Weekend in the garden

This Saturday and Sunday were spent in the garden. I had just wanted to remove some invasive grass from the rhoeo plant border that was strangling them and making them brown.

The border edge almost in place, after the grass was removed

The Rhoeo in the bucket, awaiting to be planted

I cut a piece of plastic border edging that we had rolled up in the shed and set about taking all the plants out of that area, putting them in a bucket with water, digging a little trench, putting the border edging in and then replanting the rhoeo.


This of course took me a couple of hours, but by then I noticed that most of the potted plants were actually looking quite dry, some needed to go into bigger pots, others needed new soil...
So off I went to a nearby warehouse, bought soil, clumping cat litter, mulch, and then some colourful flowers to brighten the garden too.
Cat litter? Yes, I went once to a talk about our very poor sandy soils in Perth and how to improve it, and one of the ingredients to add to the soil was clumping cat litter as a wetting agent. (Read link).

Back in the garden in the heat of the afternoon sun...I know I shouldn´t have done it, my back is now very red as I was wearing a strappy T-shirt, but I was full of steam and just kept going and only noticed the burned back when I stepped in the shower after the day´s work.

So, all the pots came off that central area, and I started changing some plants to bigger pots, others was just a change of soil, planted my lovely pink flowers and started putting the pots back in the area.
I have to say the plants have to be in pots as they are on top of a cemented rectangle where the clothes line used to be. My husband thought it was too much trouble to break the cement up, so my alternative was to put down pebbles and pots.

The old wheel barrow with succulents that I grow from cuttings

View from the back. Can you see the passionfruit vine on the side passage, it needs taming too!

The Grapevine is already full of tiny bunches of grapes

The mirror against the fence used to be our old bathroom mirror.

My lovely succulents and some of the new flowers I bought this weekend

  

Today, Sunday, after getting back from the my workplace Christmas breakfast, that we had in a lovely hotel near the river, I changed into my work clothes and back into the garden.
This time I tackled the plants hanging from the old stepladder and the ones in the shady area near the lemon tree.

All the re-potted plants on the ladder

The shade loving plants under the lemon tree

I had some pots on top of various styrofoam boxes at various levels, stacked against the fence, and when I took the pots and the boxes out I discovered enough snails to feed a small French family!!
Then there were plenty of slugs and slaters or roly-polies too. Wow, how disgusting, I hate snails and slugs and all crawly things.
So wearing gloves of course, I grabbed a plastic bag and scooped them into the bag, threw away most of  the styrofoam boxes too, as I don´t want a recurrence of those pests and moved the re-potted plants to the area just under the lemon tree. I need to get some sort of table to have them off the floor, so they don´t get attacked again by those disgusting snails.

Snails anyone?

Tomorrow, being my day off work I will scatter some mulch over the pots and then all is done.
I´m glad the garden is now looking good for the beginning of summer next week and also for our Christmas get-together.

I thought you might like to see some photos of the garden progress since we bought the house in 2007 until now. A little better don´t you think?

In the beginning, this was the back yard - dark, dull, lots of cement, a small wall around the cement pavers...

2008 - work starts - The clothes line was removed, some pavers removed.

2010 - More pavers removed to the side, more plants, looking a little better already

Now - less cement, more plants, some grass to the right. My lovely "Fluffy" in the picture too.