First Foray Into The Garden...

We couldn’t physically get into the new house but decided to go and work on the garden instead. We knew that the garden would need a bit of work, however walking around to the back of the house we were faced with a jungle. The grass was knee height, the trees were growing into each other and there were weeds and plants growing wild all over the place.

I donned my trusty zebra print wellies (a great birthday gift from Mr L'Orange) grabbed some bottles of water and got to work. My role was clearing all the fallens sticks and wood from the grass so Mr L'Orange could get through with the lawn mower. I also found plenty of red bricks, slabs of stone and rocks kicking around all over the place so I piled them all up for later use (god knows for what but I’m sure we’ll think of something).

Looking at the garden it was hard to know where to start as the area had been so neglected over the years. We set off to Bunnings (our trusty hardware store) to get some gardening equipment and of course a sausage sizzle to keep our energy levels up. We loaded ourselves up with branch pruners, secuters, sheers, firelighters and matches.

Back at the garden I left Mr L'Orange to play with the bonfire and get all the dry wood alight whilst I started pruning the fruit trees. The Bunnings 'expert' recommend being fairly brutal in my pruning so we could get the trees in shape, I also wanted to cut the trees back from the house and the neighbours gardens.

For the fig tree I tried to cut back any branches without buds and then to also try and shape the tree from the haphazard bizarre shape it had grown into. I also took to the hand saw and cut some bigger branches off the fig tree, had just a couple of minor mishaps where branches hit me on the head and Mr L'Orange had to come and kiss me better but all in all did a good job.

Mr L'Orange had got the bonfire blazing and we manage to clear out one whole corrugated iron shed of the firewood that it held, nice and empty for us to pull it down this weekend. Met one of the retired neighbours who seemed nice and friendly and who had chickens – possible free eggs? She also let me know that bonfires are banned – whoops.

After 2.5 hours we left totally exhausted , smelling smoky and thirsty but totally satisfied. There is so much potential with this garden if we put in the hard yards and sitting in the sunshine and listening to the birds in the trees gave me a real sense of contentment.