The big dry and a new study Feb 9 & 10 2013

It's been much too long since we were here last, weeks and weeks. 

Luckily Denise volunteered to water some of the plants ie the new jasmine, the citrus, fruit trees, and vegie patch (silly me I forgot to take photos of their growth) otherwise they would have gone the way of the rest of the garden and shrivelled up - powdering into dust.  Well maybe not that bad, but certainly plants that I would have thought of as hardy ie daisies, and mirror bushes are looking very sad.

Some examples are :-

Plum trees providing us with instant prunes, as the fruit drying on the limb (unfortunately you can't really see from the photo how leathery the plum is)

dried/shrivelled plum

Grass is also a victim - look at the comparison of the private house front lawns vs. the Town Hall grass which is watered automatically everyday

yellow grass in background, green in foreground

It's so dry, even the weeds are dying - which isn't a bad thing

dead weeds around the plum tree

Anyway, it wasn't all doom and gloom as Justin and I had come up with a ute load of goodies

loading the ute

fully loaded ute

We scored a daybed and a couch from Jan & Peter, a desk from Sarah, and a carpet loan from Alex & P.

The carpet had pride of place in the Chinese/red room

Nice new rug

The small couch went in the as yet unnamed other upstairs bedroom

small leather couch

And the Garden room was transformed into our new study.  Granted, it had been empty for a while, as we keep moving beds etc around.  My idea had been to put the day bed in the Garden room as well as the single bed from the big upstairs room.  However, Justin didn't want to move any more furniture than was necessary - so the single bed stayed where it was, and we attempted to get the day bed into the Garden room.  Well, easier said than done.... We got it up the stairs alright, but trying to get it up the next little lot of stairs and through the small narrow bit before the room doorway was impossible! There just wasn't the room to manoeouvre.  I saw that there was provision for allen keys and that it could therefore come apart, so that's what we (Justin) ended updoing.

FYI, the Garden room is slightly odd shaped, as 2 walls have a window each, and there is also a chimney lump protrusion which is the continuation of the chimney from the kitchen below. However, there is no fireplace. So, all of that means that wall space is a little difficult.

Luckily for us, the furniture gods must have been smiling as the day bed fit precisely in the gap between the wall and the chimney thingy - as if it was custom made for the spot.  The floor was looking a bit bare, so I took an old rug out of our room to jazz it up a bit.  But it was a bit small, and not really appropriate.

Day bed and old rug

Justin also suggested that we put the desk in here, and thus a study was born

roll top desk and telescope from the other room

He even used it to do some work, after of course hooking up his laptop to the long extension cord and connecting it up with the dining room powerpoint downstairs.  I also "stole" our good rug from our bedroom which had been situated at the end of our bed.  It was a bit wasted where it was, so looks better here.  Another suggestion is that if this room will be a study, then we might set up Frank's old train set on a table as a display.  Stay tuned for that one (the train and tracks are currently just packed away in boxes)

Man at work

We did a bit of pottering around the garden also, I gave it a good soak, and tried fixing up the front fence a bit - which is more falling down than usaul.  J then took over the job and did it more professionally - pulling it back with fencing wire, and attaching it to a metal rod in the ground.