An update on our backyard’s progress

A week or so ago, I was feeling overwhelmed by all the work our yard needs to get it to a point where it’s not only safe for the kids to play, but also ready to grow fruit and veges, raise chooks, etc. Oh, and it’s gotta look better.

We’ve implemented stage one of our makeover. We brought in a fantastic gardener (I’ll link you to his site in a future post), who cleared a lot of crap (weeds, thorns, thistles, and those dreaded cat head prickles). Here’s the before shots:

Here’s the after shot:

Now I can stop stressing! Remember in my last post about the yard, how I showed you the ‘orange blossoms’? Well, it turns out I got my trees mixed up, that tree with the blossoms was the Granny Smith apple tree, and the other tree was the orange tree. The orange tree was so destroyed, our gardener had to dig it out. But if it has to go, I’m glad it’s gone, and now we know to put a healthier fruit tree in.

Back to the apple tree. Here’s how it looks now:

It looks happier, yes? We also found this at the bottom of the tree on the ground:

Yay! There’s hope that it can bear fruit, despite being so strangled by weeds. This apple is tiny, and we probably won’t grow anything special this season, but it’s good to know that it’s hopefully not too far off in the future.

The kids are still loving their art gallery. This morning I’m told they had quite the social breakfast, discussing all the pieces in the gallery as they munched on their breakfast. It’s been great for them.

Also, as I’ve been making some minor upgrades to the site, I realized there was another update I didn’t get around to, I’m so sorry!

Remember those weird photos from Warragamba Dam? I promised when I found out what they were, I’d share, but in all the excitement and busy-ness of the move, I just didn’t! I have this Wikipedia explanation for you here… I remember being a kid in the 70′s, and seeing ads on TV for the African Lion Safari, so it’s a bit freaky to see how things turned out!

I hope you’ve enjoyed our little update today, and I can’t wait to show you further progress on it, especially once we have veges, chooks and more.