Come into my parlour

Or why Lynne and Nathan don't want to move

Or The Madness of King Nathan (and Queen Lynne)

G'day all!

Today I am inviting you all into my back yard. 7.5 years ago, this was a quiet little back yard, mostly grassed or paved with a metre deep border garden of (mostly) Australian native plants around the buffalo grass croquet lawn.

Then Lynne moved in, with her then housemate S. Lynne is a bit of a plant nuffy and loves her old garden roses, Austin roses, and anything unusual in the way of Oz native plants. Her rose collection expanded rapidly, to the point where she was looking after more than EIGHTY roses in pots. The native plant collection started growing too. Then the grassy area outside the kitchen became a vegie patch - on one of the coldest days of the year, Lynne shovelled two cubic metres of mushroom compost onto a grassy/weedy area (after placing newspaper). Lynne made a terrible mistake - she planted spuds (potatoes) and has not been able to get rid of the blasted things ever since.

Along the way Lynne Met Nathan, and the plant thing got a wee tad out of control. So enjoy this partial tour of my back yard and be happy in the knowledge that this is not the full extent of the terror.

The great Wall of Nathan (aka foam boxes with cement render thrown on) enclosing a recently completed raised garden bed upon which about half my roses reside:


The greenhouse:


Inside the greenhouse - note the blue sparkly lights and the brazillions of plant cuttings:

There's a bench above the fishpond and another 4 metre bench running down the side of the greenhouse. With plants on board of course!

The fishpond (aka an old bath) in the greenhouse:


The outside fishpond, which Nathan thought might be nice as an outdoor bath, except for the slime in the bottom and the yabby which used to live in there. Yabbies (freshwater crayfish only little uns) are known for their ability to nip with their claws and once they nip they don't let go easily. So I give you the outside fishpond, with a lesser wall of Nathan and the sundial:


About half the plants in pots. The shade-clothed structure in the background has loads more plants on it:


Now are you starting to get a feel for why we are a bit overwhelmed by the magnitude of this move? LOL - we have as much stuff outside as some people have inside. And we still have a garage full of stuff and goodly sized house full of stuff too. 8-}

Some spinning news

Here's a little of some stuff I've spun relatively recently:

Red, blue and yellow primary colours, though the blue was a bit wussy - I didn't use enough cos I was afraid of it running and taking over the dye pot.

Plum and aqua - not the prettiest combination but I dyed enough for two skeins:


These are both singles yarns, no binders to control them or anything. I spun them, then unspun them a bit to even out the spinning some and then set the twist by hanging a tin of chick peas in the wet skeins. I'll have to see what they are like to knit with.

I have to blog the road trip to Geelong - I took lots of very bad photos from the car and can annoy you with those. Plus I have a couple of pics from the fibre festival. Plus some pics from Gardening Australia Live today - it was pretty good.

But for the nonce, I must repair to my PiLs as today is the first BBQ for this season! The weather has been totally amazing this weekend - a bit windy yesterday but today was superb and I fear I have a touch of sunburn despite smothering myself in sunscreen. These are times when you feel it is great to be alive.

anon!