Kate and Andrew Scott

Month of the Garden

Honestly, what did we do with all that spare time we obviously had before we bought the house? Now we spend almost every weekend doing something house related, I fear we’re becoming one of those boring couples who has only one thing to talk about, be it their dog, their kid, their woes; for us it’s currently the garden in the continuing saga of ‘Our House’.

So, what have we been up to? Well we’re proud to say that we’ve landscaped and planted the front yard and also have a bit of a bash at tiding up the backyard, see photos. Obstacles were overcome, won’t bore you about it here but suffice to say that digging two holes deep enough to submerge the garden frames in the front yard was not as easy as one would expect and Melbourne seems to be suffering from a bush fly boom. We’re pretty happy with the results. Sure, it’s not the garden of Versailles but then frankly we don’t really like gardening so only plants with tags such as ‘hardy’ made it into our landscape, with a promise that we’d water them once or twice a week (in accordance with water restrictions) if they promised to grow and live with minimum intrusion from us. Hopefully it’s a plan, just wish the plants had been a bit more communicative when we’d put it to them so we could be assured that they were ‘on board’ as it were. 

So, with our weekends pretty much accounted for, there hasn’t been a great deal of time left over for other pursuits, especially when you factor in the two 4,000 word assignments Andrew had to write this month for his Finsia course. We had a few lunches and dinners with a host of lovely people, including Naomi’s farewell as she moves to England to be with her gorgeous man, Charles. You know it’s love when a woman willingly leaves a warm bed at 4am to climb a mountain so her partner can photograph a sunrise. We caught up with the lovely Anneliese for dinner at the local African restaurant we’ve been meaning to try for ages, and which then featured in an ‘Age’ Epicure write-up, making it impossible to book a table at for several weeks, as well having afternoon tea with Kate’s Nana, for a spot of plant shopping. (See how we cunningly integrated socialising and house stuff together there?). Kate also managed to finish knitting a scarf, of which she is massively proud, this may be the first craft project she has ever finished, bar a couple of cross-stitched bookmarks.

We also managed to make it to bookclub where one of our members, Chris Pegler, had his brother, Tim Pegler, come and speak about his book ‘Game as Ned’ which we’d all had the pleasure of reading. It was the first bookclub where the author was in attendance (although we all (well just the women really) long for the day that Marcus Zusak takes up his standing invitation and agrees to attend). It was a really interesting night, great to have insight into what it’s like to write a book and the processes involved. And Tim was a great bloke and bore our questioning with good grace and lots of patience!

So there you have it, October. On reflection possibly not the most earth-shattering of months but that said we have achieved a massive amount, on, you guessed it, progress on the house!