We’ve been back from our winter sojourn for approximately three months now. Whilst it feels like we’ve been back forever, when I look at how much we’ve accomplished, it’s hard to believe it’s only been three months.

Our front rose garden has been halved. The increased paving area has made a big difference to reducing future garden maintenance times, has increased parking space, and the half circle rose bed looks much better than the previous huge rectangular shaped bed. The roses are taking a while though to recover from their transplants, but I’m sure they’ll start to flourish soon.

Our back garden has had the contrasting paving added, and subsequently a percentage of this has since been removed – what a palaver! We started by removing just a small amount and planting a grevillea tree in the middle.

Then last week-end my ‘DOn’t waIT’ mantra came into play, and the whole native garden bed has now been planted. Everything looks so small….. But by next summer it should be starting to provide a good thicket for the birds to frolic in, and will hopefully help provide a distraction from the road noise on the other side of fence.

We’ve removed plants here and there, and added new ones. The blue salvia currently in full bloom in the above photo is last years plants that have been cut back several times, They continue to reward with a bigger and brighter show after each cut back. There’s plenty of new ones also been added, and they’re about to break out into a riot of colour, along with lots of white, easy care vincas. The red petunias in the baskets on the shed are also from last years plantings. I remember our friend, Bruce, being surprised when he learned how cutting back petunias to almost nothing rewards with increased floral displays. These baskets are testament to just that – there’s barely any soil left in the baskets, and when the above photo was taken they were flowering after at least their forth cut back. Yesterday I cut them back once again, almost to seedling size. Hopefully they’ll provide me with one last show just in time for the arrival of the first of our Christmas visitors – arriving Saturday week from the UK.

Our little part time job will conclude for the long summer holidays in just under two weeks, coinciding with the arrival of Margaret and Geoff. After that, it’s possible the company will want us to assist with the cleaning of holiday homes in the area. We hope not though. The few hours we do each week provides good pocket money, and we’ll be looking forward to more of the same when school re-commences at the end of January. Until then though it’ll be nice to just sit back with our visitors, a gin and tonic in hand, watching the butterflies and bees flitting from flower to flower as they enjoy the fruits of our labour. There’s so many butterflies and bees now visiting. Tilly loves them, as do we. The flowers, the butterflies, the bees, and next year, hopefully lots of birds as well – what a pleasure!