So, that snowballed
We were in town the other week, and we swung past the big charity shop, just because we hadn't been in there in a while. I grabbed a few books (which I photoposted about at the time) and Emma went out the back to the furniture section and had a sit down on a really comfortable sofa.
We looked at it with longing, noted it had a matching other sofa of the same size and an armchair. We left, muttering things about having other things to spend our money on. (Meanwhile, our faithful secondhand furniture at home is super uncomfortable. My trusty grey sofa, which we paid $20 back in 2003, has drooped to the point of being impossible to get out of. Emma's armchair, the sole survivor of a pair that we bought for $50 each, has collapsed in the back and the cushion is disintegrating.) We went back a week later, and the set was still there. Told by the shop that they don't really divide sets, and that we could get the lot for the princely and affordable sum of $150, we paid for them outright, knowing that we'd never be able to transport them ourselves. My plan was to lure Mum into helping us with the offer of a free sofa, knowing that one of hers is a cruel and unusual torture device that's needed ditching for years. I rang her that night, and by chance, Saturday was the first day of the school holidays, and she could bring the Hilux and help us move the lot, possibly in a couple of trips.
She rang back the next day, saying that my step-dad had changed his mind and decided he did want to come after all, and that was pretty good, because we figured that though we would have managed moving the furniture with the three of us, Taua is really strong and it'd make the job easier.
Come Saturday, we met them in Bathurst, and with a combination of bickering and skill, Mum and Taua fitted all three pieces onto the back of the Hilux, and after a bit of shopping for dinner supplies, we got home, shifted out our old furniture, took it to the tip, and tried to clean the carpet prior to putting down the new sofa and chair. Our old vacuum is on its last legs, and the spare they brought with them from the stuff of ours we have stored in their garage obviously was, too, so we did the best we could, had dinner and watched tv.
Mum decided that we needed a new vacuum cleaner, and offered to pay for it. We eventually agreed; we'd been counting on the second vacuum working, since our first one is impossible to get bags for any more. So, the next morning, we got in the car with mum. Meanwhile, my step-dad had been eyeing off our incredibly overgrown garden, and the tiny, insignificant inroads I'd made in removing all of my late grandmother's incredibly invasive planting choices in the two and a half years we'd been in Hill End.
Mum and Emma and myself went to Bathurst, and she promptly bought a vacuum cleaner for us that was a good $50 to $80 pricier than the rough figure we'd been thinking of. Then, I was in another part of the store, looking at laptops because my little HP Mini 110 that I bought three years ago, which has been buggy from the start, is finally out of warranty, and my efforts to claim on that warranty before it expired were ridiculously frustrating and ultimately fruitless. I certainly wasn't looking to buy, I was getting an idea of prices, with a view to maybe saving up for one in the next six to twelve months. But my mum saw me looking at the couple that were in my price range, and argued me into letting her buy it for me, and in the end it was easier to say yes. So we walked out of the store with a $140 Volta cyclonic vacuum cleaner and a $481 Compaq HP laptop, both with three year warranties. The laptop, we'll be paying her back for once we're caught up with the rent and a couple of other pressing expenses, the vacuum cleaner is sort of my birthday present, six months early. A few more food purchases, and back home by about three.
While we were out, my step-dad had been busy in the front yard. With nothing but my secateurs (a birthday present to myself last year), a set of shears that have been out in the weather more than they've been in the shed, a handsaw we rescued from the tip months ago, and the antique spade and shovel that used to be my Grandpa's, he'd trimmed the entire side hedge, felled the feral plum tree I'd removed once (it grew back twice as big), pruned the climbing rose, cut back the lilacs, cut out all of the damned sacred bamboo, and removed all of the clumps of grass that were taking over the paths.
Yesterday, with me and mum doing nothing more than carrying green waste to the Hilux for ferrying to the tip, he cleared the rest of the front yard, dug up EVERY BLOODY AGAPANTHUS IN THE ENTIRE YARD, cut down the thicket of sacred bamboo in the backyard, cut down a box shrub taller than me and about four metres in diameter, and cleared the grass clumps from around the water tank, pavers, washing line and walkways. We must have gone to the tip half a dozen times or more, every time, the tray heaped to the height of the cab roof with green waste. Every path is clear, every walkway is walkable, and it's more than I could have done in six months solid work on my own, even if I had electric tools.
He's already planning to come back, he's going to put raised beds bordered with treated timber (termite proof!) in the front yard for me, right where we want them, and I could be harvesting my own vegetables by spring. We're going to end up with the compost heap we've always wanted but never had anywhere to put; the corner where the sacred bamboo was is perfect for it.
In the mean time, I'm going to move the sad, lovely-scented, deep purple-pink, somehow-still-surviving rose from the stupid place Grandma planted it under the plum trees where it never gets any sun to the front yard where it'll cover the bare section of the fence between the bright pink climbing rose and the deep red standard rose. Taua's talking about putting a dwarf lemon tree in one of the future vegetable beds, and I have wanted my own lemon tree for forever. We're actually talking about going and collecting quartz for the herb garden/rock feature Emma's wanted for years, which will fit beautifully on the circular slab of the top of the septic tank, which until yesterday was buried completely by agapanthas and honeysuckle and ivy. There was a birdbath in there too, at least a metre tall with a half metre wide basin; we couldn't even see it, it was so covered. We have taken pictures; the garden looks so different. The whole shape of it has changed. I can see the possibilities, but they're in reach, now. If I want to plant something, I can just go out and do it, without having to fight for the best part of a day to clear the space. I feel like the dreams I had for this garden are realistic, now, rather than just wishful thinking. I even talked to Taua about my long-term goal of removing the useless hedge under the kitchen window and replacing it with feijoa (pineapple guava), and he was immediately on board, talking about how he'd go about removing the existing plants, and about which variety is best and how many we'd need to establish the new hedge properly. I can't tell you how overwhelming this all is, I've been verging on floods of tears on and off for the last day. It's everything I've wanted, everything I hoped to achieve by two years ago and never managed to even get close to.
I only went into the charity shop to snoop for cheap books, you guys, I promise.
This entry was originally posted at http://iamshadow.dreamwidth.org/384507.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
We looked at it with longing, noted it had a matching other sofa of the same size and an armchair. We left, muttering things about having other things to spend our money on. (Meanwhile, our faithful secondhand furniture at home is super uncomfortable. My trusty grey sofa, which we paid $20 back in 2003, has drooped to the point of being impossible to get out of. Emma's armchair, the sole survivor of a pair that we bought for $50 each, has collapsed in the back and the cushion is disintegrating.) We went back a week later, and the set was still there. Told by the shop that they don't really divide sets, and that we could get the lot for the princely and affordable sum of $150, we paid for them outright, knowing that we'd never be able to transport them ourselves. My plan was to lure Mum into helping us with the offer of a free sofa, knowing that one of hers is a cruel and unusual torture device that's needed ditching for years. I rang her that night, and by chance, Saturday was the first day of the school holidays, and she could bring the Hilux and help us move the lot, possibly in a couple of trips.
She rang back the next day, saying that my step-dad had changed his mind and decided he did want to come after all, and that was pretty good, because we figured that though we would have managed moving the furniture with the three of us, Taua is really strong and it'd make the job easier.
Come Saturday, we met them in Bathurst, and with a combination of bickering and skill, Mum and Taua fitted all three pieces onto the back of the Hilux, and after a bit of shopping for dinner supplies, we got home, shifted out our old furniture, took it to the tip, and tried to clean the carpet prior to putting down the new sofa and chair. Our old vacuum is on its last legs, and the spare they brought with them from the stuff of ours we have stored in their garage obviously was, too, so we did the best we could, had dinner and watched tv.
Mum decided that we needed a new vacuum cleaner, and offered to pay for it. We eventually agreed; we'd been counting on the second vacuum working, since our first one is impossible to get bags for any more. So, the next morning, we got in the car with mum. Meanwhile, my step-dad had been eyeing off our incredibly overgrown garden, and the tiny, insignificant inroads I'd made in removing all of my late grandmother's incredibly invasive planting choices in the two and a half years we'd been in Hill End.
Mum and Emma and myself went to Bathurst, and she promptly bought a vacuum cleaner for us that was a good $50 to $80 pricier than the rough figure we'd been thinking of. Then, I was in another part of the store, looking at laptops because my little HP Mini 110 that I bought three years ago, which has been buggy from the start, is finally out of warranty, and my efforts to claim on that warranty before it expired were ridiculously frustrating and ultimately fruitless. I certainly wasn't looking to buy, I was getting an idea of prices, with a view to maybe saving up for one in the next six to twelve months. But my mum saw me looking at the couple that were in my price range, and argued me into letting her buy it for me, and in the end it was easier to say yes. So we walked out of the store with a $140 Volta cyclonic vacuum cleaner and a $481 Compaq HP laptop, both with three year warranties. The laptop, we'll be paying her back for once we're caught up with the rent and a couple of other pressing expenses, the vacuum cleaner is sort of my birthday present, six months early. A few more food purchases, and back home by about three.
While we were out, my step-dad had been busy in the front yard. With nothing but my secateurs (a birthday present to myself last year), a set of shears that have been out in the weather more than they've been in the shed, a handsaw we rescued from the tip months ago, and the antique spade and shovel that used to be my Grandpa's, he'd trimmed the entire side hedge, felled the feral plum tree I'd removed once (it grew back twice as big), pruned the climbing rose, cut back the lilacs, cut out all of the damned sacred bamboo, and removed all of the clumps of grass that were taking over the paths.
Yesterday, with me and mum doing nothing more than carrying green waste to the Hilux for ferrying to the tip, he cleared the rest of the front yard, dug up EVERY BLOODY AGAPANTHUS IN THE ENTIRE YARD, cut down the thicket of sacred bamboo in the backyard, cut down a box shrub taller than me and about four metres in diameter, and cleared the grass clumps from around the water tank, pavers, washing line and walkways. We must have gone to the tip half a dozen times or more, every time, the tray heaped to the height of the cab roof with green waste. Every path is clear, every walkway is walkable, and it's more than I could have done in six months solid work on my own, even if I had electric tools.
He's already planning to come back, he's going to put raised beds bordered with treated timber (termite proof!) in the front yard for me, right where we want them, and I could be harvesting my own vegetables by spring. We're going to end up with the compost heap we've always wanted but never had anywhere to put; the corner where the sacred bamboo was is perfect for it.
In the mean time, I'm going to move the sad, lovely-scented, deep purple-pink, somehow-still-surviving rose from the stupid place Grandma planted it under the plum trees where it never gets any sun to the front yard where it'll cover the bare section of the fence between the bright pink climbing rose and the deep red standard rose. Taua's talking about putting a dwarf lemon tree in one of the future vegetable beds, and I have wanted my own lemon tree for forever. We're actually talking about going and collecting quartz for the herb garden/rock feature Emma's wanted for years, which will fit beautifully on the circular slab of the top of the septic tank, which until yesterday was buried completely by agapanthas and honeysuckle and ivy. There was a birdbath in there too, at least a metre tall with a half metre wide basin; we couldn't even see it, it was so covered. We have taken pictures; the garden looks so different. The whole shape of it has changed. I can see the possibilities, but they're in reach, now. If I want to plant something, I can just go out and do it, without having to fight for the best part of a day to clear the space. I feel like the dreams I had for this garden are realistic, now, rather than just wishful thinking. I even talked to Taua about my long-term goal of removing the useless hedge under the kitchen window and replacing it with feijoa (pineapple guava), and he was immediately on board, talking about how he'd go about removing the existing plants, and about which variety is best and how many we'd need to establish the new hedge properly. I can't tell you how overwhelming this all is, I've been verging on floods of tears on and off for the last day. It's everything I've wanted, everything I hoped to achieve by two years ago and never managed to even get close to.
I only went into the charity shop to snoop for cheap books, you guys, I promise.
This entry was originally posted at http://iamshadow.dreamwidth.org/384507.html. Please comment there using OpenID.