Our House Part 2: Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes (outside)

While I haven't taken many photos of the inside of our house, I've certainly made up for it with photos of the outside. This post will be told in pictures.

Before...
This one was taken pretty early on. We'd already moved the fence forward (it used to be at the back end of the house), but hadn't done much with the block yet. The yucky potato vine (on the front wall) is still there, and the little apple blossom tree my parents gave us is still sitting in a pot.

See the massive gum tree in the backyard? It truly was enormous. It was a good 15 metres tall and about 1 metre across on the widest part of the trunk. Sadly, it got quite sick a couple of years after we moved in, and we had to have it cut down. We still have a big part of the trunk in the backyard, that Anthony will (one day - it's on the list!) turn into a seat.

A couple of years later, I'd planted a bit of a flower garden out the front. Mostly bulbs, but a couple of shrubby things as well that are quite big now (and a good screen across the neighbour's driveway). You can see the little apple blossom tree on the far right of the picture - where we planted it in the ground.

In 2004, we had the driveway done, and had a couple of decks built.

One in the front:

 

And a really big one in the back:

If you look closely, you'll also see the really cool playground we built for the boys. They've had a lot of fun on it!

And now?

Well, now, it's probably not looking its best.

We still have some fantastic luck with plants, they just seem to like to grow enormous in our yard. You can see that our 'little' apple blossom tree is now quite large; in fact it likes to attack people as they walk up the driveway - I must be a little more ruthless in my pruning.
But the weeds have moved in to stay unfortunately. I let things go for a while and they took advantage. It's very hard to stay on top of them...

Except for my newest little corner. We started this little corner out the back not long before Sam died. Anthony has built an amazing wall out of concrete sleepers that goes on and on and on. It's fairly spectacular!

Samuel was around to see it go up (well some of it anyway). He even helped a bit.
You can see he was very good at supervising:

But also pitched in from time to time. He did tend to grumble a bit and give up fairly quickly, but he always helped!

So that little corner's OK.  It's where I grow my berries and also in my new apple (and sunflower!) garden. I manage to keep the weeds down and keep it all mulched and watered.

But, there's still so much to do. I guess that's the price we pay for having a big (1/4 acre) block, and I know that one day it will be very nice, but sometime I wish some of those Backyard Blitz (do they even have that show any more?? ;p) folks would come along and make it all pretty!

 Well anyway, it's a work in progress. And having all the food coming out of there is definitely a benefit. It was a great move planting lots of food (I'll tell you about that soon too), and I can see the structure starting to come together. Perhaps I shouldn't hope for it to be done too soon, then I might have nothing to complain about!