I’m so pleased to have asked Alice to mind my bird bath whilst we were travelling. Paul gave it to me for a Christmas Present many years ago, long before the replica piece became overly popular. It’s been the centre point of my gardens wherever we’ve lived, and this garden is now also shaping up around it.

I used to have a woman’s weekly garden book showing garden patterns. The stand out garden in the book for me was a large, lacy blue, plumbago surrounded by a solid border of blue agapanthus. Finally, I have a chance to re-create that pattern in a garden of my own. The Plumbago is just starting to flower, and three of the transplanted Aggies have blooms just starting to open. By next summer I’m sure it’ll be living up to my expectations, with the added bonus of being set off by my lovely bird bath.

While much of our new garden is slowly growing, the border of stepping stones and Sweet Alice has taken off with astounding speed. I just love it!

Another couple of plants I gave to Alice are still florishing. One is the Cane Begonia which I started from a cutting from our friends Bruce and Wendy’s, from their house in Churchlands. It’s still growing strong for Alice, and she’s passed a couple of cuttings back to me which are just starting to shoot. Another is the Elephants Ears which we purchased from the underground car boot sale at Warwick when we first moved into Granadilla Street in 1998. Alice managed to get me a couple of baby plants from the Elephants Ears which are now thriving in her courtyard. It’s thrilling to have plants that come with a history.

A Pygmy Date Palm has been a staple in many of our gardens, so Paul has again purchased one for our side tropical garden. This little side garden area is shaping up to be a quiet and cool place for our morning coffee. In fact we often eat our breakfast out there, and find opportunities to go out there to soak up the developing ambience several times at least on most days. It still has a way to go to equal our past gardens, but it’s well on the way. So far we’ve added a couple of Golden Cane Palms (last photographed in this blog when we planted them at Kelv’s up in Katherine), and an urn with a bright red geranium to add a contrasting splash of colour. The rest of the plants are ones rescued from the existing garden which have been re-potted, trimmed, and fertilised.

It won’t be long till the baby Elephants Ears are big enough to be potted up and take pride of place along the fence line, and Bruce and Wendy’s Cane Begonia’s won’t be far behind.

It’s wonderful to have a garden that has associations with years gone by. I’ve always loved my gardens, and this one is shaping up to be no exception. It brings us both a lot of pleasure!

It’s been a long time between posts, too long. As always with writing, if too long elapses between posts, time and life seems to all run into one big jumble with nothing standing out as being particularly news worthy. It becomes difficult to pick out the important things.

So, what have we been up to. We’ve had two week-end trips up to Perth for friends parties. Both trips and both parties went off very well. We’ve found a buyer for our beautiful white lounge suite, and we’ve bought something more suitable for the lounge.

We’ve bought new Christmas decorations and have decorated the house. It’s not up to our usual overdone Christmas decorating. This time we’ve gone with blues, greens, silver and white, rather than our usual traditional red and green. I’ve never been fond of blue for Christmas before, so I’m surprised how happy I am with this years effort.

Our garden is growing. The Plumbago is starting to flower, and a couple of the agapanthus have buds on that are just starting to show signs of opening.

There’s plenty of annuals filling the gaps, and most are now in bud. Still nothing much that shows up in photos, but they’re only a few weeks off providing a colourful show – maybe by Christmas. If not for Christmas, then they’ll all be in full bloom to provide a colourful welcome for Paul when he returns for chilly England in mid January.

I have found a little part time job as a Food Presenter. I’m only working two days a week on Friday’s and Saturdays at the Bunbury Gourmet Farmers Market. What a wonderful place that is. I’d never been there before I applied for the job. It’s massive and a real foodies paradise. Apparently it supports at least 150 local farmers from the area, and employs over 300 staff. They sell an astounding variety of the freshest of produce.

I’m presenting in the gourmet butchers section. I have a tiny little mini kitchen behind my presentation counter with a little oven, one gas hot plate, a sink and a few cupboards. I cook all manner of gourmet, restaurant quality meats for the guests and customers to sample. I’ve only worked three days so far. It’s tiring, but really enjoyable, and I’m sure there’s no job more suited to me than this one. Cooking and chatting to customers all day, what more could a girl like me want! All the staff seem happy with their jobs, which says a lot, and my immediate boss is very pleasant. I think I’m going to enjoy it there.

While there’s been nothing particularly news worthy to write about, and no trips to new places, life has never-the-less been an un-news-worthy, uneventful, pleasure!

Most of the hard work to get the garden into shape is now at an end. With the mulch now on, all we have to do now is keep it watered, and wait for it all to grow.

Glyn (Paul’s dad) hasn’t shown any significant improvement, and has made the decision that going back to his flat is no longer an option. A care facility has been found for him, and he has moved in on a short stay basis initially. After a month’s stay he will decide if he’s ok with making Neville House his permanent home.

We had so hoped he’d be able to see out his days in his little flat, but it wasn’t to be. All very sad!!

Paul has booked a short trip over to the UK to finalise his flat and make sure his dad has everything he needs initially. He’ll be leaving here between Christmas and New Year all going well. It’ll be a hard trip to make, as we’re just starting to get our new life in Busselton started.

We’re meeting people, and making friends. I’ve joined a women’s walking group who meet for an hour long walk two mornings a week, finishing with a coffee in the local cafe. I gather it’s quite a social group, with regular lunches at local wineries in the district. I’ll go to my first of those on the 30th of this month.

We’ve met two couples in the neighbourhood whom we seem to have clicked well with. The happy hours a couple of times a week that we so enjoyed as part of our life on the road is being continued with the company of these new friends. Two of the women are in the walking group, and one of the husbands loves going out for bike rides. Paul’s managing to get out on his bike often now, and I think they’re planning to get together for some rides soon.

We’ve arranged to commence a four month beginners Tai Chi course, commencing at the end of January. Paul will make sure he’s back from the UK for that, and we’re making enquires about joining the local Bridge club, and the local lawn bowling club. Life is already starting to feel full and lively, and our calendar is close to having very few empty days.

This week Paul is going to get stuck into the remainder of the indoor painting. When that’s finished we’ll have all the major work behind us, and we’ll just be plodding along, maintaining everything and doing the remainder of the work needed at a leisurely, pottering around pace. What a pleasure!

Someone mentioned to me the other day that roses are so hardy and survive under the harshest of treatments that they could almost be a weed. And I have to agree. Bushes buried completely under a mass of other plants and not even visible five weeks ago, are now flourishing, and even providing cut flowers for indoors. Their ability to survive with complete neglect, and then bounce back in such a short time when showed some TLC for such a short time is astounding.

Alice, Paul and dogs (Mavis and Betty) came down and stayed Saturday night. The dogs were delighted frolicking on the beach, and Paul and Alice impressed with the lifestyle options we have being in such close proximity to a such a wonderful walking beach. It’s been inspirational I believe, and their own dreams of a little bit of paradise for themselves on the Swan River in Perth has fired up. Very expensive real estate, but with a bit of a stretch they could no doubt manage it, but it would throw them out of their comfort zone for a while. I would say, ‘go for it’, but they’re not as impulsive as I am. So, time will tell…..

The herb garden has been planted, and all the cuttings and plants Alice brought down have now found their way either into the ground, or have been planted into small pots to get started. Half of the Lilly Pillie hedge has been planted. The other half needs some more work before we can get that going – later this week.

Now it’s all just awaiting mulch, and time to grow.

The sun’s shining today, and it’s warm and bright. A beach walk, and possibly even a swim is definitely on the agenda after lunch. And we don’t even have to get into the car – what a pleasure!

With the worst of the inside rooms now painted, we’ve put the remainder of the painting on hold and have spent most of the past two weeks tackling the garden.

I don’t know if you’ll remember the front garden bed when we moved in. It was overgrown with daisies and whilst were clipping them back we realised they had completely surrounded some very nice rose bushes. We found eight in total. With a bit of TLC they’re responding beautifully.

We found out about a wholesale rose nursery that sells particularly good roses for a very reasonable price. It’s a bit of a trek to get to it, but we decided we needed a few additional roses, so we took a drive to check out what they had on offer – BIG, BIG mistake! They have a huge selection of the healthiest roses I’ve ever seen in a nursery to choose from. We now have an additional twelve bushes in the garden bed purchased over two trips, and I’m absolutely positive I’ll be able to find some space to squeeze in a few more.

When you find a rose nursery as good as this one, it’s very easy to find oneself developing a bit of a rose OCD…. I can’t wait till the Autumn flourish comes around and they’ve had time to establish. I wonder if there’ll still be only twenty bushes!

I only realised today that we have neglected to take any photos of the huge and very ugly orchid/shade house that was occupying almost half of our back garden. Shame, as I can’t post the before pictures of that area, but please take my word for it – it was very big and very UGLY.

It took Paul about three days to dismantle it, and we’ve both spent several more hours each day clearing the debris and getting the soil watered and ready for planting.

We were very pleased when our lovely neighbours, Brian and Kay, approached us to ask how we felt about replacing the dividing picket fence with colour bond fencing. The fence has now been replaced providing a lot more privacy than that which was provided by the pickets, and best of all, it’ll never need painting.

Our side gardens were equally as choked with plants, many of which have been planted in totally unsuitable places. We’ve thinned out some maiden hair ferns in a side garden adjoining our shady morning coffee area. From the same area we’ve removed a flame tree – why on earth would someone plant a flame tree only a few inches away from a fence, the mind boggles! And we’ve transplanted two birds nest ferns into the garden beds. Once they’ve had time to settle in, and when we’ve added a few Elephant Ear palms to the area (Alice is bringing us some on the week-end), it’s sure to be a lovely tranquil place to sit and contemplate.

Paul’s built a raised garden bed with the bricks removed from the foundations of the shade house. This will be our herb garden.

We’ve divided the garden from where the shade house once stood into three. The middle section has been sectioned of with a defined border of white alyssum (sweet Alice). Inside the defined half circle garden I’ve planted a blue plumbago, with a few blue salvias surrounding it until it can grow and can fill the space in it’s own right. Tomorrow we’re picking up some blue agapanthus from someone nearby who has some to spare, and in time, these will form a solid border around the lacy plumbago.

Into one end we’ve transplanted two trees (also both from in-appropriate places in the front gardens). One is our favourite back yard tree, a Chinese Tallow, and the other is a Chinese Snowball tree. It’s absolutely the wrong time of year to transplant both trees, so, it’ll be good luck if they survive rather than good management. We transplanted them yesterday, and so far, so good. With a cool week looming, maybe they stand a chance. Along with a few other perennials and annuals that end of the garden is now showing promise.

The third section of the area is currently vacant awaiting three Frangipani cuttings Alice is bringing down on the week-end. Our sturdy, useful, but ugly shed is in this area. We have a couple of jasmine creepers for that. Paul is going to try and put the framework up for them tomorrow and we’ll let them ramble over the shed to cover up the not so good paint job. The rest of that garden area is yet to be decided. I suspect it’ll be a nice place for some golden cane palms and perhaps a few ferns. We’ll wait and see if the Frangipani’s take first though, as ferns will need the shade from them to survive.

It’s been a busy week. But we did take time out for some walks along our beach. What a pleasure!