Home sweet home

Our new home and neighbourhood is a far cry from our previous place in Portland. There we had 5 acres of orchard, lavender grove, paddocks, huge garden beds, a gazebo, sheds galore and no close neighbours...... and now we have a paved driveway, a pebble 'front garden',  a paved courtyard at the rear,  a handkerchief-sized lawn and neighbours on both sides of us in very close proximity. But how lovely it is not to see gum leaves scattered everywhere and have large swathes of peeling bark littering the driveway and lawn.  It is pure bliss to walk three steps to hang out the washing and two steps to pick my parsley. However, our new surrounds and those of the neighbouring street are indeed very, very neat.   Roses abound in all their glory and natives are pretty and well looked after - nothing straggly here. I will definitely have to lift my horticultural game. Here are three views of the neighbourhood.

 

There is a lovely lakeside development nearby that people kayak and swim in. Houses that front onto this lake have their own private pontoon. However, there is access to the lake for everyone with lots of landscaped grassed areas with seats at intervals around the lake.




Best of all is the Wetlands Walk, a minute from our front door. It's around 20 minutes a circuit so sometimes I turn around and do it again the other way.

Opposite our house is an old cemetery. It is fenced off with a lovely brushwood fence and native landscaping. It was once the site of the Tabernacle Church erected in 1846 by early settler the Rev Ridgeway Newland for his Congregational flock. Today half a dozen old tombstones remain; an elaborate wrought iron gate guards the entrance. It is lovely to look out of the bedroom window and see the trees, though they are home to marauding magpies and screeching cockatoos.