Cake Day

Any excuse to eat cake will do
- but some excuses are better than others:
Happy Birthday Six!

Happy Gerberas from J

pic from S.Baker's Flickr

Cheerful flowers to mark the start of my closing sale.

Imagine That

Imaginary friends kept in pristine condition by the plastic packaging. Brilliant.

Cut Grass

It may officially be Autumn but Summer is yet to leave the building.

Six mowed the lawn today.

The soundtrack of summer weekends in the suburbs.

BYO ipod.

The smell of summer.

Half Seven

Expired

After I moved away from home, losing my purse or wallet became a regular occurence . If not once a year, at least once every two years - without fail. Sometimes it would be returned to me as found, sometimes returned minus the cash, sometimes not returned at all.
Debit and credit cards have been frozen or replaced time after time... after time.
This week, for the first time in at least 10 years, I received a replacement card because my current one has expired. I feel like I should be having a celebration. It is a small triumph but a significant milestone!

Lilly Pilly

The Lilly Pilly's answer to the Alien Flowers.

Our Lilly Pillies flowered shortly after the alien flower post. Blossoms only lasted a few days - I was glad for the dainty cheer before they disappeared. We won't be here for the show next year.

Timber Bench Tops

Six has worked wonders in the kitchen already by replacing the old pink granite effect laminate benchtops (yes you read that right - this is what it looked like):


with these oak tops from IKEA:

I stayed up past midnight last night to apply the second coat of oil.

The Schedule

Soon we will be selling our house. As a first home-owners house, we want to get it on the market well before July (when the first home owners government grant may be reduced). But a lot needs to be done to get it "market ready". My partner, Six, is a handy lad. And I ... well, I am pretty good at following practical instructions as long as it doesn't involve power tools.

Six, infinitely practical, has drawn up a work schedule for us:

The schedule will have our house ready to sell by Mid-April.
At present we are only about a week behind.

Fetch Ball

Seven has a favourite ball with which he likes to play fetch. It is now also the only ball in the yard still resembling a ball. this is it:

Hammock

Flowers From Outer Space

Much to my flexor's dismay, today I cut back the banana passionfruit vine (bp) that was making unruly advances from our neighbour's yard.

We planted this vine about 6 years ago to cover the ugly back fence. It was always out of control and the fruit was not a patch on the fruit I remembered from my mum's vine. In the end we removed the bp... but not before it had taken root on our neighbours side of the fence.

The bp had a really great time in our yard and didn't handle the rejection very well. I know this because it keeps climbing back over the fence... and trying to smother the Lilly Pilly bushes we replaced it with.

I don't mind the task of cutting it back because this bp has the most alien looking flowers I have ever come across in a backyard garden:

This is one very cool bloom!

But no amount of funky flowers will win me over on the permanency issue. Until this bp moderates its aggresive and selfish behaviour, it will remain relegated to the neighbours yard for most of the year.

Hard Yakka

I spent 4 hours in our front garden today; weeding, pruning, mulching, wheelbarrowing and tidying. After shovelling all that mulch around I could barely lift my left hand to rub dirt off my face . I expect by tomorrow I won't be able to move it at all; it will just hang limply by my side until it recovers from the shock.

Here is a picture of my irritated muscles. Although my unassuming biceps are a bit put out, it is my flexors that are sooking the most. I didn't even know that I had flexors before today.



But the front yard is looking fantastic and I feel great about that.

Fairy Wands

Agapanthus: from the Greek meaning flower of love.

This is one of the Agapanthus seed heads I removed
from the front garden today.

In bloom the Agapanthus has a single head (umbel)
made up of florets and buds:

click on pic for more agapanthusfacts and cool botanic words

The ones in our yard sit on stems (scapes) almost a metre long. So, after pruning the Aggies I had a total of 10 gigantic fairy wands with which I cast surreptitious wrong way go back spells on would be weeds.

My flashback to being eight years old lasted about 15 seconds.
I hope that will be enough to keep the weeds away.