How are you spending your New Years Eve????

Well, guess what we're doing for New Years Eve.  Were up early this morning, did a 45 minute walk around our new neighbourhood and it was soooo quiet and peaceful.  Then got into the real work for the day.
Our two Ornamental Pear trees have been waiting patiently for us to plant them in.  Decided that it was a job we could not put off any longer.  So in they went.
Ben did some final work on the front deck, washed it off and we started the staining of the timber.  It's been a while since we finished the deck and leaving it for a while ensured that the wood leached a bit which is what was advised by a few experts on decking.  Used an "Intergrain" wood stain in the merbau colour.

So what's planned for tonight.  Well a nice quiet BBQ at home with the family.  Will be finding a comfortable spot in front of the tele with a glass of wine in hand to see in the New Year.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY!

Our First Xmas @ the ponds.

We're so excited to be in our own home for this Xmas.  Our tree went up at the end of November.  Yes, we were early I know, but we just couldn't wait to see our tree up. 

On the 3 December we went to the The Ponds Christmas Party.  It was a very popular event with over 300 people attending.  We were served a nice Xmas dinner and of course, Santa made his grand entrance.  The kids seemed to love it.  It was really nice to meet other residents of the estate as well.

Last Sunday was the Carols at The Ponds.  Wow, what a big turnout of people on a not so warm night.  It was all really well organised with food stalls, rides for the kids and we were thoroughly impressed by the lovely fireworks display at the end.

So good to see all the houses decorated for Xmas and we spend our evening walks enjoying the Xmas lights as we walk by the neighbours homes.

Just loving our new neighbourhood.

MERRY CHRISTMAS BLOGGERS!

13 Week Maintenance Inspection

Wow, how time flies!  Last week we had our 13 week maintenance inspection with Tim from the contracted maintenance company who came over to check the list of defects we had noted.  7 was the magic number of listed faults we found.  They were all quite minor really eg. a missing cover to the light switch in our laundry, a faulty front door handle and a slight crack to the bulkhead in the kitchen.

We were pleasantly surprised to have the maintenance company ring us that very same afternoon to schedule in the work that was required to fix the issues.  We really didn't think that we would hear back from them until the new year.  We now have confirmed dates for trades people to come in next year to fix the defects.

Needless to say, we were very impressed.   We're also really happy to note that we are yet to find any major problems with the house so far.  Well done Eden Brae.

 

Decisions, decisions...

Who knew choosing turf was going to be such a confusing job?  There are quite a few varieties of turf to choose from:

Buffalo - (Sir Walter, Sapphire, Matilda etc.) is drought tolerant. Low mainenance, maintains it's colour in Winter. Less invasive into gardens than Kikuyu or Couch therefore less maintenance.Less mowing than Kikuyu (approx. 50% in Summer). Requires less water.

Couch- has a fine leaf and texture.  It has a rich green colour but in frost prone areas it will become brown over winter.

Kikuyu-Needs full sun, easy to grow due to the runners it sends, fast growing so needs mowing at least once a week during summer.  As it sends out runners, it does invade garden beds.

So after much research we decided we go for a soft leaf Buffalo called Sapphire.  It is a fine and smaller leafed buffalo variety.

We used 7 ton of 80/20 turf underlay to level the front area before the turf could be laid.  Was totally back breaking work which we did mostly in the evenings as it was so much cooler to work when the sun was down.

80 sqm of turf

Also planted a row of Japanese box hedges along the front wall  and Society Garlic along the  front of the deck.

We were lucky that it rained almost every day the first week after the turf was laid.  It's been almost two weeks now and it seems to have survived and looks to be growing well. It might even need to be mowed soon.