orchard and forest views

That's going to make a fantastic useable area. Lawn's looking good too.

Re the leaky tap timer...does it leak from the top of the screw fitting, where it attaches to the tap? If so, some teflon tape should fix it. If it's leaking from somewhere else, that won't work, of course.

Re: tap splitter
We aren't using it kek. I ended up buying another one but HUbby found it effected the water pressure too much when he tried to use the sprinkler on the lawn attached to a hose on the 2nd outlet of the fitting. Our water pressure is pretty low anyway but because of the reduced flow the sprinkler couldn't work properly.

Yes the area should end up lovely. My original image was plants along the base of the wall and flat space around/under the washing line. A row of something along the fence boundary ( slight problem there as it's very hard rock and you can't dig a hole easily if at all) and perhaps a ground cover or two.
We hope to eventually pave or put some sort of stone on the top area and one day add a patio area there as well. But that's years away. We have our main entertaining areas to pave and patio first.
The small area with the trees will have more natives added. as a path through part of it to our future wood shed. The sand that has been removed for the retaining wall is where the shed will be. The guys are going to leave a bit of sand there when they've finished, nice and flat as a shed pad.
The rest of the sand will be used to cover over some of the clay on the other side of the house and to level out a hollow near the alfresco.

Tap splitters are crap!
I will dig up some pics of one I did for someone...

I normally use Gardena hose connectors that won't blow off the tap, but the client had bought these already.

I just use a brass y piece that screws in where the tap was and stick two taps on. Handy to have the hose connected all the time and a spare to "wash hands and stuff" This one has a small length of hose so it's easy to fill a watering can or wash hands.

No pressure loss

Yeah that was what i wanted to do fu. Have a spare hose. Otherwise I'm forever getting the sprinkler off the other one to drag the hose to another section of garden or pulling the connection off to switch hoses.

So the brass Y piece screws in? no plumbing knowledge/skill required? Can you buy this at the green shed or where else? Does it have a specific name? I am googling but only coming up with brass versions of the plastic splitters with the little switches. not tap heads. I like that it's got tap heads so no reduced pressure opening.

MOre googling and I'll I've found is this. rather exxy at 89 pounds


oo more googling add-a-tap ? is this it?

re retaining wall - I will do some final pics tomorrow after work. It's all finished now but i got home too late to take pics. Tomorrow we get a quote for the driveway. Hopefully they'll be able to do that soon. It's just for tailings. The cheapest way to go but it will make a huge difference to the front.

Here's 2 pics from yesterday.


Half completed steps.

How good would it be to have a house built from those blocks! Like double thickness or rammed earth inside, insulated then Limestone on the outer wall.
Big deep doorways, deep window recesses.. Never get hot or cold

Anyway yes that is what I use. Can get from Galvins I am pretty sure or that other place.
Cost me about $5-8. Something like that.

thanks Fu. says they are around 13 from that other place I'll have a look when i'm next in bunbury. I've got at ;least one spare brass tap.

Is that retaining wall set onto a concrete floor and held with mortar together or is it just gravity hold?

Mortar and gravity. The blocks are approx 250 kg each and the ground below is pretty much all rock. Some massive sections and the rest is gravelly. Remembering that it is freely draining builders sand behind the wall.

More shots on the blog listed below.

Very noice!

From early January. Mini pizzas with home grown cherry tomatoes, garlic chives and fresh basil.


Todays lunch was something almost the same. cherry tomatoes and basil from the garden with red onion and chilli cheese toastie.


Tomatoes are going mad. I'm not picking them often enough. I'll have to get to picking them every 2nd day as doing a once a week pick means half are rotting on the bushes.
Chilles are starting to grow according to DH. I'll have to have a look and see. I have quite a few lebanese cucumbers coming along and the chinese gooseberry has at least 12 berries ripening.

Carrots were a bit of a failure although they are still growing the ground isn't doing anything for them ( though to be honest neither am I) and they taste a bit woody. I need to supplement the soil before I try again. The wind has been pretty wild here for the past few weeks so I haven't attempted to buy any new seedlings to replace the ones that were ravaged a couple of weeks ago. ( within 3 days I lost capsicum, nearly all my new basil, spinach and some other seedlings)

A recent haul

There are 2 newer cucumbers in the fridge now and another 4 on the vine 2 almost ready to pick. Another was ravaged by something ( judging by the gashes a bird pecking at bugs perhaps) and then the ants got to it. A shame as it was a biggie.

Chilli plants

Cherry tomatoes

Up early this morning. So I decide to have a play with my new camera.

Links are from Fb so hopefully the pics won't be too large.

my abelias don't look the same anymore. Not so many flowers for the bees. I just spent 20 mins butchering them, bees weren't too impressed either. But I also created several punnets of cuttings to make future plants.

You are going to be in trouble when Fu sees how thin your mulch is.

Keen I didn't want to mulch under the roses because I planted a massive amount of ground covers. ( almost an entire green bin bag full) unfortunately they were given to me half dead and only a small amount survived. ( wood violets).I half buried the bits and some parts are starting to come back. I don't want to bury them under mulch atm. The rose bed is the only garden bed that isn't mulched. Although atm there's a fair bit of abelia cuttings strewn between some of the roses . ( since the pics were taken)

However I am due to top up the pea straw in a couple of patches near my veggies. End of the month the pea straw man will be at my local markets and I'll be buying bales again.

The native violets will get going on winter and when that happens you can load up the mulch nice and thick, pull a few bits of the violets through and let it go nuts

yup Fu. Love my native vioilets. I've got a couple of patches of different types down near the flowing plum that amazingly have survived happily through summer. Now that we don't have the rabbit problem ( due to fencing and I think they baited last year as well) I'm hoping to regrown the violets I initially had planted near my roses. My first lot loving babied and brought from our old house were eaten by rabbits the first year.