Trimming, clipping and shaping hedges!
Maybe it appeals to my compulsive tendencies, or to perfectly primping my environment to the nth degree, or that the chloroform is intoxicating.
I love everything about my yard, the smell, the coolness and the way it complements my architecture. I have an old park bench that I covered in chicken wire, and planted a climbing fig to cover it, so far the arm rests and half of the back and seat are being taken over. When it's done, it will look as if I'm a masterful topiarist, only it is a living sculpture instead. It is in my ideas book 'urban oasis' if anyone's curious.

Barbara, what a piece of heaven you have! your fruit trees have their ball gowns on.
Gardens are a nice distraction to the indoors, and visa versa. How's yours coming along?

@midesign0401,
Hi Megan, yes it is heaven, I take a look at it all and sigh in happiness!!!
As for the house, there's a bit of money to go ahead but this is now our busy time of the year, as we are hay contractors spending many many hours in tractors.
However, I intend to get onto the next job ASAP which is laying the sill tiles around the veranda.
It's a bit of an old fashioned look but these tiles will protect our limestone bricks from water stain when it's raining constantly in winter. The water will run off the sill tile and drop just a little shy of the bricks.
Limestone is not only rough in our case but very porous and we also plan to have these tiles on all the window sills too, like the old tan brick houses from the 50's and the chocolate brown sill they had on their windows,only ours are cream not chocolate.
It will be easy to wipe the sills from time to time and keep the house neat and clean.
Once these tiles ar in place, 80mtrs of tiles, then we can concrete the veranda and then the roof iron can go on hopefully before Christmas.
We have all the bricks for the home but need to find another $16,000 for all the rest of the windows.
We are only using our own income, not borrowing at all so we have to do a budget and see if we can allow the money for the windows as the income we earn from Sept to Dec, is about 90% of our income for the entire year.
It's taken 7 years now to get to this point having spent more that $80,000 already as I'm keeping a diary of spending.
Goodness knows how much a 30+ square home with pool would cost if we had to pay a builder!!!
We are owner builders and we've done everything ourselves including digging all the foundation and laying over 5000 standard bricks and digging the hole for the pool and fitting the pool including all the plumbing.
We put in all the concrete stumps, layed the floor and fitted all the underfloor plumbing with a plumber friend guiding us along.
We also put up all the framing and roof trusses, so we are absolutely chuffed with our abilities and progress.

Wow, a busy time of year indeed!
Theres a great deal of pressure before windows go in, but everything seems a little better once they're in. They can be pricey, but unfortunately, theres little scope to cut costs on them. Your limestone sounds glorious. I have a solid stone fence, driving all the way out to cadtlemaine to get the rock, I wouldn't have any else as my number one pick. not to rub in in again, but the creamy tones in the limestone with shading and aging will be further enhanced with the Jasper colourbond. Eventually there will be some aging that extends to the darker creams towards caramels, and this is when it will all settle into itself. The green and gold fields around you will be such a breath of fresh air, and your house will be a part of the horizon, and won't just look as if it just landed on the earth, like so many houses with modern material and colour, they often lack a connection to their site. Yours will be a real home from the get go.
I feel guilty about destracting you from your work, and rest time.
No more from me!

@midesign0401,
Hi Megan, please don't apologise, you're not distracting me at all in fact I love chatting.
I did have a laugh when you mentioned the Jasper ha-ha, all jokes aside, I don't hate it at all and I so want the colours to gell and you're comments just make me feel far more confident, as I have no idea really.
I do think allot about how I'm going to do something, gosh it keeps me awake at night something terrible at times, but I'm no designer and have no experience but ultimately, I have to like it even if no one else does but I wouldn't want that either!!

Your fence sounds beautiful, truth be known, I tried to talk hubby into collecting local rock to build our home, as there's plenty of free rock in the area but it was in the too hard basket I think for him, at 70 now and me at 57, it's at the wrong end of our lives, such a big task, although we've still got plenty of living to do!!
Laying square cut bricks is much easier allbeit 560mmx250mm and 25kg each, you know you're carrying them that's for sure.
I guess I best sign off, as I didn't get to bed till 1.30am last night deciding to cook a double batch of kisses and a chocolate cake to keep us going, can't do it in the daytime as there's too much other stuff to do outside.
A cow to milk every morning, cows calving at present and our contract work to keep going, it's busy busy busy but still time for a coffee!!
I was able to sleep in this morning though, so I'm fine and can get by with less sleep here and there.
Thankyou for your correspondence, I really enjoy it.
We will have to meet when the home is finished, don't forget my invitation!!!

midesign0401,
Hi Megan,
I just posted a comment to Robyn that you'll probably see about having painted some samples this morning of Harbour Stone, Earth, Stucco, Lexicon and Castlegate.
I like the Castlegate now over Earth for my large viewing window.
Don't like the Harbour Stone or even Stucco as both these colours are too coloured for me, it's hard to put what I mean into words but I feel like the room would be closing in on me, with so much depth of colour.
I do however, like the Lexicon you suggested for the roof and now I need a much cooler colour for the walls, perhaps an off white or a very pale version of Stucco or Harbour Stone but certainly not with the amount of colour that both these samples have.
I have a 1/2 strength Stucco but it made very little difference on the sample.
My daughter, who is very good with colours interestingly said, that the Harbour Stone sample colour has allot of yellow and the Earth has allot of red and that they don't match at all, even though both these samples have the same three tints!!
As I said to Robin, I have oodles of time but I'm a step closer to knowing what I don't want at least.
When you see a colour on paper so to speak, it can really stare at you for all the right or wrong reasons.

I love planting up best. And i love to just walk around it in the morning complimenting my flora beauties! :-)