Happy New Year

Another year has come and gone…

We were fortunate enough to have some of our family visit for the Festive period, it was great to catch up with everyone and the place was a bit hectic for a week or two, but it was well worth it, catching up after many months was an awesome Christmas present in itself! The kids of course make Christmas, and they were in fine form!

Pool Time!

The lounge room looked like a toy factory on Christmas morning and all the kids were well and truly spoilt, of course this scene was prefaced by the annual argument that Karren and I have regarding Santa's salutary generosity. I recall that Santa was not quite so magnanimous when I was a child and my predilection for Christmas was not diminished by this!

Of course boxing day was spent watching the cricket, the next four days of cricket capping off a great end to 2013 with proper cricket equilibrium returning to where it belongs. Apart from the cricket, everyone took the opportunity to cool off in the pool, in fact Pa even had a splash and I can't remember the last time I saw him swim!

A big splash awaits

Another Cannon Ball

Fun and Games

Aside from being pretty busy preparing for Christmas not much of note has happened for us since the last post at the start of Summer, a little more time was spent in the garden and one half of the front is now complete! We added some cardboard to act as a weed mat then topped with 3 cubic metres of Hoop Pine mulch. In my opinion it looks much better! The planting is still a little sparse and we will add more into the garden beds as funds and supply meet.

Looking decidedly better

We transferred a couple of Bromeliads from large pots into the front garden and replaced them with two Yucca.

Two transplanted Bromeliads 

Yucca Elephantipes

A couple more days and the other side will be transformed from this…

Messy and full of weeds

To look more like this…

More plants will come over time

As you can see from the above photos the weed and feed added to the front "lawn" has made its presence felt, amazing how much of the grass wasn't actually grass isn't it!

A few months ago we bought what we thought were Dwarf Purple Fountain Grass or Pennisetum Advena - Rubrum Dwarf, unfortunately it looks as though of the five we purchased (from Bunnings) only one was indeed Rubrum Dwarf and the other four simply Rubrum! Of course we threw away the plant labels so we can't prove that was indeed the case.

Dwarf on the right 

Dwarf on the left

So what I hear you say, well Dwarf supposedly gets to about 60cm high, the standard to nearly 140cm. This extra height takes the seed head above the pool wall and nicely distributes seed heads into the pool as the heads gently sway in the breeze and the aforementioned seed heads are a pain in the freckle to remove!

We headed off to Tamborine to do some bush walks with the kids and soon found out that a large proportion of the QLD population decided to do the exact same thing, busy doesn't begin to describe it. 

Curtis Falls

                  

Still we had an enjoyable morning walking through the rain forest with hundreds of others... At lunch Rosie saw an ad for a reptile and crocodile show so that was next on our list to visit. Furry put on an interesting and educational show that had Rosie enthralled.