Many hands make light work

I have never been so grateful for our wonderful neighbours, who helped clean up after we fell the trees in our driveway over the weekend. 

It was a massive job, that is not completely finished, but we smashed it, thanks to them. 

It's totes corny, but it's like the Neighbours song goes - "good neighbours who become good friends".

We've been neighbours for over 10 years, nearly fifteen actually. We have kids around the same age, but haven't been close friends or socialised for that long. Only in the last seven years or so. 

Back to the trees. They were huge Melelucas, by my guess probably about 50 years old and starting to become dangerous. The decision was made to cut them down. We had a gorgeous shady driveway, and getting used to it without the trees will take a while to get used to.

Hubby hired a cherry picker to cut the tops out of the huge trees, they would have been close to fifteen metres high. There was LOADS of mess in the driveway and over two days we managed to clean most of it up. Glad we live at the end of the cul de sac because the road was covered with it, and our job would have harder if it was in the middle of a normal street.

The bigger logs remain, and they will end up being cut up for firewood. 

It's still going to take a bit to clean up around the trees and along the fence, there's garden beds under all that mess and I can't wait for it to look gorgeous again. There is still some tree trunks to be dropped and cut up, it's looking fairly shabby! I did learn to use an electric chainsaw! Pretty cool.

We left the red flowering gums, we all like them and the birdlife they bring. I know it as Eucalyptus ficifolia, one of the latin plant names I remember!

A couple of branches got broken off accidently when the taller trees were being felled. I couldn't let the flowers get thrown away, I now have a huge bunch on the table and I gave some to our pet birds.

An InLinkz Link-up

It's the time of year..

It's the start of another week, thankfully, a much cooler week. How was the weather in the southern states? Crazy; but we survived, thanks to air conditioning and swimming pools.

It's the last week of the school holidays in SA. Izzy will start full days at kindy this year. I will have to cherish having her home this week, I will miss her and be thinking of how her day is going...for the first couple of weeks. She did so well with pre-entry last term, I am sure she will be fine, although tired at the end of the day.

Eucalyptus Ficifolia at the front gate. Just to keep us gardening
nerds on our toes they've changed the name of this tree
to Corymbia ficifolia. It's native to WA.

I love this time of year. The way the sun makes the garden look as it sets. The colours are spectacular, the greens striking and the whites brighter.

Musk Lorikeet 

I love the native birds that come to visit. Particularly the lorikeets that come to feed on the Red flowering gums in the driveway every year. I stood out there watching them a couple of nights ago, such a treat. We've seen rainbow lorikeets too and the usual cockies that all arrive at sunset with their raucous banter, in the gums that line our back fence.

Have you ever seen a drop tail lizard? There are lots of them in our garden, thousands. The girls and I sat out on the grass in front of the veggie patch, watching for them darting around for a bake in the morning sun. We caught a few when I was a kid, they're bloody quick, I don't know how we did it. 

Common Garden skink

I did try to take better photos of them, but when I crouched down Sum would climb on my back, choking me with her arms around my neck. She loves doing it, like a clingy monkey.

I thought this one might be preggers, but apparently they lay eggs at this time of year. I've never seen any, I'm surprised, there are shitloads of them running around.

What do you love about this time of year?
Do you have any natives coming to visit your backyard?