Garden Attack!!!

This weekend saw the latest instalment in the popular and exciting not-made-for-TV series Garden Attack!!!. Today's episode focuses on our backyard, where, bucking popular trends, we didn't install a water feature or a dry creek bed. Crazy, I know.

What we did do was cut the garden back by about 2m. The original gardens were around 4m deep at their narrowest point, and well overgrown. By cutting them back we'll gain more lawn area, and be able to keep the actual garden beds clear of junk (fallen palm fronds, dead trees, etc). Another good benefit from reducing the size of this garden is that eventually we'll gain vehicle access into the back yard. Which has the knock-on effects of making gardening easier, as we can load the crap straight onto the ute, as well as keeping the gardens easier to maintain, since we can dump a load of mulch straight off the ute and into the garden beds.

Here's a dodgy photo stolen from when we had the trees removed. You can see how deep the gardens were, and you can't see the (extremely dodgy) back fence at all:


You can clearly see here how far we chopped it back - the dirt/grass edge used to be the edge of the garden:


As you can see from the "Before" photo above, the garden was really quite thick and overgrown. All in all, we took two very-well-loaded ute loads to the dump. Some nice plants unfortunately had to go, we now have the opportunity to plant the gardens up how we want them. As as previously mentioned, the ability to dump mulch onto the gardens should keep them looking nice.

We still have a bit of work to do with this side garden - there's a couple more golden cane palms that I want to chop down before they get much bigger, and there's a medium sized fishtail palm in there as well that needs to go - this is what they look like when they get big, and then they cost heaps to get cut down (as we learnt two months ago):


You can see the stump that that big tree left on the far right-hand side of this photo, and the medium-sized fishtail on the left:


With those bigger palms gone, however, the maintenance of the yard will be so much easier, and we won't be constantly taking old rotten palm fronds to the dump. Part of the impetus for doing this work was a notice we had left in our mailbox from the Dengue Patrol people advising us that we had water collecting in palm fronds out the back, and that we needed to clean it up before they came back.

For those who don't know, Cairns had a very bad season this summer for Dengue Fever. It's quite a debilitating disease, and if you catch it twice, you're at high risk of it developing to Haemorrhagic Fever, which really is just as nasty as it sounds. People can, and do, die from it, often quite quickly. Dengue itself is pretty nasty, and is one of those things that you don't completely recover from for a number of years.

Dengue is spread my Dengue mosquitoes - a special breed of mozzie that carries the disease. They're different to normal mozzies, smaller, only come out at night, hide in dark places, etc. But they can also breed in very small amounts of water - smaller than what normal mozzies would use. So an old palm frond laying on the ground can hold enough water for them to breed in - obviously not something you want around your house.

Because of the seriousness of this year's outbreak, the council formed a special Dengue Patrol unit, which went around inspecting people's yards for potential breeding grounds. They had the power to fine you big dollars if they thought the situation warranted it. In practice, only a handful of people were fined, and that was for persistently ignoring their requests. But still, if you had your house inspected (like we did), it was still in your best interests to heed their warning. In the past we've just left the back gardens as a jungle, since it gives good privacy from the neighbours, but it's now time to clean them out.

Unfortunately one side effect of cutting the garden back as aggressively as we did is that you now have a clear view of our back fence. The back fence was a point of contention when we bought the house - we wanted the current owners to replace it before we bought it, and they didn't want to. I suspect it's made out of asbestos fibro sheeting, and it's really not in a good way. It's busted up, cracked, and generally falling down. You can see in the above photos the sheet of second-hand corrugated iron that Trev and I bought when we fist moved in and screwed to the fence to cover a large hole and keep Badger in our yard. The rest of the fence is being held up by a combination of star pickets, fencing wire, cable ties and concentration.

That said, we actually have the good end of the deal. For years now it's been hidden behind a thick garden, so we haven't had to look at it. But for our back neighbours who share this fence, this fence is part of their pool fence. So when you're in their pool area, lounging around, you have an uninterrupted view of this dodgy old fence, complete with "windows" of shiny corrugated iron peeking through. It must be a good look. Last year the new owners of that house dropped a note in our mailbox saying they wanted to get it replaced ASAP with a nice new colourbond fence, and would we pay half. We gleefully accepted, and told them to get some quotes and we'd go ahead ASAP as well. We've not heard from them since. Which hasn't been a problem, until now.

In the meantime, I'm probably going to give the fibro a quick and dodgy coat of paint, so at least it's mainly one colour, and will blend in and disappear a bit. But I think the long term solution will be to talk to the neighbours again, and see if they're still keen to replace it, and have it swapped out for a nice new presentable fence (that's not going to give us all Mesothelioma).

One unexpected side effect of being able to see the fence, however, is that it's made our back yard appear to be very small. Before, the yard looked huge. You knew there was a fence, but it was way back there somewhere - behind all that garden. Now that you can see the fence, despite the additional area we've uncovered, the yard looks quite small. It's an interested effect, and one that we really didn't expect. Hopefully as we fill in the garden with plants and paint the fence, it won't be as noticeable.

Our plan is to work our way around the back yard, slowly cutting all the gardens back and clearing them out, and eventually we'll be left with some pretty, easy to maintain and safe gardens. As we go we're going to be dropping some of the bigger trees and palms before they get too big for us to handle, as well as taking the top out of some of the bigger trees that are starting to just get too big. Hopefully it'll all look good at the end of it!

One job that has been on our list is to remove the existing clothes line. It's right smack-bang in the centre of the side yard, which is great for it, but means that we can't drive a car up there. Which is the whole point of all of this! We want to replace it with a lift-out-able hoist, so that when we need access we can simply pull the hoist out of the ground and drive over it. Best of both worlds!

After taking the second load of rubbish to the dump yesterday, Trev jokingly asked "any more jobs you want me to do?". So I jokingly answered "well, you could always pull out that clothes line if you were desperate!". So before you know it, we had the crowbar and pick out, and were digging it out. We also found a block of cement right next to it where the clothesline had previously been - it had been cut off with an angle grinder, and re-positioned to where it is now! After digging around for 10 minutes and still not getting it to budge, the 4WD was called into action. A length of rope and some low-range action later, and this is what we'd achieved:


(Note the Safety Chair positioned over the hole!)

So I guess now we need to:
1) get rid of the clothesline somehow? Keep it somewhere in case it comes in handy later on?
2) buy new clothesline
3) decide where we want it, and
4) dig a new hole and cement new clothesline in.

Sounds like fun, eh???!!! Stay tuned for next week's episode where we try and use a 4WD for more inappropriate things! Will we actually manage to put the clothesline through the radiator next time? Tune in to find out!!!