he is hoping to start work in a fortnight or so. The last step is looking for interim accommodation. I had hoped to live in during some of the work, but there is going to be a great deal of dust (some of it with lead, given the age of the house) and some asbestos Fibro removal. However, the house next door has fallen vacant and we were able to put a deposit down, so we are hoping that the landlord approves us.

After years of dreaming and planning, it is amazing that in the course of a Saturday, everything could change so quickly!

Cicada Season

2011-01-09T23:00:00.004+11:00

It all started when I saw a plump cicada in a spider's web. I have lived here for 11 years and I didn't know we had Floury Bakers!

But it might not be a Floury Baker, despite the floury look. I went looking, and it turns out that there are 273 species of cicada in Australia, in 38 genera. And with more species than you might expect frequenting Western Sydney! Nonetheless, this species has the Floury Baker habit of standing head downwards on the tree:

They are rather well camouflaged on the greyish trunk of Acacia fimbriata, the Fringe Wattle.

I'm glad to have found them! We don't have Greengrocers (Cyclochila australasiae) as they like big eucalypts. My biggest eucalypt plainly isn't big enough yet.

Our main cicada species is small and quite prolific. This cicada case was found with many others under my Parramatta Wattle. The grass-blade is kikuyu; the case is therefore only 2-3cm long.

I suspect that it belongs to someone like this camera-shy fellow on my Hakea. He's only about 3cm long and really didn't want to be photographed. I've seen this type on my wattles too, so I think he might be a Spotted Wattle Cicada. The coloration is a very dark green.

On the other hand, he might be a Ferny Acacia Cicada, though they don't seem to have a wing-spot.

I'm really not sure, but I feel sorry for my cicadas, whatever species they are. They don't sing in the rain, and it's been raining a lot.

If you want to learn more about cicadas, or try identifying your own, have a look at Lindsay Popple's fascinating and detailed site.

New Year Spiders

2010-12-30T22:24:00.004+11:00

If you're arachnophobic, I must warn you that this post is all about spiders and includes photos.

This year's rain has caused insect numbers to jump, and our beloved spiders are mopping them up for us all over the back yard. Here are a few I found to share with you. All the spiders seem to be from the same family, the Araneidae.

First is the St Andrew's Cross Spider (Argiope keyserlingi), which sits in its web with its legs paired to make a St Andrew's Cross. Pity this one's web runs across the doorway of my garden shed! I have been crouching to go under the web.

Here is its underside, with another view of its neatly-wrapped lunch.

When I first saw this 5mm creature, I thought it was a beetle of some kind (apologies for the photo quality). It was only when I enlarged the photo that I could see the head and front legs. It is possibly a Gasteracantha.

I call this a stick spider, for obvious reasons, but haven't been able to identify it.

Our most common spider is the Garden Orb Weaver (Eriophora spp.), which puts up a new web after dark. We have heaps of them about this year; many more than usual. I suppose that means that we have many more night-flying insects than normal. This one was sleeping the summer day away in a secluded leaf. Doesn't it look peaceful?

If you wish to live and thrive
Let the spider run alive.

Best wishes to everyone for the New Year!

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-26T18:01:00.005+11:00

CHRISTMAS BUSH FOR HIS ADORNING

All the bells are gaily ringing,
Birds in every tree are singing;
Let us in the golden weather,
Gather Christmas Bush together.

Christ is born! The angels thunder,
Thru’ the Heavens their tale of wonder,
While we pluck for His adorning
Christmas Bush this hallowed morning.

Christ has conquered Evil’s power
Hear the bells rock every tower
Birds and beasts lift up their voices,
Freed at last the world rejoices.

Onward with triumphant chorus,
Following the road before us,
Singing thru’ the golden weather,
Gath’ring Christmas Bush together.

Merry Christmas, everyone! I hope you have some time to play in your back yards.

But in my garden?

2010-11-28T13:42:00.013+11:00

While I have been regaling you with photos of Victoria, not a lot has happened here in the garden. It has proved difficult to plant warm-weather crops as the last few months in Sydney have been extraordinarily wet; in fact it's raining right now.

Month	Average (mm)	Actual (mm)
September	52.7	69.8
October	64.9	85.2
November	72.9	108.0 (so far)

This is due to a fairly strong La Nina effect which is expected to remain all summer. Our summers are when we receive most rainfall anyway, but we'll probably have longer rainy periods rather than storms. I will also be expecting more moderate temperatures. While that's good for the vegetable garden, the humidity won't lift so often (generally the humidity drops when we get over about 30C), which tends to mean problems with mildew.

The trip to Melbourne, enjoyable as it was, put a hole in my vegetable planting programme. Since then, it's been hard to find time when the soil is dry enough to allow planting. This weekend, fortunately, gave me both moist (not puggy) soil and time. And now my new plantings are being watered in!

Yesterday, in went my six 'Brandywine' tomato seedlings. I am hoping that temperatures will stay cool long enough for them to grow and set fruit; they should have been in the garden at least a month ago! I am planning a second planting of 'Brandywine' for autumn tomatoes -- in fact, I should plant the seeds this afternoon so that they fruit in March.

The tomatoes are now surrounded by basil, 'Mini' cabbages, 'Flame' lettuce and some 'Mini White' cucumbers, and a row of 'Stringless Pioneer' beans.

Today I planted a block of Sweet Corn 'True Gold' underplanted with Cucumber 'Lebanese Mini Muncher' and 'Sugar Baby' watermelons.

Yesterday, I also put in my heirloom beetroot seedlings, and radish 'French Breakfast' near the bolting Florence fennel and 'Tuscan Black' kale. Found that my leeks had survived, which was rather a surprise. They are sheltered by a sorrel clump and a bolting parsnip, and so should cope when it gets hotter.

My quince tree is laden with small quinces. I need remove a lot of them, then bag the rest against fruit fly. Underneath it, however, are some impressive volunteer tomatoes, which also need bagging. I hope I don't damage too many of them!

By all reasonable measures (that is, non-calendar ones), it's summer:

The jacarandas across Sydney have passed their peak of bloom
Blowflies and mosquitoes have appeared
We have heard Greengrocer cicadas in the trees
The Ashes have started
The air-conditioning at my workplace broke down
The shops are full of Christmas things
Our Christmas tree went up this afternoon

And I'm off to prepare my Christmas cake fruit right now: it has to macerate in brandy overnight before I bake the cake tomorrow. See you later!

Out of Melbourne

2010-11-26T18:35:00.003+11:00

The Geek had only one requirement of our trip to Victoria: we had to go on Puffing Billy! The line winds through the Dandenongs, on the north-eastern edge of Melbourne. Some parts of the trip are through remnant forest: I think these trees are Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus regnans) and underneath are Rough Tree-ferns (Cyathea australis).

For some reason the camera filled up with an excessive number of train photos.

Though it was interesting to see the cinders being cleaned out of the box. Old books will often refer to cinder paths, so I presume this is what is meant. The pieces of unburnt coal are a bit coarser than the kind of gravel you see on paths.

My husband is not entirely lost to the joys of nature and took these photos of Waratahs for me (I was too short). I am guessing from the location and size that these garden subjects are probably 'Shady Lady Pink'.

The rich chestnut soil of the Dandenongs was like nothing I've seen anywhere before. Except possibly clinging to brushed potatoes!

Then we drove across northern Melbourne to Ballarat. Now it was the chance for our history enthusiast, the Twig, to enjoy himself to the utmost.

Yes, we did find gold. Some.

Our history fiend was wild again when we visited the site of the Eureka Stockade the following day. Click on the photo to read the famous oath taken by the diggers.

This memorial was erected in 1923 on the site of the stockade.

I was impressed with the gracious wording of the plaque; too often Australian history is seen as a war between "goodies" and "baddies". Black armbands and white blindfolds at twenty paces!

We can also highly recommend Eureka Street Fish & Chips, just down the road from the stockade memorial. After lunch, however, we had to head for Tullamarine. The Geek's iPhone, however, wasn't quite up to the task of getting us there...

We did eventually make it onto the plane, rather than under it.

And so ended our trip to Melbourne.

Phillip and Churchill Islands

2010-11-12T16:26:00.001+11:00

Like most tourists to Melbourne, I was very keen to see the Fairy Penguins at Phillip Island, and somewhat daunted to discover how far we had to drive to get there and at how large the island was. It's a pleasant drive around Westernport Bay, however, and we can recommend the Sorrento Fisherman's Co-op for good fish and chips. They also feed the local pelicans at lunch time.

But as the penguins come in after sunset, what do you do beforehand? We spent the afternoon at Churchill Island, nestled on the Westernport Bay side of Phillip Island. It's a heritage farm these days, part historic site, part farm education centre, part nature reserve and part petting zoo. The kids had a cart ride, and saw some shearing and blacksmithing. The sheepdogs showed off their training (apparently a fully-trained sheepdog costs about $5000) by rounding up first sheep, then a pair of turkeys!

And as it was spring, love was in the air. Portrait of a young man trying to impress a young lady:

A number of wallabies live in a large enclosure, and we told there was a mother with her joey, but that she was very shy and we'd be lucky to see it.

The caretaker was quite thrilled when we came upon the mother in an open area and the joey was not only awake, but peeping out of the pouch in the classic manner!

The historic house and its outbuildings and garden fascinated me more than the children, but we all loved this pump-activated fountain made out of old tractor seats.

In the late afternoon we drove down to The Nobbies, the extreme western end of Phillip Island, to visit a new Seal Centre. It would be good to see some seals while we were here, I thought. We went into the Centre, full of interesting information about Australian Fur Seals -- but where were the animals?

It turns out that the seal colony is on this islet. It's only 1500m from shore, and you might be able to see some of them if you just put $5 into one of the telescopes. The same telescopes that you put $1 into everywhere else in Australia.

But The Nobbies are also home to a huge colony of seagulls. Did I mention it was spring?

I'd never seen seagull chicks before. This gull was happily nesting right next to the boardwalk. Perhaps this shouldn't have surprised me, given how assertive seagulls are, but it did.

From the parking area on the north side, we could see the sheltered waters of Westernport Bay.

And at the end of the boardwalk, we could see the south coast of Phillip Island, and the wild waves of Bass Strait.

What a contrast! But it is in Bass Strait that the ~~Fairy Penguins~~ Little Penguins spend a couple of days at a time fishing. Then they come in on the southern beaches and waddle up to their burrows. Photography is prohibited as it hurts the penguins' eyes, but you can watch footage at the Penguin Island site.
I found the Penguin Parade quite magical. For a long time there are no penguins, just the ebb and flow of waves on the sand. Then a wave recedes and magically, there are a dozen little silvery bodies standing where you thought there was only foam. They march together, rather timid on the exposed sand but confident once into the dunes, to their burrows. There are penguin highways through the grass and under the boardwalks, and the birds make extraordinary noises to each other. Each bird has a unique call, and it is by this call that they identify themselves to their spouses, who at this time are already incubating eggs in the hundreds of burrows. I'm grateful that sometimes, we get it right with our wildlife.

Melbourne Botanical Gardens

2010-10-22T22:13:00.013+11:00

I knew I wanted to see the Melbourne Botanical Gardens, but didn't realise that I would feel like I hadn't left Sydney!

Bits of the Royal Botanical Gardens, and Centennial Park and Vaucluse House, look pretty much like this. Apparently there was a peculiarly Antipodean muddling of the Picturesque and Gardenesque, and here you have it: meandering lakes and shrubberies, but specimen trees and elaborate borders included as well. (No, I can't quite conceptualise how people muddled Gardenesque and Picturesque together, but they did. It seems to be an Australian habit to pick the bits they like out of disparate ideas and mix them all together without regard for consistency.)

The garden, like the Sydney equivalent, is a lovely place to wander through but not so easy to photograph. Some of the borders were lovely:

How about these contrasts in texture and colour?

I took about half a dozen photos of Echium candicans, with stunning electric-blue spires of flowers. We wants it, my precious, we wants it! And I've seen Echiums growing in Sydney, so I know they can cope with our humidity. Now it's a matter of finding the plain Echium candicans, rather than a cultivar.

With the recent drought the Gardens staff have focussed more on water-wise plantings. I particularly admired this bed, on a steep bank overlooking the Yarra. I would love to know what the red-and-white bulbs are; I don't think they are tulips.

I definitely wanted to see the redesigned "Guilfoyle's Volcano". The famous director and designer of the Gardens had a reservoir built and designed a "volcano" garden for it as a kind of folly. The introduction of town water for irrigation led to the old reservoir being ignored for years, but recent drought has prompted a redesign. The new garden is very modern in style but still reads like a folly because it is so different from its surroundings. I loved it but felt I couldn't do it justice in photos. It is planted with thousands of different cacti and succulents in great drifts, and the red rock-mulch makes it quite startling on a grey Melbourne afternoon. The number and size of Golden Barrel cacti was also quite startling, and how often do you see a mass planting of Jelly Beans?

The reservoir holds water again, this time collected from local stormwater, rather than pumped in from the Yarra as it was originally. The surface has a number of circular planting-rafts floating on it, but they were empty. Enlarge the photo for a better look at the clever fencing. The boardwalk is a double-spiral around the top of the reservoir.

Unfortunately, I had somehow missed out on hearing about the other Botanical Gardens, at Cranbourne. I saw it as we headed for Phillip Island, but there was no time to investigate it. Next time...

The Ian Potter Foundation Children's Garden

2010-10-17T18:55:00.001+11:00

Some gardens are so full of ideas, so full of joy, that it's hard to take everything in. The Ian Potter Foundation Children's Garden is one such garden, and you know it's going to be good as soon as you see the gate. How many different implements can you see?

Then there are these mysterious creatures outside the gate. They make me think of Patricia Wrightson. The curve on the path is part of a spiral that falls both inside and outside the gate. (By the way, I've never seen Asparagus Fern looking so respectable before -- it turns into a hideous weed in Sydney!)

All the parts of this garden have names. The first thing the boys saw -- and ran straight into -- was the Tunnel, made of Leptospermum laevigatum (Coastal Tea-Tree) saplings planted a metre or less apart and woven together. I presume that the same method could be used on Babingtonia virgata (which has softer leaves) or some of the smaller Melaleuca species. The tunnel was long and curved enough to be fun, and formed the boundary of the Children's Garden.

This fountain is the head of the rill that runs through the garden. I think it's a rather ugly-but-safe thing, but the significance of its "bubbler" style became apparent as soon as children came near. It's fun to put your hand over a jet and spray someone! Also note the bare-bottomed toddler: the garden information says, "For safety and hygiene reasons, children must be clothed at all times." But the Australian tradition of letting small children dabble naked in water continues regardless. The rill, by the way, meanders through the garden to a large pond, which would be very unsafe indeed if it didn't have heavy mesh just below the water surface.

This wonderful ancient redgum stump was extracted from the Murray, where it had lain undisturbed for years. It is raised so children can crawl underneath and look up through the hollow.

Across the campsite from it is the stone bridge/tunnel, part of a "ruin". My children loved this area as there were cut logs that could be moved around and stacked, as well as various hiding places to enjoy.

But I admired The Gorge the most. A path wends through standing basalt shards, surrounded by Snow Gums (Eucalyptus pauciflora) and tussock grasses. I could imagine playing hide-and-seek here, and aren't the colours wonderful? It evokes the gorges of Central Australia, but uses different species -- I doubt Ghost Gums and spinifex would cope with the Melbourne climate.

Nearby are the Magic Pudding and his mates. And a few more mates. Behind are some Gymea lilies used as a screen, and the popular picnic area.

New Zealand flax, Gymea lilies and what looks like Dianella are mass-planted as screens between the various "rooms". There was a whole area of bamboo, delightful to walk through, and a lookout tower. The only plant that puzzled me was this one. It looks horribly like an Equisetum, but I suppose it can't be.

The children's vegetable garden is off to one side, appropriate as its formal layout does not suit the rest of the space. There is a sand-pit in one of the boxes, and plenty of watering-cans to enable children to "help". I love the way the trellis crosses the beds to form tunnels.

The boys could probably have spent the whole day here and so could I. Now I'm preoccupied with working out how to realise some of the ideas from this garden in my own.
The Ian Potter Foundation Children's Garden is part of the Melbourne Botanical Gardens, which I'll deal with in my next post.

Mazy Days

2010-10-09T08:34:00.010+11:00

If you are going to take a couple of boys on "another boring garden visit", it's always a good idea to have something you know they'll like planned for afterwards. So after our Heronswood visit, we drove ten minutes up into the hills behind Dromana to The Enchanted Maze Garden (except I didn't mention the word "garden"!).

The owners must be nuts about topiary, which is far too exacting for me. They have put in an application to the Guinness Book of Records for the world's longest relief topiary, on their front hedge (I couldn't manage a good photo of it). I had never heard of relief topiary before, but here is an example from within the garden:

The first maze was the classic hedge maze, made even more interesting by the need to find five Buddhas and two Japanese gardens. The second was a labyrinth.

But what was that in the middle?

I think Nessie is wonderful! And I loved the dolphins and waves across the dam.

There are a number of other mazes I haven't mentioned or photographed, as well as some outdoor puzzles and display gardens, even a small kiddy farm. We must have spent about four hours there, but we had already had lunch and didn't see the animals or follow the whole Sculpture Walk. A great place to go if you are concerned about your children being inside too much.

Heronswood

2010-10-05T17:51:00.039+11:00

I'm a member of the Diggers Club, have wanted to see their two gardens for years, and finally I had the chance to see Heronswood. It is a pleasant drive down the Mornington Peninsula. My sons were not overly keen to see a garden, but I knew they'd enjoy it once they were there. The afternoon was to be given over to a place they were definitely interested in, but I'll cover that in a separate post.

Heronswood is a lovely Gothic Revival house, built of the attractive bluestone-and-limestone combination that distinguishes fine old houses in this part of Victoria.

This would have been an imposing entrance in its day, but now, you enter higher up the slope and at the back of the house, where the nursery and shop are. You can barely see the house from the road, due to a luxuriant mixed border and shrubbery.

Further along the new driveway are the children's sandpit and the cafe. My boys loved the sandpit! The structure at right is the framework for a creeper: eventually, there will be a wonderful green tunnel to crawl through. It's fun already, of course.

When I was able to drag the boys away, our first view of the house proper was this appropriately gothic one:

Again, this is the back of the house. The north-easterly aspect would have given the owners an expansive view down the slope of the main garden.

Was there a fashion for Chinoiserie when the house was built, I wonder?

But on to the garden. From the Diggers Club's point of view, the centrepiece of the garden is the formal vegetable garden. It consists of six sectors, here planted with brassicas, lettuces and yellow calendulas (or pot marigolds, as they were once called -- the leaves and flowers are edible). The beds are edged with steel, I think, to help provide that razor-sharp line. I'm surprised they didn't terrace the area first; the slope makes the geometry look wonky, as well as complicating watering.

I liked these sturdy trellises, which partially enclose it.

A nice spot from which to contemplate the fruits of your labour on the upper side of the vegetable patch.

Of course the Diggers Club is not just about vegetables, and the rest of the garden is filled with examples of the stock. The garden drops away into a steep valley, and it cannot have been easy to design, nor indeed to redesign after more than 100 years of gardening on the site. There are a number of ancient trees,including this huge deodar:

Perhaps because of the long history and the commercial requirements of the nursery show garden, I felt that the garden was somewhat diffuse in conception. Some areas were satisfying, but somehow I felt the absence of a unifying idea, or possibly a unifying hand. The symmetrical sections seemed unrelated to the rest of the garden, which rambles informally. Nonetheless, my favourite areas are shown below.

The garden has a couple of overgrown arbours -- well, I think arbours look better overgrown, anyway. So do my boys.

Here's a study in lines and curves; I was rather proud to have noticed them!

And the purple and greyed tones against that Prussian blue:

I thought the iris and wormwood produced a nice example of varied texture with the Berberis(?) adding contrast.

The placement of the arch on the curve of the path seems a certain technique to achieve wanderability.

A final note: the Fork to Fork Cafe at Heronswood bases its menu on what is available in the kitchen garden on the premises,with the meat tending to the regional and organic. I had one of the best meals there that I have ever eaten: with great respect shown for the produce, the result had a lightness and freshness not commonly encountered. My set two courses were well worth the $49 they cost (three courses is $59). The children's menu is made up of simple but carefully cooked dishes: the Twig enjoyed grilled chicken breast with baby carrots and the Sprig gobbled down his pasta with tomato sauce. Highly recommended. I was, however, very lucky to get a meal at all. It isn't mentioned on the website, but bookings are required for the meals. If I had come with a party, the staff would not have been able to fit us in. I am planning to notify Diggers of this omission. The staff were quite aware of it!

In all, a very enjoyable day, lifted by the sublime food at Fork to Fork.

Melbourne Zoo

2010-10-04T16:20:00.002+11:00

This isn't a very garden-oriented post, but everyone likes animals, don't they?

Here is Melbourne Zoo's newest arrival. He's famous, but unnamed as yet.

It's funny to see a tiny elephant zooming around and generally acting rather like a human toddler. Here is Mali, a four month old elephant calf. She is rather more sedate than the little boy.

There are public toilets, and there are very public toilets. This is one of a group scattered around the premises, asking who had the most unusual poo at the zoo. The boys, of course, thought this was the height of wit.

The orangutan play compound is a nice example of an adventure playground. I am sure there are similar playgrounds for human children!

I didn't find the Japanese garden very satisfying. It seems very busy, with many different plants; the gardens I saw in Japan had a more restricted palette. And the deer-scarer wasn't working!

This was the best shot I could get of the dryland garden at the entrance to the Australian animals exhibit. I have not done it justice. I have not been able to identify the yellow-flowering plant at right. The big grey one in the foreground is an Eremophila with lavender-blue flowers, most likely E. nivea. I am not sure how these plants will survive in the damp Melbourne climate! The grass-trees along the fence will be all right.

This sculpture includes lines from our best-known patriotic poem, "Core of my Heart", by Dorothea Mackellar.

One of our better-known animals, doing what he does best. I must admit I felt like doing the same by the time I encountered him at the end of the day. You can see the size of his claws, which is one of the reasons we don't tend to cuddle koalas very often. That said, at least he isn't carnivorous or aggressive like his cousin the drop-bear.

Back From Holidays

2010-10-01T11:58:00.016+10:00

We have been away for a little while on a family trip to Victoria, so what's happening in our garden now?

Before we left, I madly planted out all the vegetable seedlings I had in our damp soil. It doesn't seem to have rained while we were away, but most seedlings survived. I also committed an act of vandalism, cutting off every flower on my 'Purple Podded Dutch' peas. Peas take about a week to reach picking size from flowers, and mine had just started flowering. If I had left the flowers, the plants would have gone to seed before we returned. It paid off -- I returned home to this:

There are plenty of other flowers around too. My quince, which was only in bud when we left, is now in full bloom:

And so is the chervil (Pity! I will plant more):

The Melaleuca nodosa is covered in creamy fluff-balls:

And I was able to pick this lovely 'Forellenschuss' lettuce:

A quick wander down the back showed me that the Cheese Tree was producing. The fruits aren't edible, but they are fun to look at.

And on our first evening home my husband discovered this handsome fellow in the laundry. He is standing at the back of the laundry tub, and the metal splashback is 55mm high, so this huntsman could fit comfortably on a man's palm. I love them -- unless I'm surprised by them! The most dangerous thing about huntsmen is the way people react to their imposing size.

We are also being entertained by the local magpie family. Their two chicks have fledged and are following their parents around the neighbourhood, squawking for food all the while. I managed to catch an overworked parent about to apply the grub to the gullet.

Stay tuned for my travel photos!

Pea-Tunnel

2010-09-03T15:47:00.004+10:00

Colleen Vanderlinden posted last year about a cucumber trellis she saw at the Michigan State Fair. She has a great photo of it, and I've been wondering how to do something similar here.

Then, as it happened, I ended up with two rows of peas planted next to each other.

I think they'll meet at the top eventually, so I'll keep you posted (they've doubled in height since I took this photo last month). In the meantime, we've had platefuls of fresh peas gracing the dinner-table several times, an experience that only gardening can buy.

Even better -- those peas in the front are 'Purple-Podded Dutch'-- with pink flowers. I can't wait!

How to Prune a Quince Tree and How to Treat Scale

2010-08-12T09:00:00.004+10:00

The quince, like many fruit trees, puts out lots of branches that shoot skyward. It also likes shooting from the base -- its natural form is more a thicket than a tree. While quite picturesque, a tall thicket isn't easy to collect fruit from, so growers tend to prune to a vase shape. The vase shape allows air circulation through the middle of the tree, which reduces some diseases, and makes it easier to deal with the fruit. Quince trees should be pruned in autumn or winter, when they are dormant. I decided to wait until most of the leaves were gone from my tree before I started, last weekend.

I grew up with plum trees and feel confident to prune them, but quinces, being pome fruit like apples and pears, are a little trickier. They fruit on year-old spurs, which you have to be careful not to cut off. Fortunately, these spurs are quite distinctive. They are 10-15 cm long, somewhat flattened, and the tip is broader than the rest of the twig. You can see one in the photo of scale below, pointing to the right. Branches, of course, taper to the tip.

For the last few years, I have been (roughly) following pruning instructions from the Gardening Australia article about quinces. Here is my version of that pruning method:

Year One

Plant your sapling. We'd do this in autumn to allow the tree to develop a good root system ahead of the summer heat. I'd prune it fairly hard, but not so hard that I can't tell whether it's survived!
In late winter, prune to a single short trunk. While the orchardist in the article gives his trees a very short trunk, 60cm, he probably isn't picking up footballs, chickens or anything else from under his trees. I think 1m or more is a better trunk height for a tree in a home garden, but it depends a bit on your height and what you expect to be seeking under your tree, as well as how high you can reach to pick the fruit.

Year Two

Subsequent Years

Don't cut off the stubby little fruiting spurs!
Remove any diseased or dead wood.
Remove all of the upright branches inside the vase at their base.
Prune any side branches that have developed on the trunk or base of the tree.
Remove any branches that cross others.
Shorten the remaining branches to 50 cm.

That looks better, doesn't it? Though I feel I can take a bit more off, now I've had a good look at this picture -- I think the tree is starting to look splayed. Quinces are heavy fruit and a good crop (which is still unlikely on my tree, I fear) could cause branches to break.

This year, I've found I could remove an older framework branch as a new branch had grown in the exact spot I wanted. The older branch had zigzagged.

My tree has had another problem this year: scale, caught from the next door neighbour's fig tree. Scale are sap-sucking insects that live on the branches, and for protection cover themselves with a hard shell, which makes them look like limpets. They are farmed by ants for the honeydew they secrete, which also has the side-effect of feeding sooty mould. Neither the scale nor the mould have really affected the tree's production or health, as far as I can tell, but over time they would.

The commercial treatment for scale is White Oil, which is a petrochemical you use diluted. Mum tells me that her Dad used the washing water from the washing machine on his fruit trees. Probably any oil or soap will work, but here is my recipe, cut down from this one:

In a 500ml spray bottle, put 8ml vegetable oil and 2ml dish-washing liquid. Pour in 500ml water and shake to mix. Spray liberally on scale. The oil and detergent apparently smother the scale insect's breathing apparatus, and it's a useful recipe to try on any sap-sucking insect.

Chook Dome Maintenance

2010-08-08T22:04:00.001+10:00

After its five years of service, it was time to have a really good look at the chook dome. The UV-stabilised plastic twine I had used for bracing (following the original instructions in Linda Woodrow's book) had not worked well, as the chooks often tripped on it, and now it was starting to shred. When I untied it, I found that a couple of the joints had lost their wiring, so that was my first job. An intact joint is shown below.

The cross-bracing didn't seem to me to be necessary with my small-diameter dome, so I decided to just strengthen the upper joints with the good sections of twine.

I couldn't cover the lower joints without removing the netting, which seemed a bit much, as I wanted to move the girls in to their dome the same day.

What was the rush? I'd seen Annie sitting on wet ground. They only do this when they are afflicted with mites, to cool down their itchy undersides. While the girls had been mite-free for months, I think the butcher-bird I saw stealing their scraps a fortnight ago might have left them a return gift. After I had caught each girl and subjected her to the indignity of the spray-on parasite treatment, she was popped into the restored dome and set to work in my garden.

For more information on the structure and purpose of my chook dome, see this earlier post.

However, I am not the only creator of structures in the back yard. I suspect this is an artillery bunker, but the information is Classified.

Cowan Creek Bushwalk

2010-07-18T18:50:00.028+10:00

Last Saturday our family went on a bushwalk from Berowra to Mount Kuring-Gai Stations via Cowan Creek. Cowan Creek is a tributary of the Hawkesbury River. It was a perfect winter's day with pale blue skies.

The path down from Berowra to Waratah Gully is rather uneven and we were puzzled by the amount of fallen timber. The trees weren't big, but it seemed like a lot of them had been knocked over. Something to do with burning off? The undergrowth was at most hip height, and at the start mainly a kind of grevillea (I think; a lot of our healthland plants are hard to tell apart) and a sweet-scented plant with small five-petalled white flowers (Woollsia pungens, the Snow Wreath). The only flower I saw that I knew was Epacris longiflora, the Native Fuchsia.

As we came closer to the gully floor we could hear water running over rocks. Such a lovely sound! We crossed the creek where once there had been a bridge, and continued alongside the creek into a patch of rainforest. Some of the trees here had the distinctive bark of coachwoods (Ceropetalum apetalum, which have smooth bark blotched white, grey and chestnut. Again, all the trees seemed very young, with diameters under 10cm. I suspect that this gully might have been entirely burnt out by the 1994 bushfires; most of Kuring-Gai Chase National Park was damaged.

We had out lunch on Waratah Bay, not far from the abandoned barge. The sun was welcome after the cool of the rainforest.

Afterwards, our walk continued southwards, up Cowan Creek (which looks more like a river to me, being a couple of hundred metres wide). This was the view north, towards the Hawkesbury. The vegetation is the dry sclerophyll forest typical of the Sydney region.

This was the view upstream:

It was lovely to walk along the creek. Most of the track was about 10m above the waterline. We stopped at every inlet to fortify ourselves with chocolate, and eventually we reached the uphill track to Kuring-gai Station. It was a stiff climb for the children (and, truth be told, for the unfit parents), but there were good views from a resting point halfway up. We ate more chocolate, and I annoyed the family by exclaiming over various flowers.

It was on the latter part of the bushwalk that I noticed NSW Christmas Bush growing everywhere. Unfortunately we also saw an unknown weed plant everywhere. No idea what it was, and my photos didn't come out, but it was doing very well indeed, growing on long canes to 2m with pointed leaves, and very hairy. On the other hand, there was a cream wattle (probably Acacia ulicifolia) flowering in great swathes near Mount Kuring-gai, scenting the air.

This pairing of weathered sandstone and gum trees is typical of coastal Sydney:

The walk was about 9km and a bit strenuous, but our five-year-old and nine-year-old did manage without whingeing until we were almost finished. The hill at the end is not difficult, merely long, and paths are generally in good repair. It is a popular walk and is impossible to get lost on, there being only one track for most of the route. The water views and variety of vegetation make it very enjoyable. A good family day-walk, with easy access by public transport. I'd suggest going in another month. It was really too early for most of our spring wildflowers, but the Boronia was out. The mauve-pink really stands out against our grey-green bush!

Note: While I've marked the photo as B. mollis, I now think it might well have been B. ledifolia -- the leaves were long rather than round.

My Day Off

2010-07-12T22:42:00.010+10:00

I took a day off for myself these school holidays, and what would a gardening-and-book nut do on her day off? She would visit a place that has been on the to-visit list for quite a while: Florilegium. A whole shop, just for gardening books... what might I grab?

Florilegium isn't far from the cafes of Glebe Point Road, where I had lunch (and afternoon tea afterwards). It's in a tiny corner shop which was once the Demeter Bakery, but now has warm white walls, polished concrete flooring, and a stairway to ~~heaven~~ more books downstairs, including some antiquarian treasures. I loved the feel of the shop and of course the titles!

Perhaps naively, I had thought that the obsessives restricted themselves to cultivation of roses, bromeliads and orchids. You expect to see books on those genera. But a whole book on the genus Sorbus? Yes, you'll find one. But then, surely every genus deserves some obsessive person to write about it...

I whiled away at least an hour exploring this cornucopia of gardening books! But in the end, I settled on four titles:

Edna Walling's The Happiest Days of my Life ($18), a memoir of her time building a holiday shack near the Great Ocean Road.
Helen Proudfoot's Gardens in Bloom: Jocelyn Brown and her Sydney Gardens of the '30s and '40s ($30). Brown and Walling were active in the same period and as I have a 1940s house, I am interested in how to bring something of that time into my own garden.
Piet Oudolf and Noel Kingsbury, Designing With Plants ($35). I was introduced to Piet Oudolf by the blogosphere and find his work fascinating. Again, it will be interesting to see how I can translate his ideas to Sydney, where the seasons are far less distinct than in the Netherlands, and where the native plant material is vastly different. I asked Gil, the proprietor, whether anyone was working in a similar style here and he was able to point out one or two designers to me in Contemporary Australian Garden Design by John Patrick & Jenny Wade... but I didn't buy that book!
After the glowing review at May Dreams Gardens, I couldn't pass up Rick Darke's expanded edition of William Robinson's classic The Wild Garden ($39.95). Looks like I have a bit of reading to do.

I felt the prices were very reasonable, and of course was very impressed by Gil's immediate grasp of what I meant and what I wanted to see. He travels to all sorts of gardening shows, and if you aren't able to come to Sydney, you can order by e-mail. But I know I'll be visiting the bookshop again.

A Walk in the Back Yard

2010-07-04T17:00:00.001+10:00

There are seedlings being kept warm on the concrete near the back door. It's time to bring out my little electric greenhouse to keep some of them warm, I think.

The fuzzy stuff above is fennel. Maybe I should plant them out today. Below are some brassicas: kale and pak choy.

During the day I move the seedlings to a sunnier spot under the carport, next to my pot of Dichondra and Aloe.

At the edge of the vegetable patch, a sweet potato has twined through the lemon grass. It has frost damage this week.

On the other hand this pink silverbeet is quite happy with conditions.

The sorrel is also fine. You can see where I have been picking the outer leaves for the chooks.

The young cabbages are looking good amongst the fumitory. I have to be careful when weeding fumitory, as it tends to bring other plants with it.

The pak choy is all self-sown. I've seen lettuces in here too.

The broad beans are almost ready to flower.

And here are my 'Purple Podded Dutch' peas coming up!

On the other hand, the quince tree has a bad case of scale and sooty mould. Once the leaves drop, I'll use a detergent mixture to remove the scale. My neighbours are having the same problems on some of their fruit trees, so I'll pass the recipe on once I've tried it.

I had no idea blueberry buds were pink; my last plant never grew. This one is in a pot for safe-keeping.

But what is this? Signs of habitation?

Even of cookery!

The kids like the teepee, but they've been riding bikes today instead.

In Praise of Gardening

2010-06-24T11:24:00.002+10:00

The Geek has drawn my attention to this touching post by Derek Powazek, about his father, himself, and why they like gardening.

I'm not sure that the Geek has noticed that Derek is himself a geek -- who likes gardening. Do you think my Geek might be catching the disease?

Another List of Gardening Activities

2010-06-22T19:06:00.001+10:00

One day, my horrible garden sheds will be demolished, which means that the contents have to go somewhere else.

Have you ever looked at your garden shed and contemplated having to pack it? It occurred to me that disintegrating bags of lime and blood-and-bone are not packable, so I did something radical on the weekend... I used them up! The lime went on my vegetable patch and the native plants got the blood-and-bone -- it's their favourite fertiliser.

The Geek and I put up some more pea-netting and the Sprig helped me plant 'Purple Podded Dutch' peas under it. I'm still deciding where to plant the snow peas, as I never have much luck with them.

The new pea-netting used to hang at the back of our house, where I had a small brick-edged garden bed and a 'Nelly Kelly' grafted passionfruit. Now I don't know if this happens with all of them, but the stock suckered unstoppably and inevitably the graft died off. The stock has been going strong for years (still suckering madly), but it doesn't produce edible passionfruit. The same thing happened to Dad's 'Nelly Kelly', so I won't buy one again unless someone gives me a very good reason. But with the wall slated to become an interior wall, there was no reason to waste my netting on an ugly stock any more, was there? And those bricks could be reused, so out they came. The boys had a lovely afternoon building with them.

My cut finger has prevented me from planting up punnets for a couple of weeks, so I turned to that next. I had to plant out a few beetroots and cabbages, and found that the bed was full of volunteer lettuce and bok choy seedlings -- which is great, seeing as I have missed out on planting those things recently!

Seeds planted:

Beetroot 'Globe Free' and Heirloom Mix
Cabbage 'Mini'
Florence Fennel
Kale 'Tuscan Black'
Leek 'King Richard'
Lettuce 'Yellow Leaf' and 'Forellenschuss'
Onion 'Borrettana'
Pak Choy 'Red F1'
Silverbeet 'Five Colour'
Spring Onion 'Evergreen'

The one thing we didn't get to was building a teepee out of the pruned branches you see at the top of the post. Next week...

A Very Light Frost

2010-06-11T17:51:00.004+10:00

Very light, but it was definitely there this morning! The first frost of the year. Now this IS early -- I recorded last year's first frost on 6th July and in 2008 it was on 30th June. I notice that nobody bothers to record the last frost in Sydney!