Before And After

Let me say that when I was single, less abrasive, fun loving, and had heaps of 'spare' time to devote to my hobbies, the thought of a put in the garden never sprang to mind. However, I'm inclined to think it had a bit to do with always renting in the past. Our last place was a unit, and although we owned, things seemed a bit limited at times. Later, we moved out of the area and got a larger home, along with an equally large landscape. I don't know about you, but my gardening experience boiled down to my boyhood lawn mowing and weeding; maybe a little sweeping. I don't know. It was rough going for awhile.

First off, I knew, and still know, very little about reticulation. What I knew of it, amounted to replacing sprinkler heads. The timer was, and still is, a headache, that I choose to operate manually. My previous attempts at using the timer caused the water to come on at 2:15 am for about 6 months , and this cost me $600. The second roadblock was that I had very little in the way of tools and garden equipment. I wouldn't say that not having a lawn mower was a problem, because we ported our gardener over from the our previous place. But the damage that the crab grass, brought on by the watering and my inability to cut things back, only added to the edgy look our house was getting. I felt that I had bought this prominently placed house, and was slowly bringing the neighborhood down with it's appearance.

The Big change was that I got a job at a hardware store, and therefore, had all the tools at my my fingertips. This may sound silly, but I never took the time to think past the spade and gloves concept. My first purchase was a Cyclone ratchet lopper. This was a revelation in terms of gardening. The ease of which I was now able to cut woody plants with little effort, made it possible for everything to fall together. I also got a Black & Decker cordless Alligator lopper, but that's been untested as of yet. A good set of Cyclone telescopic bypass-shears has also improved the physical side of yard`work. Garden wheelie-barrows also make it effortless to impromptu weeding, by limiting your back and forth trips to your greens basket.

After the massive water bills, I have vowed to plant a water saver garden. Lots of native plants like lamandra, dianella, kangaroo paw, red devils, woolie pines, and fountain grasses. I thought the previous owners had over planted, and I wanted to have a garden that had elbow room. Pine bark for ground cover, pea pebbles with flag stone. Classy low maintenance stuff not run of the mill. Well, That's what I think I did with the 58 plants (well 57, as one died...) I put in, 4 I salvaged, and countless weeds and scrub removed in order to get to here.