Holidays and Gardens

Holidays are the perfect time for spending as much, or as little, time in the garden as one wants.  We were really lucky to have some gorgeous sunny days that were just warm enough to make gardening pleasurable.  So we finally pruned that hedge.  It looks way better.  I really like pruning this hedge. It's really easy to get straight because I can just rest the shears on the hedge to get the line. We've a hedge out the front which is a mix of grevilleas and other plants. It's seriously hard to get straight.  We've decided a wobbly hedge looks just fine. 

The Grevillea hedge

Our good friends C and P visited for the day from Perth.  While they were here they helped us pick some chestnuts and olives.  Overall we managed to pick just over 5 kilos of olives.  They are a mix of varieties. The only one I'm sure about is the kalamata.  There is also a very round black olive and a small black olive.   

They're currently sitting in brine.  I used a recipe our brother-in-law C gave me.  He said it was given to him by an old Italian man.  Basically you add enough salt to water to make a fresh egg float.  Then leave the olives in the brine until they don't taste bitter anymore.  These have been in the brine for about four weeks now.  I tasted one this morning.  It was still a teeny bit bitter.  And very, very salty (no surprises there right!).  So I think I'll give them another few days before giving them a thorough wash and bottling them. 

We've also spent time mowing the lawn and pulling kikuyu out of the agapanthus. R finally got to try out his new ride on so the lawn only took about ten minutes to mow instead of the hour it would normally take with a push along.   Pulling the kikuyu out took about an hour all up.  A good part of that time was spent pulling out wisteria.   We thought we had that under control because we've been pruning it very regularly where it grows over the pergola, to make sure it doesn't take over the verandah.  Turns out it had been stealthily heading towards the verandah under the cover of the agapanthus.  Sneaky wisteria.

The sneaky Wisteria. 

I love a freshly mown lawn (even if it is covered with leaves almost as soon as it's done). And I love the smell of newly mown lawns.  Sigh. 

Before a mow

After a mow

We also spent a very pleasant couple of hours collecting wood with B and C for our wood fire.  There is a wood collecting area a few minutes from our house.  Between us we managed to fill our ute and C's in a couple of hours. It was a beautiful warm day and the bush is thick and glorious.  This was definitely a highlight of our hols. Helped along by coming home to a coffee and fresh baked fruit bun.  Yum. 

Sadly our holidays are now at an end.  I still can't figure out why holidays go really quickly and work goes really slowly.  We did manage to do quite a few other things while we were on hols (including putting in a bunch of new natives) and I'll try and do some more posts over the coming weeks.  Until then, take care and stay safe.