Child free and succulent garden May 25 & 26 2013

School hockey duties over, and Justin and I escaped to Inglewood, footloose and child free.

And yes, the weather is definitely colder, it was warm enough in the afternoon with the sun out, but certainly not balmy like two weeks ago with Mum for the Mother's day weekend.  Saturday night and Sunday early morning were COLD!

I've already seen what I assume is frost damage on some of the plants, I've mollycoddled the citrus trees after last Winter, so I hope they'll be OK this Winter.

The olive trees are looking very good after all of the TLC we heaped on them last time, and the strawberries are still ripening

luscious strawberries

And, given that there was a bit of rain on the Sunday of that Mother's Day weekend, the grass is finally starting to grow again, and there is even some green showing through!

Green green grass of Inglewood

As is our habit, we went and visited Steve and Denise after we had a late lunch.  And then back to potter around a bit.  Watering of course, and I chatted to Steve who was on the roof of his place fixing leaks.  It was quite amusing calling out to him over the lane

Steve action man on the roof (me chatting to him from the "orchard"

We also carefully checked the work of Orgin Energy, as they had replaced our old electricity meter with a new smart meter. It seems alright.  Justin had been concerned that it would be an eyesore, but it's no worse than the previous old one.

new smart meter below old switch board

Given that Justin was starting a new trial on Monday, he needed to do some pre-work.  It's a little ironic that he's set himself up a good study, but prefers to spread out his books on the bed!

The bed desk

Around 4pm I decided it was down tools for me, and time to get social again.  Thought we'd drive up to Kingower and see if Damien and Nicole were home given that they've tried dropping in on us twice and missed us both times.

Unfortunately, no one was there, so this time we left a note

Damien & Nicole's place 

Drove back home without any kangaroo misadventures, and assembled a modest tasting and drinks platter around 5pm which we planned to have under the portico at the front, as it was nice, sunny and relatively warm.  Well lo and behold, Damien and Nicole dropped in - as they were on the way to their place, and were most surprised that we had already been there and left them a note an hour before hand.  We asked them to join us, pulled up a couple more chairs and had an enjoyable time chatting, eating and drinking  until 7 or so - by which stage it was well and truly dark, and I had brought the lanterns out. We also gave them a   tour of the house and garden as they were interested to see what it was like, what we had done, and what still had to be done.  After they left, J and I toddled off to the pub for a shared parma for dinner ( we didn't need one each), and then back home to a roaring fire in our bedroom and a couple of episodes of Breaking Bad.

As I said earlier, Sunday early morning was cold.  Cold enough to have frost on the car when I went to get the newspaper around 7am.

After thawing out, helped by my fire in the wood stove in the kitchen we both went into the garden todo some work. Justin wanted to finish off painting the back veranda, but then he noticed that the bricks over the kitchen window seemed to be bulging out more, so he had to fix them first

Propping up the bricks 

Once this was done to his satisfaction he started painting

painting at last

As to me, I wanted to do my succulent bed outside the dining room, next to the jacaranda.

Before shot

First step was to outline the area with bricks

outlined with bricks 

Then I dug up /loosened the soil

dug up soil

Added horse manure, and dug that in

horse manure

 The impetus for this succulent bed was this huge rather old beauty which I would love to be able to move there, but am unsure if I could do so successfully

it's a monster!

I did manage to move a few bits, and had been propagating other varieties too, so planted them all,  covered them with mulch, watered them and hoped for the best.  At the moment it looks rather sparse, but I'm constantly on the lookout for new and unusual succulents that I can include.  Clare, my sister in law was able to give me a bag full of cuttings which I hope will strike when we're there next.