KitKat and Kikuya in the Garden

How many of you live in a suburb? Or in town?

I find it hard to stay living amongst houses abutting houses. I don’t mind the people but I miss the horizon. Suburbs give me no horizon. I love the busy energy of town but I miss the gentle lope of my animals.

Yet I am continually surprised at the beauty a person in the suburbs achieves. The gardens here are lovely. The walkways and parks serene.

And every thing I need is so close. I don’t need a car at all.

I can walk to the cafe, the supermarket, the little grocery store, a little Italian restaurant, a park. The fish and chip shop ( tonight) and my daughter tells me there is a great fried chicken place close by too.

This give me my 10,000 steps a day easily.

I have stayed in three different suburbs in Melbourne as my daughter moved around and she always finds good coffee and a nice local restaurant we can walk to.

Something new everywhere but always coffee.

Plus these darling little gardens.

You know how I love the challenge of a rescue garden. I almost have my daughters garden up to date but there is couch grass (pronounced cooch where I am from) in the garden. Also known as kikuyu.

It is great in the lawn but in the garden it is a horror.

And cats in the pots in the garden are a horror too! I wondered why everything was dead in that cat sized pot. But KitKat is so sweet in an aloof kind of way.

I have pulled the couch grass off of the front garden – only one big patch to go, and dug the roots out, which is a monster job, but you never fully get rid of this nasty little grass. Plus it is so hungry and invasive (it’s roots can travel under concrete for almost 6 foot) – it sucks up all the nutrients from other plants and even makes the soil acidic so nothing competes with it.

I am not into using chemicals.

So, I mowed the lawn and have heaped hot grass clippings on top of the cleared gardens for the nutrients and smothering possibilities but I hold little hope of my daughter being able to eradicate it.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated. We have lots of gardeners on these pages.

I did notice that the patch of violets seems couch free so I am digging out and transplanting the violet trailers. Something has to grow there or we give the grass a free reign. Maybe they will help.

Nature hates a vacuum.

It is windy and a bit rainy looking today. I am going to grab my cup and walk down to the coffee shop before it starts to rain.

Take care and talk soon

Celi