The Salviation Garden

I love my simple life in this small country town.   My lovely friend Janice dropped in this morning an invitation to the monthly health and wellbeing day.  The day comprises yoga, meditation, story telling and mandala art.  Each of the sessions is run by a local expert and we all share a yummy home made lunch.   Janice also brought oranges from a one hundred year old tree that grows on a property on the Wallagaraugh River.   The tree was planted from the seeds of oranges that washed ashore from a wrecked ship in the 1800's.

Sadly I will miss the monthly Transcoota dinner this Friday.  This is a pot luck 100 mile dinner - the aim is to incorporate as much locally grown/caught produce as possible!  Even though there are times of the year where every second dish contains zucchinis/silverbeet or cucumbers, the range of dishes is inspiring!

I call my garden the Salviation garden.  There are lots of salvias and most of my garden infrastructure is made from recycled bits and pieces!   We made our concrete pavers using moulds.  In addition to the concrete we mixed ourselves, each time a neighbour had a concreting job we scored the leftover bits of cement mix!  Over time, this adds up to a lot of pavers. 

Over the past few weeks we have been the lucky recipients of old hardwood timber planks that had to be replaced as part of a jetty renovation.  The planks now have a new lease of life as garden edgings and a cold frame that also utilises our old shower door.  The chook house is also getting a new roof - the ridge pole is from another recycled piece of timber and the gables are from materials left over from the house build.  Work is commencing on the second gabion wall and Geoff is cursing our neighbour who suggested an arbour connecting the two walls would look good!  (I've already downloaded plans from the Internet!).

Finally I've commenced my first upcycling project!  We've had an old cabinet under the house for yonks.  Done up it will be the perfect home for our collection of Perfect teapots.  (These pots date from the late 1920's and have a lovely art deco shape.   You could collect labels from your Robur tea and purchase an EPNS silver teapot at a discounted price.  There were also cheaper ceramic versions which are now worth much more than the EPNS versions as the ceramic pots were more breakable.)

I've removed the flaking Masonite top (supervised by King Parrots!) and will replace with a new MDF version.  The middle shelf will be replaced by glass and our wonderful local cabinet maker Greg will make me a new glass door.   Finally I'll repaint with leftover wall paint, letting the old colours show through - very shabby chic!