No Place like Home!

Thought it was time I updated the photos of my new home now the lawn is sown, growing an bright green!  It's so nice to look out on that, rather than the brown weeds that was there before, but it's taking a bit of work.  My shrubs I planted at teh beginning of winter are up, and my vege garden is growing well.  So all up I'm really pleased.  I've been in the house for 10 months now - how time goes so fast!  Here's the house with the street view....  Look at that bright green lawn, and the beautiful vineyard right next door!

Here it is again without the messy garage showing. As you can see no plots of sections around my house have yet sold. I'm quite happy about that, but even if they do sell, it's not going to have much impact on my property as I face out to the vineyard, so I'm very private.

This is the side of my house (west). I've made that garden leading up to the front door a rock garden, with river stones from the local Wairau River. The barter system is alive and well down here. I bartered the rest of my red bricks, for a few trailer loads of river stones. I'm really pleased with how it turned out. You can also see the nice long line of lawn leading up to the back. I'm pleased with that - makes me think of some of the gardens of national significance I visited during the week of Hunters Garden Marlborough. On a much bigger scale of course, and naturally I don't have the lawn tennis, summer houses, or olympic sized pools! Will have to win lotto before I get those!

This is the deck looking over to the vineyard. That's Mum drinking a beer at midday as she had just cut the lawn and was hot. She wasted the beer though, as a bug flew into it. What a bugger! Kass the cat is trying to get out of the hot sun. The sun down here packs a bit of punch!

This is looking at the backyard - towards the vege garden. You can see that all the shrubs I've planted are gradually growing. Some have almost hit the top of the fence! I love how they stand out against the black fence..

Now lets have a closer look at that vege garden...

I'm picking carrots, lettuce, beetroot, spring onions, chives, sage, thyme, leeks at the moment, and have just plated more spring onion and carrots, and more spinach. Beans, cucumber, tomatoes and courgette will be read in a few weeks. Loads of fun.

The original vege garden was built by the same people who built my deck. That is 3m x 1.8m and a nice height so I don't have to bend over too far. The smaller raised garden next to it - I built myself. Not without considerable pain either..

I managed to hammer the wrong nail! It hurt. I cried for nearly an hour. I said the F word. Several times. I kicked the bricks of my house. I ended up in A&E getting it x-rayed, having a hole put in the nail to release the pressure, and having some local anaesthetic put in my finger to dull the pain. Short lasting they said - maybe 4 hours. It lasted 48!!! By the time I got home, I was feeling no pain at all, and went about and finished building it, although I friend of mine came round to help in case I hammered any other part of my body!

I blame males for this totally. They should have come up with some sort of tool to prevent these sort of accidents by now!

The results of my garden has been great... Cauliflower, broccoli, carrot, spring onion. Note the brown grass before my lawn got put in...

The Cauliflowers were quite something. All five I picked were no smaller than 26 inches - and my freezer is now totally full...

My cat will have the last word on this blogpost. She loves her new abode and loves catching rabbits in the vineyard next door. She likes nothing better to lie in the sun on top of my outdoor table...

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz..