Making Over My Life: The Backyard

Everything is fairly stock-standard in a townhouse, same unit design, same interior decor, and same low-maintenance backyard.  As it's not a thoroughfare, it's easy to go a few weeks without even heading out into the backyard.  I've killed a few plants, you know.  I love bonsai, and after little success, my Mum finally gave me the bonsai I couldn't kill:  a plastic one.

I killed it.

So, my concrete backyard, which already received a beautiful makeover a few years ago, looked like this:

Quite boring really, not much to tell.  And, naturally, doesn't see a lot of use.  It's not a huge space, but it's certainly big enough to create an outdoor living area, to expand out from the townhouse dining room.  Ideally, I'd love to open the space up more and create a walk-through effect from the house out, so that the room easily flows from the indoors out. 

First of all, was cleaning the concrete.  The concreted area doesn't drain easily, so builds up quite a mess on it.  See the difference there, where I had already water-blasted?  It was heaps of fun!!

I removed the old plastic chairs, they were disintegrating in the sun, and nobody even liked to sit on them.  The dream is to get a beautiful wooden outdoor setting, but that's down the track a bit.

My favourite part of the garden, a gorgeous wooden-framed mirror also adds an illusion of space, and sits nicely behind the unidentified shrub (which used to be as tall as the house) and overlooks the buddha statue.

Maybe as the weather warms up, we'll spend more time out there.  Just need to get my BBQ back from Miss M!!

xo