Our house came with a backyard and as such, I was able to claim a little patch of grass as my own for the very first time, ever.
Growing up in a city, I used to be fairly dismissive of the 'Australian Dream' embodied by a quarter acre block complete with a patch of grass for kids to run around on. However, I have somewhat come around to the idea and can see why having one's own little bit of outdoor space can be a lovely thing.
It's a pity then that we never use ours.
It has the potential to become a nice outdoor space but at the moment, it's everything but. It's wild and overgrown with bits of building materials still lying around from the renovation. The plants and trees aren't anything special, the soil is terrible (mostly sand) and gave us a pretty dismal crop of vegetables, which have now all been ripped out of the ground anyway. In summer, we get a lot of mosquitoes and without any form of furniture there, there is nowhere comfortable for me to sit if Hugo wants to play. We have a sandpit that gets covered in fallen leaves and some rusty toy trucks that belonged to Chris. To make matters worse, it is a fair bit lower than the level of the house so it involves going up and down a long flight of stairs. From the house, supervision is very limited because of a tree canopy blocking most of it out.
It needs work!
I am hopeful though that one day, it can really work. We are starting to hatch a few ideas that would radically improve its usability, child-friendliness and aesthetic. For a start, I want to get rid of the big tree to give us a beautiful view we are completely missing out on from the house. We also want to extend our little balcony into a deck that we can use to have lunch on or engage in messy activities like painting for example. Then, we might have a deck at ground level covered by the deck above to have a nice shady undercover spot to hang hammocks and sit around, even on a rainy day. I want to plant a succulent garden which would be beautiful and super low maintenance. We want to put a little treehouse above the sandpit which would help keep the sand clean and provide shade. And obviously it would be super fun. As for the stair, there isn't much we can do about that but soon the children will be old enough to get up and down safely on their own.
So it is a work in progress rather than a lost cause. Maybe we can make a start with my Dad in a couple of months because it's time we started living the dream.
Growing up in a city, I used to be fairly dismissive of the 'Australian Dream' embodied by a quarter acre block complete with a patch of grass for kids to run around on. However, I have somewhat come around to the idea and can see why having one's own little bit of outdoor space can be a lovely thing.
It's a pity then that we never use ours.
It has the potential to become a nice outdoor space but at the moment, it's everything but. It's wild and overgrown with bits of building materials still lying around from the renovation. The plants and trees aren't anything special, the soil is terrible (mostly sand) and gave us a pretty dismal crop of vegetables, which have now all been ripped out of the ground anyway. In summer, we get a lot of mosquitoes and without any form of furniture there, there is nowhere comfortable for me to sit if Hugo wants to play. We have a sandpit that gets covered in fallen leaves and some rusty toy trucks that belonged to Chris. To make matters worse, it is a fair bit lower than the level of the house so it involves going up and down a long flight of stairs. From the house, supervision is very limited because of a tree canopy blocking most of it out.
It needs work!
I am hopeful though that one day, it can really work. We are starting to hatch a few ideas that would radically improve its usability, child-friendliness and aesthetic. For a start, I want to get rid of the big tree to give us a beautiful view we are completely missing out on from the house. We also want to extend our little balcony into a deck that we can use to have lunch on or engage in messy activities like painting for example. Then, we might have a deck at ground level covered by the deck above to have a nice shady undercover spot to hang hammocks and sit around, even on a rainy day. I want to plant a succulent garden which would be beautiful and super low maintenance. We want to put a little treehouse above the sandpit which would help keep the sand clean and provide shade. And obviously it would be super fun. As for the stair, there isn't much we can do about that but soon the children will be old enough to get up and down safely on their own.
So it is a work in progress rather than a lost cause. Maybe we can make a start with my Dad in a couple of months because it's time we started living the dream.
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