30 July, 2014

Big changes: a new house with new possibilities, and a (very) old dream!

In case three years of inactivity didn't clue you in, I gave up on trying to work the south-west facing slope in Turramurra. It was too much, too hard, and not a priority given everything else going on.

Things have changed a lot in three years.

To start with, the Turrmurra place has been sold, and my sister and I bought a house about 15 mins away on a flat block that's open to the north and the west, with large expanses of land that's just asking for a kitchen garden!

Our house (to be)! Is a very very very nice house, with two cats in the yard... #yesweboughtit #holycow

The house is in Sydney suburbia, a medium-sized block (600sqm), with a small house (125sqm). The house sits on the back part of the lot, with a large front lawn, a green strip down the side of the house next to the driveway with a frangipani in the middle of it, and a small lawn patch in the south-east corner of the block where the washing line and the shed are positioned. We have no plans to extend the house, and if we did, we'd probably extend backwards, since there's already slab there.

But there's lots of garden potential. LOTS. I've already started mapping out possible garden plans!

In preparation for the move and the change (we settle on the 1st September), I've pulled out my Permaculture Kitchen Garden book by Linda Woodrow and am avidly re-reading.

This book has been on the shelf for a long time! I bought it back in 1999, years before everything got organic and healthstyle and grow-your-own-veggies. And then I got stuck in a house that had no aspect at all, dreadful terrain, and gum trees all over the slope. It would have been a full-time job setting something up that worked and wasn't backbreaking labour all the way (completely defeating the point of permaculture), plus I already had a full-time job. (I still do, but this time, I don't think it will be quite as backbreaking).

At any rate, my permaculture kitchen garden has been waiting for this moment in the sun for fifteen years.

My sister's only request of the garden is that I leave somewhere for her to grow some freesias. Yeah, a bed of freesias won't be a problem...