So after all that work, there were still a couple things we needed help with. Luckily Rodd’s Dad Ray came to the rescue! He came down in October and, over the course of just a few days, finished it all off. So here’s the back garden in November 2014, with the creeping fig now completely covering the wall. (We’ve had to replace two of the camellias. We suspect there wasn’t enough sun for that variety.)

We bought a funny little steel obelisk and planted a climber inside it in the area between the Japanese maple and the bougainvillea. (We had another old doorway space there and wanted something visual to put in it.) The climber has sweet little red flowers.

We installed a trellis for the bougainvillea to climb, and boy has it! The thing is up over the top of the wall now. Pa Snook also strung steel cables along the wall above the lemon and lime for it to creep along.

The violets are now completely carpeting the corner of the bed. The Snook has to regularly hack them back to keep them from encroaching on the veg! We’re now trying out some tomatoes in the area in front of the lime tree.

For veg this spring, he planted more beetroot, leeks, and broad beans. The beans have climbed really high against the wooden fence and we’ve had a couple harvests already!

The grapevine is doing really well! Still no blooms yet though. The bay tree really likes that sunny spot.

Our potted herb garden in front of the stairs continues to grow. We’ve got basil, parsley, mint, sage, tarragon, cat mint, ginger. You can also see that we installed some lattice to hide the vents for the car garage below.

And here you can see the beautiful glass balustrade that Pa Snook put up on the stairs! At last I don’t have to worry that people are going to fall off. And even more amazingly – he fixed my screen door! It now shuts and locks properly and it’s perfect and we can open up the house in the summer without worrying the cats will escape.

So that’s the back garden pretty much complete. And we can’t do anything else with the front for now because it’s likely to get torn up as part of repairs to the building’s brick front wall. And I haven’t really shown much on the side of the house, since we really haven’t done much there other than get it paved. The star jasmine are blooming though, and we’ve got some ideas. I may be updating this page before you know it!

That’s all for now…

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