Bench Surfing

Picturesque Pialligo (4 of 10)

Every garden needs a work area, a place where you keep your mulch, build your incinerator pit and, in my case, keep your chook poo tea! We call our work area Fyshwick, a reference to the suburb in Canberra that is the city's version of our garden's work area, industrial and not overly pretty. (Our Fyshwick doesn't have a red light area though.)

Now there has to be a green belt between the view from the house and Fyshwick. I don't consider ugly an acceptable view. Fyshwick, Canberra, has Pialligo, a delightful 'suburb' full of old farms and garden centres. We have a Pialligo too. And in Pialligo we have, you guessed it, a bench to sit and admire the view. A bench with wooden slats skillfully restored by Ruprecht. It sits next to a wheelbarrow full of flowers and is guarded by our 3 metal galahs. It looks out onto our self seeded silver birches and a thriving garden where once there was nothing. We haven't had a drink there yet, must be time to rectify that!

A Trip to the Country (5 of 10)

On the same side of the garden we have developed a cottage garden. It was once overgrown with white lily plants and rabbits. We pulled one of them out and fenced out the other. We still have some lilies and unfortunately we still have some rabbits.

The cottage garden is now thick with plants and just gets better every year - many of the plants are self seeded. The bench here isn't in the garden, there's no room, but it sits prettily in front of the flowers. This is our classiest bench - white wrought iron, quite Parisienne in style. Ooh La La. It looks lovely in the foreground of all the flowering plants and the view from the seat is a panoramic shot from the other end of the garden to the house. It's right next to the vegetable garden and usually in the shade. It's a bit of an oasis when we take a break from working on the veggies.

5 benches to go now. I am writing this, soaking up the sun on our deck. Today is a magnificent day. I'd almost call it Spring. The deciduous trees are showing their baby leaves, one tree is in full blossom and the wattle is flowering everywhere. I am itching to start working in the garden again. It's such a peaceful and rewarding garden to work in. And there's always that drink at the end of the day. Now which bench shall I choose for that?

2 more next time - how about the back garden? There's the wooden bench in front of the espaliered fruit trees (a whole 2 of them) and the white chairs in front of my rainbow masterpiece. The view from both is through the washing line but, hey, you can't have everything.