Firstly, you can see the green shed, which looks much nicer from the outside than the inside. When we first moved to this house, a friend put shelves into it for me. I helped by holding things. For a couple of years, the shed was very tidy. There were even clips for holding the handles of tools upright against the walls. Then, gradually, some of the clips broke, and the tools now seem to be in a big heap. Ants dig up a great deal of dirt through a large crack in the floor. Spiders and other creatures have moved in. It’s hard to reach the shelves because the wheelbarrow, the lawnmower and a large pile of discarded pots always seem to be in the way. Oh yes, a big cleanup of the shed is going to happen soon.
On top of the shed is a large bougainvillea vine. The people who set up this garden must have decided to use every prickly plant they could think of. There are dwarf date palms, cycads, prickly-leaved pony tail palms and an ornamental grass with sharp leaves and sharp flowers. The date palms (which don’t produce dates) have powerful thorns which are several inches long (more in centimetres). Once, I was weeding near one of these trees, when great drops of blood appeared on the paving in front of me. One of these thorns had pierced the middle of my forehead (where I must be lacking in nerve endings). I now treat these trees with great respect and am disinclined to weed near them.
Bougainvillea twigs often fall on the ground. They have thorns like roses which can pierce the soles of your shoes. However, when the vine is in full flower, it can look quite spectacular through this window, and you can see the glow of it from the front door. It’s only half-heartedly flowering at the moment.
The big pot with the pattern on it arrived at our place after one of our children’s many moves. After watching Gardening Australia, I was inspired to plant a lime tree and several herbs in it. For several weeks, it looked just like the TV show. Then the lime tree developed citrus leaf miner. I applied the appropriate cure but the tree has been in sulk mode ever since. You can see that it is cringing against the shed wall and didn’t even want to be photographed. The sage and the parsley were doing quite well until the weather grew hotter and we were using the air conditioning more. The outside unit (near the left hand edge of the window) blows hot air directly onto this pot, so I turned the pot around so that the basil, now flowering copiously and taking over the whole pot, would protect them both.
The chives, in the smaller pot, have run to seed, but are still producing lots of fresh chives for our salads. The brick beside the chives is used to hold the shed door open when we’re going in and out with the ladder or the lawn mower.
Then there is the rain water tank. Once, the citizens of Brisbane were not permitted to have rainwater tanks, but during our latest drought, we were encouraged to, and a whole new industry was born. As we have a pool, it was mandatory for us. Pat’s resourceful cousin Rob installed ours for us. To bring it in, Rob removed the fence from two sides of the pool, and then rolled the tank over a plank across the pool. Luckily, it didn’t fall in. When the tank was installed, we couldn’t wait for it to fill, but it didn’t rain for ages. We finally had a few meagre showers, so we blocked off the other downpipes by taping old CDs over them. Beside the tap of the tank, you can see a green cup, which we use if we want a drink of cool rainwater.....
You can see a bit of the lawn. I would like to dig up some of the lawn and plant vegetables, but my chances of doing that are not high. When we moved in here, we had a “Languishing on the Lawn” party where we all sat about languishing with a few drinks and some live music – it was rather fun.
Well, off I go to clean out the shed ..... well, maybe tomorrow.
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