The Curse of the Black Thumb

I've lamented before about my curse...

Some days I'd be quite happy to just order a truck full of concrete...

But this week my little brother came to the rescue instead....

.. and peace and tranquility has been restored to the neighbourhood.

The green corner

I read lots and lots of crafty blogs on a daily basis, and it seems to me that most crafty bloggers are also a dab hand in the garden. I ooooh and aaaah over lovely veggie gardens and flower gardens and native gardens.... heck any beautiful garden!

So while taking photos of my creative space on Thursday, I was inspired to take a photo of the latest thing that I'm growing in my garden.

This is the view outside my loungeroom window. It seems that I'm a dab hand at growing rather large weeds. If I'm brave enough next week, I might even take a photo the latest view of the backyard weed garden!

More fabric and a concrete patio

I've been very well behaved for the last couple of weeks and I haven't been anywhere near a fabric store......

.........until yesterday.

I decided that I needed some more prints to make bibs for boys - it's really difficult to find cool prints that are not too cutesy (if you know what I mean). The top photos shows some bargains that I found in the remnants bin.

I also bought some dark red corduroy, three blue prints for bibs, and some green floral material which will come in handy for something eventually!

We finished the patio yesterday....it's an exposed aggregate finish so you can see all the pebbles at the surface. Now all we need is a front fence (planned to be built next Monday) and I'll be able to walk out of the kitchen and eat brekky while sitting under the tree. We also put some conduit under the concrete so we can string up fairy lights all over the tree - it will be an instant christmas tree every December.

Now we just have re-landscape the garden over the Easter break. Does anyone have any suggestions for drought tolerant shade loving plants?

Things that don't go together

Today I finished the new quilt for my baby nephew.

Here are a couple of photos of what it looked like right after I finished........

..........And then I put it through the washing machine and dryer so it be nice and clean and sweet smelling for the handover.........

.......And todays lesson was - Don't use cheap cotton to sew a patchwork quilt top because it shrinks in the dryer! Oh well, I still think it's cute.

Next task for the day - make a multitude of bibs. I could only manage 8. I have a very short attention span and I get bored easily so making the same thing 8 times in a row was as much as I could handle.

.....then the delivery truck arrived with the materials for this weekends task.

This is the front of my house. When we renovated the kitchen, we installed french doors that lead out into the front garden. At the moment, if you try to use the doors, you fall down the step (which was originally a window opening) and end up lying on a patch of dirt under a tree.

So this weekends task is to pour a concrete patio outside the doors. If you can see the stick in the foreground, that indicates where the patio is going to end. There will also be a footpath along the front that will lead to a gate because we are eventually going to fence in the front yard and make it a useable space.

So even though we need the rain, please no rain between 8AM and about 3PM tomorrow......

....and one last completely unrelated item.....this is my herb garden today....

Just ignore the dead looking stick thing in the pot at the right (I don't know what happened there, but I suspect it was a victim of my two weeks holiday at the beach over Christmas).