It’s not like I forgot I wanted this year to be the Year of the Garden but I have been busy and we’ve had some very wet weather.
Anyway I spent three-quarters of an hour continuing my deforestation after work one day last week.
Privet! Nasty stuff! Read more about this noxious bloody weed here if you are interested. Chopped down and poisoned a plant growing near our pool. And I chopped a rogue branch of my crepe myrtle.
Only stopped as the light was fading.
There is one more privet next to the pool to go. And go it will. Here it is dominating my mock orange hedge. How’d it get so tall so quickly? Wasn’t there at Christmas. Nasty, nasty stuff.
Luckily we have a large bin just for garden waste that the council collects every fortnight.
I chopped down more than one bin full. The bin emptied last week, I spent half an hour on the weekend cutting and snapping and sawing the cut plants to fit the bin again. And I still have more to fit in.
At this rate it is going to take me more than a year to clear the weeds and plants that are consuming my years, garden and house!
And the bin is quite a large wheely bin.
Oh, and let me share a photo of a spider that uses the hedge and privet as anchors for its web.
Nice, eh?
lucinda sans 
Those Sydney spiders!! Until we moved to Sydney I’d never heard of this one metre wide web phenomenon. I swear those spiders used to make webs overnight right at our front door: trapping us inside!
We don’t have that almost tropical speed of growth down south. Great to have such beautiful, lush gardens. Though yes – lots of work. I have to ask…do you have a frangipani? Please don’t say I’m being cliched…we never got tired of them during our 2 years in Sydney.
I have lots and lots of the huge spiders with huge webs. I don’t go down the back yard after dark. Who wants to walk into a spider web?
Sorry, no frangipanis. I don’t actually like them. Without leaves they look very ugly. Now gardenias, they are my favourite.
Both smell divine. I’ll never forget walking around Sydney at dusk with the smell of frangipanis and gardenias. Those things die in the cold down here!
Some people potter around in the garden with a pair of secateurs snipping here and there – but you? Indiana Jones of the garden you are, giant spiders and all..
Lol, made me laugh and splutter over my porridge this morning, Jo.
It is a jungle, full of wildlife. But like Indiana, if I see snakes, that’s it. All gardening is off.
My parents also have some spiders that build huge webs between the posts on their front porch – you have to look carefully before walking out in the morning!
All your greenery looks lovely! Glad your council takes away garden waste – we have to compost it or pay for removal.
Don’t you just hate it when you get caught in a web. Especially when you can’t find the spider!!
I live in a very leafy area so if the Council didn’t collect the green waste we would be stumped! And there would probably be a lot of dumping. Our council turns our green waste into compost and mulch, so that’s good.