Rose Mallee

One of the first plants we put in our garden here in our little patch of paradise was a rose mallee. We both love them but just didn't have room to put one in when we lived in Greenmount.  We really love the form of the mallee and the incredible flowers.  So, you can imagine how excited we were when buds formed on the tree this year.  Super excited.  But that tree sure makes you wait to see the flower.  The mallee is planted in the bottom paddock, and we've been going down every week to see if the flowers have opened.  For about the last three months!! Finally, we got to see some of the buds open.  It was definitely worth the wait.  I'm not sure the photos do the flowers justice, but it will give you an idea at least.

This is the bud.  They're huge and impressive to look out. Who needs flowers to show off!!

                                                    

If the parrots and cockatoos don't get to them first, this is how the flower opens:

                                                    

Once it's shed its cap, it takes few days for the flower to full open.

                                       

We also have a grevillea in the bottom paddock which has flowered nicely this year.  Its flowers are on the end of a very long stem, which is unusual.  I can't remember what type of grevillea it is.  But I love it.  Like all grevilleas.

We have lost about a quarter of the plants we've put in over the last four years. Overall I'd say we're pretty happy with our progress though.  We've still got plenty of room to put more plants in.  And now we've plenty of time to do planting too.  We just need to be patient and wait until Summer is over.

A Grove of Grass Trees

 My adorable husband and I took a drive across to Tutunup to pick up some pine poles to make a trellis to grow grapes on.  Google maps took us along the Capel-Tutnup road (or CAPel-Tootunup Road as she called it) where we came across a grove of grass trees, all in flower.  Neither of us have seen this many grass trees in flower at the same time.  So we were super happy to see them.  We had to stop and take pictures of course, to share the love.

Simple pleasures that make one happy. 

Clever Sister

I'm really lucky to have a wonderful family who are always happy to lend a helping hand when one is needed.  I'm even luckier to have siblings who are actually talented at a whole range of things.  One of those, my clever twin, recently sewed some new cushion covers for our cane seats.  She's exceptionally good at sewing (her soon to be born grandson is one lucky child!!) which is fantastic from where I sit (pun intended) because I can't sew to save myself.  Below are some before and after pics so you can see the difference some talent makes.

I hand sewed these cushion covers from faded doona covers that I no longer used.  It took me hours and hours and I ended up with very sore fingers.  And cushions that were permanently encased in their new covers.  They looked okay (as long as one didn't look too closely) and did the job, but they were impossible to keep clean. 

                                                            

                                                                

After sewing covers for the two-seater and two singles, I ran out of oomph, and the third single didn't even get sewn.   The cover was just thrown over the chair.

                                                                    

My lovely sister on the other hand, has used a sewing machine and sewed in zips and buttons so I can take the covers off and wash them.   

Don't they look amazing now.  All neat and tidy and matching.  I love them and, even though they have the same foam in them, I'm sure they're way more comfortable to sit on now.

The Summer House

When we moved into our new home, back in April 2020, we inherited a structure which we call the Summer House.  It might be overstating it a wee bit to call it a Summer House.  It was basically a three-sided shed with a pitched roof and a dirt floor which had the property's only clothesline in it.  It did have a little bit of detail in one corner which suggested it was intended for greater things.  So, we added a cement floor.  That is, we got someone who knows what they're doing to add the cement floor for us.  That was about two years ago.  Since then, we've used it to dry our washing and house a growing cluster of spiders.  Our best intentions have been sidelined by, well, life really.  

It's been a project waiting to happen for too long so, while my lovely husband was off on a boys own fishing trip to Exmouth with his best mate (I know, who'd have thought he'd ever be up for that??), I decided to keep myself busy and paint the Summer House.  I managed to get some paint tinted to match the colour scheme that is already used on the gables of our house.  Great start.  I then set about cleaning the walls so they'd be ready to paint.  I really, truly thought this would be maybe a one-hour job.  Turns out it was an entire afternoon job.  Apart from brushing the walls down, and chasing the spiders out, I had to wash them three times.  

 

There sure was a lot of dirt on those walls and loads of spider's homes (sorry spiders).  It look heaps better just being cleaned.  I was tempted not to paint it. 

But given I had six litres of paint, tinted a lovely shade of pale green, and no idea what else I could use that for, I forged ahead and put on a first coat.  My goodness, did it improve that space.  When he got home, R helped me put on a second coat.  The Summer House now looks like just that, a nice place to hang out in Summer. And we have already done just that.  We had breakfast out there this morning.  Lovely. 

It was definitely a lot of hard slog but I'm more than happy with the end result. It still needs a few things just to finish it off but it's very useable. 

Long live the Summer House. 

What a Difference a Floor Makes

It has been just a wee bit noisy and stinky in our little patch of paradise over the last two days.  That's because we've been getting new jarrah floors laid in our home.  They've not been sanded and finished yet and already they have transformed the living area of our house. Now it looks like it was always part of our home and not an afterthought that was added on later.  And, we're both so excited to be rid of the awful tiles that we had before.  Even the cement pad was an improvement on those. 

Anyway, here are some pics.  We're super happy with the work that has been done. They've created a lovely frame around where the fire place will be put back in.  That's to allow for the tiled hearth that we will need. 

The boards look way better in real life than in the photos.  They contrast in colours isn't anywhere near as dramatic and the tones are lovely and warm.  I can't wait to see it completely finished. Unfortunately, I have to because they won't be back to do that part of the job until mid-December. Bummer.

Oh Bother

For the first time since we planted our fruit trees, our early and late apricot and our prune have an abundance of fruit on them.  For the first time since we planted our orchard, the apricots, peach, prune, plums and nectarines have bacterial canker.  Oh bother, as Pooh famously said.  The good news is that, with proper treatment, the canker isn't terminal and it isn't a bio-security issue (phew!).  Treatment requires removing the affected limbs and spraying the cankers with copper.   It's not a hard job to do but it is time consuming because we need to soak our secateurs in a mild bleach solution for 30 seconds between each cut.  It's pretty easy hanging out in the orchard though on a lovely spring day.

The first obvious sign of the bacterial canker was dead leaves on the tree which were all stuck together with a very sticky substance. Then we noticed the same sticky substance dripping from the branches and running down the trunk.  Then we noticed it oozing out of some of the fruit. Boo hiss to that.

 

 

According to the good folks at the Department of Agriculture (we sent the above pics and some others to them just to make sure this wasn't something more serious) bacterial canker is generally caused by winter pruning, trees being exposed to wind driven rain or poor drainage.  We did prune our trees a little late this year but it was definitely well ahead of winter.  We will certainly be more careful with the timing of our pruning in the future.  The trees are outdoors so there's not a lot we can do about wind driven rain.   The drainage should be okay because we planted the trees in mounds. That said, we have got a lot of clay so this is something we can maybe look at too.  Overall, we're hopeful that with a little bit of effort the trees will be fine and we'll still get most of our lovely fruit.  Fingers crossed!!

So It Begins

We've lived in our little patch of paradise for five and a half years now.  We've spent a lot of time in the garden, putting in hundreds of plants and tweaking it here and there until it is starting to feel like our garden.  But we haven't done anything to the house and it still feels a little like we're inhabiting someone else's home. I know, weird given it's full of our personal belongings.  We've yet to make our stamp on the house and have decided to start by renovating the kitchen.

There are a few reasons we decided to start here.  First, and foremost (at least from my point of view) is that we really, really hate the tiles.  It's not that they look horrific (although they don't look great, very dated) but they are darned near impossible to keep clean.  I'm not a clean freak (I don't spend hours and hours making the house pristine) but I do like a clean home.  These tiles just never look clean, even after they've just been mopped.  As soon as you walk across the floor the tiles look dirty again. There are far too many things, more enjoyable things, to do than to spend our time cleaning tiles.   The second reason is the kitchen, aside from looking a bit battered after 30 plus years of use, just doesn't function for us.  It's fine when one of us is cooking. But if we both want to get into the kitchen at the same time it just doesn't work.  The main issue is that the bench, which is plenty long enough, is just too narrow.  So, one has to spread sideways.  Tricky if I'm prepping an evening meal and R is kneading a loaf of sourdough. Also, the lovely R wants to set up his audio system properly (he has waited patiently for five years) and the best way to get cable to the speakers is across the floor.  And finally, we wanted to get rid of the footprints that are permanently imprinted across the dining room floor. Presumably they belong to the previous owners or perhaps to the people who built the house.  They kind of look like a ghost has walked across the floor.

This is a picture of the old kitchen.  It doesn't look too bad and the cupboard doors are solid wood. We saved those and took them down to the local tip shop in the hope that someone can make use of them.  The rangehood (I might be overstating it to call it that!!) never worked properly and was really manky, despite hours of effort cleaning it.  The filters can't be removed so one has to reach up under and try and clean them.   That was never going to work as our cricked necks have proven over the last few years.

These pictures show some of the wear and tear that 30 years of everyday living can do to a kitchen.  

The door is cracked right down the middle.  

First things first though.  Before we could start work on dismantling the old kitchen we had to empty it, and the entire living area and dining room.  We didn't think things through very well though because we put all of the furniture, and the contents, into the spare bedrooms, office and pool room.  We have left ourselves with just one room, our bedroom, to live in.  And a temporary kitchen in the laundry, which was mostly taking up with the new appliances for the new kitchen and is a little squishy as a result.  We're really going to appreciate the new kitchen once it's in place after living the temporary one for the next six weeks or so.  R thinks I'll be spending the entire six weeks mastering the art of one pot cooking.  He's so hopeful!! 

The following pictures show our temporary kitchen and the furniture and bits and bobs crammed into the various spare rooms around the house. 

 

    

 

Next we set about demolishing some of the kitchen. At least, we removed all the doors and drawer fronts.  We kept the screws and attached a set to each door and drawer.  That way if someone only wants one or two doors they can take just what they need and still have all the bits to go with it.  

We did not save the pull-out ironing board, which has definitely seen better days.  We've never been able to figure why this kitchen was fitted with the ironing board.  This house has got the biggest laundry we've ever seen. Seriously, you could set up a laundromat in it and still have spare room.  There's definitely room for a regular old ironing board to be set up.  Needless to say, we never used the ironing board in the kitchen.  It is not an innovation that we embraced.  Actually, all my clothes are drip dry because I really don't like ironing.  But R has 100 % cotton shirts that do need to be ironed. He's definitely on his own when it comes to that.  

This is what the kitchen looks like without all the wood.  A bit sad huh.

The rest of the kitchen was demolished by the crew from Bunbury Designer Cabinets and Furniture, who were most professional and left a nice, neat room.   No going back now.

The next step was to get rid of all of these horrible tiles pictured below.   Kim Evans spent Saturday and Sunday working really hard to remove all of the tiles.  That sure was noisy. We got as far away from the house as we could and spent our days in the garden, doing weeding and tidying up leaves and dead wood to improve our safety for summer.  To his credit, Kim managed to keep the dust created by removing tiles and glue from making is way through the rest of the house. Yay to Kim. 

This is the space, empty of tiles and ready for a new wood floor to be laid.     

After the wood has been laid the kitchen cabinets will go in.  Can't wait to see that.  And to cook something in our new kitchen. I'm counting down.