There Have Been Improvements

It's funny how you don't realise how far you've come until you go through some old photos and see the changes in pictures.

This is a photo of an area of the garden that I thought would never be useful for anything. Initially I thought we would just let the kyku grass that was already there (and totally out of control) continue to take over and maybe through mowing become a lawn right to the edge of the fence. You can't see it in the photo but near the concrete; the roots were so entangled and compacted that driving a pitch fork through them to turn the soil over was almost impossible. The layers of roots were about 1o cm thick. It took us a few days to get through the mess and pull out enough of it so that we could see the soil.

Scattered throughout this stip are new argum lilies trying to come up. Argum lilies once were the main feature here but over the past 5 years we've pulled more and more out reducing them to a few shoots. There is also evidence of Jasmine near the back. Funny thing here is that Jasmine is supposed to be one of those plants that 'takes over' but this little bugger just has a few shoots, stands at about 15 cms and hasn't grown more than 2 cm over the past year!

Here is a photo where we have dug up some of the grass and rubbish. Oh yes you should see how much 'human' rubbish we found in this little bit of garden, paddlocks, pens, glass, plastic, forks, knives, small plastic toys, door stoppers, a large hand saw, rusted nails, cans, endless pieces of plastic sheeting, a variety of packaging from food like chocolate bars etc. just to name a few.