Get Your Garden On

It's high time I posted about the garden. I've been spending a lot of time out there, nurturing little green things and inspecting branches trying to work out what is growing. I've also been keeping a keen eye out for your garden related posts and feeling especially inspired by hers and hers.

This house is a typical old Canberra house. It's on a very typical, decent, Canberra sized block. And, like many typical old Canberra houses, it has a well established garden. One that was once someone's absolute pride and joy.



You see there are established garden beds (enormous! multiple!) beautiful old trees, a number of self sown veggies, a huge array of beautiful flowers and endless little surprises.



My interest in gardening has been going for quite some time and eagerly grows a little each year. So, it goes without saying that I am just a little bit excited and awfully honored to be able to take care of this beautiful place in the world for the time we live here.

The tragedy though, is that the house is now owned by developers and will be knocked down and the land cleared to make place for a bunch of souless townhouses. Good bye little 195os museum house. Good bye amazing garden. So, you see, I feel a duty to enjoy the garden and all it's beauty and endless surprises (like the asparagus patch!) while we live here.

We moved into the house in the middle of winter when the garden was bare - bar the weeds - and no surprises had revealed themselves yet. As spring approached the Smurf and I spent more and more time weeding and digging over the beds, and as I did the garden started to burst into action.

A pear tree! Apples! Peaches!



The most amazing dogwood tree - which I knew nothing about but soon learned after two lots of people stopped to photograph the tree on one day.





Rhododendron, very, very showy camellias, gorgeous clouds of colourful azaleas.



All manner of blulbs popping up at different times - daffodils, jonquils, Iris, tulips, bearded iris, grape hyacinths. A fence full of jasmine all topped off with the most beautiful, fully-fragrent old roses. Oh and the flowering surprises go on - the hydrangers are getting bigger and I can see a few other flowers although I have no idea what they are yet.

I've always wanted a flower garden!

Every day I go out into the garden and watch the magic unfold before my eyes. I've got quite a number of edibles growing too - but I think I'll have to leave that for another post now. Allthough suffice to say, the patch is providing endless yumminess for dinners lunches and snacks.

Oh and did I mention we have chooks?

New Dress

On the craft weekend I made three dresses. Two little baby ones for presents and one-for-me. Yep, a dress for me. It has lining and it's fitted and a little bit of trickiness and I made it and I couldn't be happier.

I think it's a great example of how my sewing skills have come along. Don't get me wrong, I have a long way to go. But I look back on my sewing and there was a time I would have been afraid to attack even a simple dress like this, especially with lining.



Simplicity pattern 3803. The fabric is a cheap cotton I bought on sale at scragfight thinking that it wouldn't matter if the dress didn't work because the fabric was cheap. Only problem is, I really like this fabric now and wish I had more.

I will definitely make this again and next time I'll cut one size bigger in the bust and also cut the arm holes a little higher.

Craft Weekend

Turns out whenever I go to write a post about a craft retreat I always go to use the word indulgence. Full weekend of sewing, good friends, great food, a bit of booze and an inspiring ocean view. What's not indulgent about that?

We headed to our usual spot, only this time coming from the nation's fair capital I had to go over the mountains. On a goat-track type tourist road. In the dark. With foxes and trees that hang down over the road. At least it gave me a good story to tell when I finally arrived with clenched teeth and white knuckles.

I went with my usual basket full of priority projects, back up projects and I-should-have-a-million-spare-hours-to-finish-this projects. I surprised myself and finished 2 baby dresses, a pink tutu for the Smurf, Jammies for the Smurf and a semi lined summer dress for me (I may have stayed up until 2am on Saturday night to finish all that). Oh and a bit of knitting. Yippee.



The Smurf was totally taken with his new stuff. Put it on straight away.


And then did some gardening in it.



I'll do a separate post re the dress - need to take photos.

Thanks Bel, Cass, Jade, Sheridan and Soph, for another fab weekend.