New house, new garden!

Well! Its been a while hasn’t it!!! A lot has happened since I last wrote.

Firstly, I moved house. Not only that, I moved states. And got a job, and bought a house of my very own in the lovely suburb of Seaford in southern Melbourne.

So that was a bit of awesomeness, and I celebrated my first anniversary here last month, and that first 12 months went so fast!

Another pretty lifechanging event was my breakup in early March… not much to say about that really but “onwards & upwards”!

So I bought a house. Its mine. I have an encyclopedia of to-do lists and renovating plans and decorating ideas but this is what I started with:

Neat overall, but does need some work, mainly a lot of painting & some TLC inside.

Since this photo was taken I’ve painted the gutters, fascias, gates & vent grates a rich brick red. I’ve sanded the window frames ready to paint them white. I’ve bought almost everything I need for my luxurious new bathroom, which will be installed in August. And! I’ve got ducted gas heating installed so the place is no longer a fridge!

Also and! Check out my back yard:

(Scuse the washing on the lines)

So much space! So much potential!

The trees are one huge and very neglected pear tree, and two neglected but manageable apple trees. I’m going to attempt to prune at least part of the pear tree to hopefully get it productive again, but I’m not going to rule out getting rid of all the fruit trees and planting new ones, with the advantage of knowing what varieties I’d be planting and pruning them to a nice shape from the start.

So, the work on the garden began today with a smallish garden bed against one of the fences:

The soil here is lovely sandy loam (I’m only 1km from the beach) which I sifted to make sure all the grass roots were removed. Hard work, but well worth it, because now the soil is nicely aerated & smooth, ready for its new inhabitants!

I planted my first flowers, a bulk pack of tall Snapdragons:

I have learned that Snapdragons take much more time to get big enough to flower, so planting them in Winter means they’ll be ready to bloom in late Spring.

Next weekend I’ll be digging & sifting more of the grass out of the remaining dug-up soil, and maybe think about planting something edible like spinach and herbs.

I have a feeling this Summer will be the best Summer ever!

Tags: garden, house, in-progress, planning