What's up...

My orchid surprised me with a late bloom!  My dog has subsequently knocked it off :o(.  How long do I need to wait for more?

Sorry I've been a little absent, we had a lot of public holidays at the end of April/beginning of May and I've been playing catch up on a few things.  Work was exceptionally busy last week, which was only a 3-day week for me and I seem to be putting out a few fires at the moment.  Why are other people so unreliable?

Besides that, Jake and I have been pretty busy at home too.  We decided that, instead of having our lovely landscaper do our garden, we'd attempt to tackle the job ourselves.  We did most of it while Danie was in China, so I'm a little slow in sharing these pictures.  I measured the beds out as per the plans drawn up by our landscaper and marked the areas off with string.  I started digging out the grass on my own, but after a lot of hard work, I decided that digging out grass was men's work and hired someone to do it for me.  That man worked like a machine and he managed to get all my beds dug out, planted some grass, dug in compost, he trimmed back 2 trees and cleaned my stoep.  He'll be coming back for regular maintenance for sure.  This is looking out from my stoep.  Don't you love my dog's old kennel??

  Looking down the back of the garden.  The big patch of compost on the lawn is where we planted some grass that had been dug out... 

 Turn around, looking down the back of the house.  This is where our veggie patch will go some day...

 Looking at the stoep again...

 And out...

 Jake and I spent most of the weekend shopping for plants and then laying them out in the beds.  We have opted for indigenous, hoping that they need less water than any other plants...

 A sand olive in the fading sunlight...

 Jake was super excited to get going on the actual planting part.  He faded on me a little though and I ended up doing most of the work on my own...

 This bed under my bedroom window, is Jake's special one.  He did all the planting in there (including the ground cover not shown).  It was part of his gardening badge for cubs.  I love looking out my window and seeing life in my garden... 

 And wild irises are so pretty, I just love them.  Mine have got new buds on them, so I'm guessing they're happy in their new home.  I'm sure there'll be lots of flower photos soon... 

 1st one in the ground...

 Starting the ground cover...

Now that every thing's actually in the ground, I need to take some more photos.  It'll take some time before everything starts filling out and looking gorgeous, but we're super excited to see that happening!

Sue X