A bit of white fluff

It almost became a blog-less day today until I was reminded of this.......a tiny bit of white fluffy stuff that has been magically stuck to the rose branch just outside our front window.

These funny little birds are laying the foundations for their high-rise, one storey house too and we get to watch it all take place while sitting at our kitchen table.

We think this is the female who will be undoubtedly barking orders at the male and warning him about doing the job properly or else (according to Bill!).
The whole process began yesterday so we will watch with interest to see who gets the job done first. Us or them.
 I somehow think it will be the willy wagtail family.


Our last two days have looked like this and it's freezing, so no building jobs here.
 The weather definitely hasn't been a deterrent for the little birds however. They battle on regardless.

A quick scoot around the garden showed that the freesias are still looking and smelling beautiful.
 I adore this one because of it's purity and perfect form.

And the leucadendrons  are now all settled into their native habitat (even though they're not truly native).

On my bedside table at the moment.......

This little boy makes us smile. He's like the willy wagtails....flittering about from one thing to the next but we can't take our eyes off him!
Hope you and your Daddy are feeling better little man.

We are looking forward to Spring next week.
Did they say 25 degrees??????

Here's the church, here's the steeple.....

All hands on deck here this morning before the forecast showers arrived.........
      Fill in the trench to the laundry.
      Spread or remove two big rubble/dirt piles.
      Cut the concrete lines on the shed/garage (there's probably a proper word for that).
       Put up the portal ( builder speak).
All done and dusted in a couple of hours.

We still had some gaps to fill along the road boundary fence. I bought 10 more tubes of the pin cushion hakea that we had already planted there.
They don't grow tall enough to be a problem under the power lines and they look very pretty when in flower. 

I hope ours look as gorgeous as these.

And while I was wandering around and soaking in all the loveliness at our local nursery yesterday, I found these two perfect ground covers ....

.....for here.

We think we may just leave this area as a native area and plant some ground covers ( only grow to 30 cms) for a bit of colour and interest. Hopefully I might be able to propagate them and add some more of the same.
Making it grass seems too hard now and unnecessary. I'm still pondering the possibility of meandering a pathway through there though....just a natural dirt/leaf litter one.
The red flowering plant is a low growing grevillea called Billy Wings ( had to get that one didn't I).
The yellow button flowered one is a Golden Everlasting called Desert Flame.
I especially like the silvery grey foliage on both of them.

Bill found these old fence palings advertised on Gumtree for free. We will use them to build a fence around our kitchen garden wherever that may be. 

The fog a few days ago cast a whole new look out the back. 

The horses are back and we love seeing them in our paddocks again. They are both in foal.

The yellow you can see in the paddocks is onion weed drying off. If only there was a way to get rid of it. I'm sure it would make the horses happy too.



Amy is back from her Pilbara trip.

The three White kids.

Amy and her cousin Ben in the outback.

All things trees and dirt and red straws

Each day I find myself glancing at these words. 
Over the last two days we have "gardened on" until it now seems like we have planted a forest out there!
Nearly all the tree tubes have been planted out now. In fact almost 100 of them.
 Ridiculous really, but I don't expect them all to survive in the concrete-like ground that some of them were planted in.  
We are just glad to finally get them in the ground.

In the end we had all five watering cans being used.

Bill decided to take some drastic action to stop himself being  target practice for the magpies.
Hence, the red, bendy straw......

He says he was attacked at least five times yesterday....and it hurt.
I must have been the distraction out there today because we hardly had a strike!
It could have been the pink crocs and Aunty Audrey's hat!

This little guy was disturbed during planting. I hope he is still okay. This was one of 20 Kings Park callistemons that we planted in a sweep ( or should it be swathe ?) along the western side of the house at the front.
In any case, we tried to do some block colour planting this time instead of the usual box of smarties that we end up with.

The same with these gorgeous leucadendrons.

8 for $20.....bargain.

My close inspection of the orchard last night revealed these.....

...and there we were thinking we were going to lose most of the fruit trees!
They were very much in the path of the fire and I would have expected them to be more sensitive to those conditions.
We are glad that we just let them be for the last seven months. (Quite apart from the fact that we didn't know whether they were dead or just in their natural Winter dormancy).

Some Coral Bay snaps that make me smile...

Look at the colour of that water.....beautiful!

Coral Bay, magpies and tiny shoots

We have the fire going here as we speak.
No such requirements in Coral Bay by the look of things!
Beach babes........Flynn and Aunty Amy. 

In fact Bill had the bonfire going here as well today cleaning up the sticks and burnt wood from the fence that he had taken down.

And while I was up there, ( and while the magpie had gone searching for food) I couldn't resist taking a photo of the woodpile. 
I don't know what it is about them but I love a good stack of wood!

I noticed Bill has his own stone walling going on here!

This is the fence that Bill removed today.
With just a few distractions.
Click on this link....

Bill's Magpie Encounter

Scary!!!

 It was burnt anyway so now that the burnt bits have been removed, we have an opportunity to consider how we might replace it and where to put the gate this time. 

Just when we thought that Bill would need to get the chainsaw out again ( heaven forbid) I noticed these tiny bits of new growth on the deciduous trees out the front. .......

I know it's not much, but I can't tell you how excited I was to find these little greeny, bronzey shoots.
I'm even including this miniscule tip as a sign of life!

Can you see it??? There's a couple actually.
Very exciting.....


One floor pillow finished.

I think we might be planting trees tomorrow.
Enjoy the beautiful day everyone.

Mr Magnolia and the hedge that needs to go

The first of our magnolia flowers appeared today.

When Sam was two, he was given a book by Aunty Audrey called Mr Magnolia and this was the first page.

And now every time I see a magnolia tree I find myself saying exactly that under my breath......... (I suspect Sam probably doesn't!)


 The sky looked like this for most of yesterday. 

So it was a worker- free day for us.


This is the view from inside our new room looking out on the garden. Joanne pointed out to us that the banksia rose hedge  should really be moved back. We had noticed that too. It just doesn't look right.
 So Bill headed out this morning to start taking down the fence....

And I started taking some cuttings to replace it.

....and a few other bits and pieces.

AND THEN I had another thought.
 We don't have to have a banksia rose hedge at all. We can have another kind of hedge!!!
We will move the fence line back further so the view from our new room is within the rose garden and research some other hedge plant to go all the way around the three sides of the rose garden to enclose it.... a bit like a walled garden room.
Please post some ideas if you have any. They would be most appreciated.

The rest of the day was spent discovering what was new and trying to evade the swooping magpies which terrify me.
This pretty dutch iris has just started to bloom....

....and I was thrilled to find this Lambley Dumble salvia  that I thought had disappeared. It's not looking terribly robust just yet but it will get better if something stops chewing it!

Amy flew to Perth and then caught another flight to Karratha yesterday to stay with Sam, Kiann and Flynn.
This morning at 5am they drove to Coral Bay for a few days....a 6 hour drive.  She must have started the trip in the back with Flynn, who wanted her (Ahmee ) to draw him a big shark ( 5am, dark, journey has just begun, Amy not a good morning person at the best of times.........love that boy!!)

Some of my favourite browsing magazines are garden catalogues and this one arrived yesterday. 

Clive Blazey suggested that..."less is more when we work with colour".
Mmmm......there's no chance of that here. Our garden beds always look like a box of smarties..!
I can't help myself.
Same with my patchwork......

This is the top of a floor pillow. It's huge!
I used the scraps of Notting Hill.
It needs to have piping attached, a bottom sewn on, stuffing added and a button sewn in the middle.
Trip and Toby will probably think it's for them!