--- Our House Gallery: October to December 1999 Garden Work ---
This page contains pictures of some of the garden work that was done in October to December 1999.
Not really garden work... but here's our nice new lounge suite, when it first arrived. It is blue leather, with a 3-seater, a 2-seater, and a 1-seater. All of the seats (except the centre one in the 3-seater) have footrests and can recline. Very comfy! See the Cats web pages for a picture of David and Pixel on one of them:
The native bush area of the garden, with a riverstone path, and ceramic Pukekos made by a NZ artist, Kevin Kilsby:
A view of our pond; the irises are blooming, and you can see some fish:
Another view of the pond; the waterfall is rather green -- a good sign that the filter needs cleaning!
A close-up of the pond -- you can see Kermit, our first frog, in the centre of the picture:
We drained the pond to clean it -- it was getting choked with oxygen weed. The green tide mark shows the usual water level. Kermit didn't appreciate the disturbance -- he left us. We have since got some tadpoles... a couple of which were eaten by Bubba, our biggest fish, but the others turned into frogs... one of which one of our cats killed:
The front garden, featuring the rose standard etc, shortly before we got rid of the grass:
Jennifer and one of the many huge dinner-plate-sized dahlias grown in our front flowerbed:
We decided that we didn't want to have any lawns anymore; that we'd rather have flowerbeds and paths. So we sprayed all the grass, then hired a rotary hoe to dig it all up. Here's David getting ready to start:
A view of the front lawn afterwards; the remaining strip of grass is where a path will be:
A different angle:
The back lawn, next to the main patio, was also dug up with the rotary hoe:
We installed a sprinkler watering system throughout all of the front flowerbeds, with pipes buried under the paths and sprinkler heads sticking up every metre or so:
Another view of the watering system:
We got nine cubic metres of fine-grade bark delivered, to cover the new gardens. We also bought one cubic metre of riverstones for the paths, with small river boulders as edging. Good exercise, moving all that by ourselves!
Partway through constructing the path around the side of the house:
The left-hand-side of the house finally got some bark and riverstones, too. This will be the fernery. The weedmat here is now covered with riverstones:
The front gardens, mostly completed (still no riverstones on the house-side path here). Now we just need to fill up the gardens -- there are some roses here:
Another view. Interestingly, our section is the only one in the entire neighbourhood that doesn't have any grass -- even the street verge has bark and groundcover plants:
A view of the Japanese garden area, showing the central mound and feature tree (a flowering cherry), with moss-like plants and mondo grass below. And Piwhacket:
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