It's that time of year where spring is painfully, teasingly close and I simply cannot wait for the garden to wake up!
The hydrangeas had some very special attention over winter, so it's no surprise that they are the first of our deciduous plants to show their springy greens. In January when our baby is born the hydrangeas will be in full bloom, and I plan to immerse him or her amongst the mop head flowers (in the most hypo-allergenic way possible) for a fun summery photo.
It is also time to start the interior paint job. This project has been a looong time coming, mostly because we took an insanely long time to choose a paint.
We knew we wanted the paint to be free of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) as they pollute the air in your home for years and years after you down the paintbrush, and with VOC-free paint options available it seemed an obvious no-brainer to invest in one. We were looking for a VOC-free paint that you don't have to buy online (I can't think of much worse than choosing a colour from online paint chips), and found Porters at our local paint supplier. It's not only VOC-free but also Australian made and owned (which rated highly on D's conscious-consuming scale).
The paint chips are also hand-painted (it's the small things right?). We've chosen the colour 'Lamb's Wool', a soft neutral, paired with a crispy white trim which will be a huge improvement on the bottle-green windowsills we currently have.
It is also time to do some serious mass planting along one of our boundary lines. We want a dense, high screen, and we want it fast, so D decided to employ the help of some Acacias and Acmena Smithiis (sometimes known as 'Goodbye Neighbour', you get the drift).
The beauty of online tube-stock ordering is that late in the evening, while in your post-dinner food-coma you can completely forget your resolve to take on no more juvenile plants until maybe some of the zillion others you've planted have found some plant-independence. So, one click here, and another there, and here we are, another twenty-four plant-children to tend.
Now is also the perfect time to start raising seed for summer. I love seed raising, and this week I planted our tomatoes, basil, cucumber, zucchini and chilli seed into punnets, which once they have grown into healthy seedlings we will plant into the garden beds (around late spring).
It's such a good feeling knowing that long before we have finished eating from the winter garden our summer produce is underway. The productive garden is a very rhythmic thing. The same thing, at the same time, year in and year out. It brings a whole new meaning to each long awaited season.
