Steve and the beanstalk

We've been doing a spot of landscaping recently.  When we moved in our quite small (13m *7m) back garden was mostly concreted.  You can see the extent of it in the photo below.  Low maintenance but not very pretty.

A shot of the garden as it once was, wall to wall concrete

 Back in 2010 we dug up half the concrete, leaving the rest because I think we wanted to wait until we'd finished the big construction work before digging up the rest - plus it was too much for one small skip.

Digging up the first half of the concrete in Dec 2010

 Of course, the glorious day has now arrived where the building work is -ahem- finished.  More on that in future blogs... but the majority of it is done so we were ready to start landscaping in earnest.  We had another smashing Saturday with a cleanfill skip out the front and Sheryl, Paul and Maggie all turning up to help with some destruction.

Sheryl, Steve and Paul vent some aggression

 Actually digging up concrete is quite a quick (but very enjoyable) job, but there's a lot of carrying of concrete and rubble to and from the skip so the extra labour is very welcome.  We also had all the waste from the bricks which came from our destroyed chimneys - quite a pile of mortar from the de-mortared bricks and broken bricks to dispose of as well as concrete.

Maggie the murderer  kills some plants

 Once that was done we set to trying to get rid of some of the plants which are inconveniently located right where our path to the basement and deck stairs will go.  Maggie was getting into it: "Die plant, die" seemed to be quite a successful mantra.

The demon fig

 We pulled up a couple of fuschias which were right under the deck and definitely had to go.  But the fig which used to take up approximately 1/4 of the garden just would not budge.

A typical working party, one working, three watching

The fig was located pretty close to the house and was a really healthy plant reaching 2m in each direction at one point.  Great shame to get rid, especially as the silvereyes really liked the berries, but our garden is too small for such a huge plant, plus it was too close to the house and in danger of undermining the foundations, and the pathway to the basement really needed to go right over where it was located.  Despite the collective efforts of the group we had to concede defeat though - it was just too big.

Our second skip full of cleanfill

This was the satisfying sight on Monday morning - skip full of rubble, broken bricks etc.  Only cost $190 to hire the skip and it is well worth it - imagine trying to take all that to the tip in your car.
I did take all the green waste from the fuschias etc plus the weeding that Sheryl did (she couldn't resist attacking our borders) to the tip and it completely filled the car.  The only spare space was my driver's seat!  Amazing how bulky it is.  The council mulches it all and turns it into compost which they sell back to residents - what a fantastic scheme - they charge you to accept it then sell it back!

At last! Steve chops down his beanstalk. I mean fig.

After a weekend away in Queenstown we had another weekend of landscaping.  We bought an axe specially to chop back the fig and after a couple of hours finally got it free.  Here is a shot of Steve with his trophy.

Next the plan is to extend the brick path round the back of the house to the basement door and deck stairs.  We've marked it out and once the ground is levelled out (another big job) that will be our weekend job for the next few months.  Meanwhile we face a rather muddy walk to get to the basement.