autumn blooms

The demolition of the jungle has somewhat come to a grinding halt, what with all the fence building, wedding planning and potato season now in full swing with little time for thoughts towards the ramshackle farmhouse. Poor old farmhouse. 

We have just a little patch at the front of the house to tidy up. Amongst this particular corner of the jungle are (somewhere!) some rhododendrons, camellias and this creeping plant which seems to cover the lot. It has just started to flower with these pink blossoms in the autumn sunshine - does anybody know what it is?

As you can (sort of) see in this photo, the remainder of the old garden fence is still to be pulled down. That is the driveway running behind these bushes, the new fence now runs on the other side of the driveway, so the old fence is no longer required (and is kind of falling apart/running through the jungle!) To the right of the photo you can see the crater which was made when we pulled out a cypress tree which once stood there. Oh and Tess - site manager as always, just made it in! Back over to the left you can see a dead shrub and some dead stumps, this is a common sight throughout the farmhouse's garden, a lot of neglect but you can see that once this was a magnificent country garden.

Our problem is that this part of the garden has been left to go a bit crazy. I don't really want to get rid of it all but I feel the only option is to chop it off at the socks and see it come back next year (which I'm sure it would with such hardy plants). The mystery creeping pink bloom seems to have no beginning and no end so that will probably just be pulled out and come back next year. The rhododendrons and camellias have gone 'leggy' as my mum would say, in other words they are quite healthy up the top but have a lot of dead wood at the bottom, this happens basically due to years of not pruning and left to 'run wild'. 

The view that we have from the house is out this way to the south, as well as our house 'facing' this way, so this jungle of the garden is effectively blocking the potential view of our house as you drive up the driveway. Decisions, decisions! At this point we will wait for the mystery plant to finish flowering and then have a plan of attack. Stay tuned jungle - your days may be numbered!

P.S. I love how the petals make even my patchy, weedy grass look pretty :)

{ images by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella }