When we moved into sunny Belmont, there was a flurry of activity. Firstly there was a major push to try and convert Bleak House (for bleak it was – decorated entirely in shades of dark grey and black) into something with a little less craptastic 80’s feel and a little more posh English study feel. Which was done by painting every bit of grey out of the place with deep cream colours, lots of heavy gold picture frames, dyed the grey carpets burgundy and navy and moved in small tonne of timber furniture, books and rugs etc.
The garden likewise got a swift makeover. Ripped out two vicious date palms (you know those ones with the massive unfriendly spikes on them… great for kids to play around :S) and removed a massive fan palm thing which was particularly resistant to the idea and required my Dad’s 4WD and some chains to remove the root system. If memory serves I also dug out a huge golden cane palm that was opposite the driveway too. If you’re starting to think I don’t like palm trees you’d be quite correct in that assumption. They’re not native plants and I really just don’t like them. So they were pretty much condemned before we even moved in.
We also had a couple of areas around the back yard where grass wasn’t growing very readily due to either shady conditions or too much direct sun or the ground wasn’t getting good water as the grass was competing for moisture from near by trees. Given that Mr K isn’t overly fond of yard work – I thought we’d reduce the amount of mowing to be done over sections where the grass doesn’t want to grow too well by making garden beds and planting some drought hardy shrubbery 🙂
Big mistake… … Huge!
For while I was effective at reducomg Mr K’s mowing obligations and transferred them all into weeding for yours truly. Not my best laid plan. Especially not now when my back is arcing up and I can’t hardly manage to weed the gardens for 15mins together without doing that thing I do where I hold my breath because I’m causing myself more pain. Sigh… not good. So for months and months I sit and look out my lounge room window at what should be a lovely little garden covered in delighful red and purple little bushes and groundcovers but instead is a mass of weeds trying to reclaim my pathetic excuse of a garden. 🙁
.