Long term readers of this site will recall that, 3 years ago in October, I bought myself a new car.

I have been very happy with it but, with 2 adults and 4 children it is now impractical due to the fact that it only has 5 seats.

As a result we have been looking around for a new car.

Four months ago we started by going to have a look at the Hyundai Trajet but ended up getting distracted by the new version of my car, now available in a 7 seater model.

The trouble with that was that, after looking at the new Santa Fe, the Trajet looked like… Well, to be honest it looked like shit!

Okay, it’s not the fault of the Trajet, apparently it’s a very fine car from the reports I have heard from happy owners. The trouble is that you just can’t compare the two cars as they are both in completely different classes.

No matter though because, when we started to do the figures we realised that to afford it we would have to make too many sacrifices and, despite the salesman making progressively better deals for us, eventually we had to say no.

It’s amazing how four months can make a difference!

Four months gave us the chance to come down from the “WOW” that we had with the Santa Fe and gave us the opportunity to reconsider the Trajet.

So we went back to the dealer to have a look.

Yeah, it still looks cheap compared to the Santa Fe, but we weren’t going to let that worry us and this time we had a very good look.

We asked the dealer to work figures based on both cars and we got a surprise. The Trajet had gone up by $1000 due to the arrival of an updated model where as the Santa Fe had remained stable. The fleet discount that I get had changed making the Santa Fe a little better value than the Trajet.

The sweetener was the fact that, as it’s the end of the year and dealers are trying to remove the 2006 stock from the floor, they were offering free registration, free delivery and free stamp duty.

Done!

With the Santa Fe now effectively three thousand dollars cheaper it was now much more affordable.

So with the deal done, now all I have to do is wait. We were hoping to have it by the end of this week but it now looks like it will be early next week.

It was my aim to finish the pond for my birthday but the cost of the liner was more than I had anticipated so I accepted that I would not be able to get the stones needed to finish it off straight away.

My mother got me a Buddha fountain statue for my birthday which I positioned as the feature and that’s where I got up to.. Close, but not done.

A week or so later I decided to cement the stepping stones in place as they were prone to movement, something I would not have done if I had got the stones already, so I guess it worked out for the best. I also found a really clever little light that would sit up inside the bowl in the Buddha’s hand so I put that in and connected it all up to the pump.

Finally I got a trailer load of rainbow stone to finish it off. It did not take me very long to spread it out.

Above and below – Finished product… Almost!

With a quarter of a trailer of stone still left over I found myself wondering what to do with it.

I had already decided during construction that I was going to leave the other pond intact, a decision that was made when I discovered that there were fish living and breeding quite contently in there, but it was the excess stones that made me decide to tie the two ponds together in a common theme.

My dad had already suggested the removal of the ground cover around the second pond and because of the fairly minimalist feel of the first pond I felt that this was a good idea as it was too heavy. I felt it would be easy to get rid of this plant and continue the stones back.

That’s when I re-discovered the garden kerbing that the previous owners had put down to seperate the garden beds from the lawn. Thankfully I was able to lift the concrete up, breaking it at the expansion joints and then move it out of the way.

I could now call the pond finished. I later put some lillies and some koi into it, the lillies look great but the koi are being coy! They find hiding spots under the bowl of the fountain and between the pots where the lilies sit. I am hoping that they will start coming out when I feed them soon.

Finished Pond.

Finished Pond.

Buddha statue with water-cooled halogen light.

Buddha statue at night.

Night view of the pond with statue lighting up and solar powered garden lights bordering the garden.

The old pond, tied in with the new one.

So.. Now for the next project.. I don’t know what it is yet, but I’m itching to get started!

With winter passing the weeds had taken over the bush garden causing the pea gravel to get further buried under the sand.

Unfortunately I had not taken photos of the project at this stage so I cannot show you what the garden looked like when I moved in or what the bridge over the old pond looked like. I do have a photo of Cameron by the new garden bed, the overgrown bush garden in the background.

With spring and the weather starting to get warmer I was more motivated to return outside and with the school holidays at the start of October I made a push to try and get finished before my birthday in the middle of the month.

The first part of the project was to clear out the weeds and all the pea gravel. This was done by using a fryer basket that I had bought from the supermarket and shovelling the sand and gravel through it putting the sand into a big pile and the gravel into the wheelbarrow.

Some of the sand I had already used to make a rock garden at near to the back bedroom windows and also had spread on the new garden beds to raise them up a little. The rest was used to level out the garden.

With the garden finally cleared out it was time think about the actual construction of the pond.

Starting to dig I discovered that, during the building of the house, the plasterers had buried the excess plaster in a hole, right where I wanted to put the pond. It was quite a large thick chunk but thankfully easily broke up when smashed with my shovel.

Top left – Using poles and sting to mark out the area I used old paving slabs to form the sides of the pond. I then mixed up some concrete and rendered the sides to hold them in place and formed the bottom of the pond, curving it to make it deeper in the middle but still allowing for structual support along the sides. Top Right – After the pond was formed I used some black plastic to put down in the garden area as a way of keeping the weeds out and to stop the future stones from getting eaten by the dirt. I then used pond liner to fill out the pond sealing it for the water to be added. Bottom Right – Lobelia seedlings had been bought a few weeks prior and put into these pots while they grew.

With the plastic down, the pond is really starting to take shape.

To get the pond liner to form its shape, the next stage was to fill the pond. I also took this time to plant the lobelia seedlings.

When I first moved into this house, I started to formulate an idea for a new pond in the back garden. There actually was pond already, but it didn’t look very good so my plan was to fill it in when I create the new one.

I knew where I wanted to put it too. As you come off the patio into the back garden would be perfect.

The previous owners had built a very Australian feel bush garden in this area but it was held in by border paving that was originally designed to form a circle but they had attempted to form an oval with it. As a result, there were gaps where the concrete blocks didn’t quite meet up.

The lawn was starting to push into this garden and, as I discovered when I tried to remove the grass runners, there was no plastic underneath the pea gravel meaning that there was nothing stopping the weeds from growing up through the small stones and nothing to stop the small stones ending up buried in the sand.

The first thing I started to do was remove the lawn along the edge of this garden so I could plant a couple of citrus trees.

I decided to use the border edging from the bush garden to border the new garden bed that I was creating thus causing the gravel to fall further into sand.

With the idea of the pond still in my head I bought some more border pavers and some box hedge to divide the future feature from the existing garden.

Around the same time I also attempted to plant a lot of seedings into the new garden but unfortunately, due to the cat digging them up, very few survived.

With the new slabs and box hedge at the back and citrus trees at the front, the new garden bed has taken shape.

At this point the new pond was a distant plan but something happened to speed up the development.

Above the existing pond sat a bridge. We had been warned by the previous owners that it was a feature only and not really strong enough for people to stand on. I knew that I would have to get rid of this bridge because it was not keeping with the plan I had in mind.

Of course, moving a bridge like that would have been a lot of work so it was not something I was really rushing to get done, however nature had other plans.

Rather carelessly, the previous owner had built the bridge out of untreated pine and then allowed the pine to come in contact with the ground..

Great meal for the termites!

And thus ended the bridge.

And with the onset of winter, the work on the garden also ended.

Mandy approached me this morning asking me how well I know the Swan Valley.

“Umm”, I replied, thinking that she wanted to know where a particular restaurant or vineyard was. “I know where it is!”

“How about Baskerville?” she asked.

Baskerville is on the other side of Midland and the Swan Valley sits in between Midland and our house. Clearly it is not in the Swan Valley, but that is not what the luncheon invite implied. (And by implied, I mean stated categorically.)

Neither Mandy or myself were sure how they managed to decide that Baskerville was in the Swan Valley, however I figured that as it was only 5 kilometres, it’s not really that far a stretch.

Mandy suggested that it was because they were going to a brewery and they have lots of breweries in the valley.

We both laughed!

With that I also declared that, as we are only about 5 km from the valley that we are also Swan Valley residents.

The reasons are thus -

There is a market gardener around the corner from our house who has a small vineyard of a couple of hundred vines.

There is a brewery in Malaga. (admittedly it’s a “U Brew” home brewery and not a boutique micro-brewery.)

There is a restaurant in Ballajura. Italian, don’t know if it’s any good but it’s often busy.

The local council area is the City of Swan.

Yup, life sure is sweet here in the valley!

This morning we took the bus into the city. It’s become something that we do quite regularly as transporting 2 adults and 4 kids around is not the easiest thing to do when your car only holds five.

Thankfully it’s incredibly cheap to head do. A $7.70 family day rider lets us travel anywhere across the perth public transport network.. All day. We make little excursions out of it.

Today we went into the city to go shopping, had lunch, popped into the art gallery, saw a global warming protest concert, went into Northbridge where they are setting up for the annual festival (which is tonight), had Es Telar (an Indonesian Ice dessert), stopped by Hyde park and played for a while before catching the bus to get home.

It had been overcast all day, but not cold, and the forecast had been for thunderstorms later.

There was lightning in the sky when we got off our bus and the distant roll of thunder. Four hundred metres to walk home.. No problem.

Emily and Cameron had run off ahead leaving James and Thomas with Lia and myself. With maybe a little more than 50 metres from the house I suddenly got hit by a big drop of water.

“Run” I exclaimed.

So we did and no sooner than we got into the house, the rain started bucketing down.

The other night we had so many kids knocking on our door with cries of “Trick or Treat”

As much as I wanted to berate them about the adoption of yet another Americanism diluting our culture, I just couldn’t do it. Some of them had gone to such effort with their costumes.

So instead I apologetically told them that I didn’t have any treats.

Perhaps next year I should soften my attitude to Halloween and invest in some lollies.