Decorating the garden with #HDYGG

I'm currently in South Africa for 5 weeks and extremely busy with the Santa Shoebox project that I'm sure you've heard me talk/blog/go on about by now. There will be plenty of posts related to South Africa for HDYGG as I'm having some free time also and visiting many townships where lots of exciting gardening is happening.

I'm missing autumn, I haven't had an autumn since April 2014 in the Southern Hemisphere and it's nowhere near as beautiful as the pictures everyone is posting now.

Before I left Dubai, the temp had dropped a little, meaning I could get out in the garden and have a clean and tidy up and start to put some of my ideas to plan.

I prepared the sand to grow some grass, it's been done before as you can see and at one point we did have the whole area covered, but if you look closely you'll see most of it is weed, but it was green.
I've chosen grass seed tag 'grows well in difficult conditions' I emptied all the pots from failed seed growing attempts and after spreading the seed, sprinkled compost over the top and watered well.

I also got my craft on and dragged this old piece of furniture from the shed round the house and gathered up all the bits and pieces I'd collected and ideas from my scrapbook and created this.

It means now I have somewhere to store my gardening equipment and cloths etc for the table and as the unit is beyond use, I'm happy to leave it in the garden till it no longer stands. Hubby of course wants to treat it so it'll last forever but honestly, we'll only be here another 2 years and without rain and frost I don't see it being too much of an issue.

I've also enjoyed decorating the table and being outdoors more, especially in the evenings. I do have to remember to bring the candles in at night as they melt during the day, but again not a major issue as they're in containers anyway.

I enjoyed the garden much more in South Africa in our previous 2 houses, we were able to spend more time outside and of course there was a lot more colour.

Here's a little taste of some of the projects I did there.

These flowers were picked from the garden

Homemade bird feeders

It's spring in South Africa and there is a riot of colour, I'd forgotten how colourful this country is.

 So many beautiful trees

 I really wanted to get out the car here and go for a walk, but I was visiting a game reserve and had to stay in my car.

Jacaranda. 

I have no idea what this plant is but it's petals were like paper

Ground cover

Scrapbooking and ideas for #HDYGG

There is plenty of software available to help with planning your garden, but as I like to physically have things in front of me and flip from page to page rather than try to locate tabs and saved pages, so I decided to make a physical scrap book of my plans for the garden, look at what I've already got, what I've done before in the garden and ideas for future planning.

Next weeks blog post will showcase gardens and outdoor space in the UK. We never really did much in our garden in the UK as it was fairly well established and with me working and having 5 kids at home it really was just another project I didn't have time for. Although I did do a fun halloween project with the kids which I'll blog about nearer the time.

I have a house full of arts and crafts pieces that I keep meaning to get round to making into something including spray paints, beads, coloured string and material. I've opted that whatever design I come up with will be bright to inject some colour into the beigeness of the desert sand and walls in our garden.

I've been gathering various bits and pieces together from around the house that I can use in the garden, including an old dressing table I had every intention to do up as well as ornaments and lights I can use outside and make some more floor cushions and create some kind of protection from the sun. 

I already have a table, chairs, parasol and 2 sun loungers as well as a gazebo and several deck chairs and an inflatable bright pink chair.

There are areas previously used for planting and we have a pile of bricks at the back of the house I will use to build raised beds with so I can mix in some soil rather than just plant straight into the sand.

This is what I've been creating over the past few weeks to inject some colour back into the desert and now the weather has cooled since our UK trip we've been able to spend some time outside in the evenings.

I just have to remember to bring the candles in during the day as I keep forgetting and they're melting from the heat of the sun.

Last weekend we took a walk round Safa Park as the weather has started to cool and found these amazing mushrooms growing in the shade.