motivation can come from the most unlikely of places...

on Sunday I had a visitor, our over the fence neighbour... not someone we have an awful lot to do with other than when our driveway bushes are encroaching onto his property

which they were doing and apparently breaking 3 panels on our shared fence *bugger*

he was quite amiable about it, as was I, I mean we can't exactly shirk our* responsibilities here can we?

he wanted to prune some of the bushes away from the fence and we'd sort out the fence repairs at a later date... and he wanted us to dispose of the prunings since they were ours*

*the fence is actually common property between us and the owner of the other duplex on the block, a fact I've only just found out, so technically we should share any costs... when it comes to the fence repair we might do that

the next day I decided, might be a good time to start my driveway gardening project and as it happened my dear Hubby had promised me a day of helping in the garden as part of his Valentines gift to me (despite his complete disdain for all things gardening)

I had thought it was a reasonably cool day (after our 40 degree heatwave), there was a nice breeze and I got started.... I soon realised we needed a chainsaw and that's a Hubby job

By lunchtime our driveway had gone from this....

this is actually an old photo from a couple of years ago, I forgot to take a recent Before shot but you get the idea I hope

And when we were finished with it, it looked like this....

 

By this time the forecast had been proven horribly wrong and it was turning into a 39 degree day, we were both hot, tired and verging on sunburnt so it was time to stop.

The result is maybe a tad more extreme than I had first envisaged but we really hate these bushes and hate to prune so the intention is to rake out all the crap, get rid of the stumps, then weed mat and pea gravel it and plant smaller plants that are able to survive drought conditions (cos less face it I can't remember the last time it rained here!) and won't grow into a tangled mess and push down the fence.

It probably peeved the neighbour to see us chopping the day after he had pruned, but that's life and if we don't act when the impulse strikes us then it doesn't get done. Also I don't know what the neighbour who shares the common ground with us thinks but she's never done anything to improve the garden so I guess that might speak for itself.

Either way we're doing something about it and when it's done I'm sure everyone will be happy and too bad if they're not hehehe

To Be Continued.....