Garden To-Do List

A few years ago we bought our little 3 bedroom house here in Papakura. It's on a section of about 500 square metres and was (and still is) overgrown. The house itself has a few things that need fixing too. While we're glad that we're able to own our own home - especially in a suburb of Auckland - I don't think we'd quite realised what comes with it. 

So here is a list of things that we need to do - when time and money allows (garden this week and house next week):

Garden

• New fence on the back part of the section. Now, this might sound relatively simple, but there is a massive kiwifruit vine right there that has collapsed onto the old chain link fence that's there. There is also old tree stumps and all sorts of creepers growing around there. And a big tree about half a metre away from the boundary. This is getting higher on our list though as the dogs from the property on the other side are escape artists and keep coming into our yard. We've done a bit of a bodge job to try and keep them out for now, but it needs to be done properly at some stage. 
• New gate. The entrance to our property has a massive gate. Which is all well and good except that it's made entirely of wood (that I suspect isn't treated, so it gets waterlogged) and is massive. It's another thing that we bodged a bit a few years ago so that it can actually be closed if need be. But it's getting on more and more of a lean now. And it's so heavy that I struggle to close it. So ideally the whole thing needs to be replaced. 
• Re-do lawn. We don't like a super-short lawn like a lot of people. But we do prefer it to be grass. There are all sorts of weeds growing through it right now. So ideally we need to spray it out and put in new stuff. 
• Paving. We have a few areas that we want to pave around the place. Basically we want places to sit outside in both winter and summer. Shady for summer and sunny for winter. Got a lot of stuff to clear first.
• New shed. Our current shed can't actually be used as a shed. Unless you want a shed with holes in the roof. That and it's a crappy little corrugated iron one. AJ wants to build a bigger one and in a different place. He has a specific plan in his head though so when we can afford it I'll just leave him to it. 
• Re-do cactus garden. AJ loves the desert and everything that goes with it. So we like to keep a little cactus garden. Our only problem is keeping it under control. It's so hard to weed through stones. So it's quite overgrown right now, and there's some frost-damaged plants that we'll need to tend to. 
• Re-do vege garden. Right now, our vege boxes are empty (except for weeds). Need to clear them out and plant something. Not sure what to plant in the wintertime though. Through summer/autumn we have huge success with different capsicums and chillis. 
• Weeding. Everything always needs weeding. So there's lots of it to do. Whenever it's a nice day this winter I'm heading out to do a bit more weeding. 

As we work on various things, I'll do my best to post before and after shots. 

So there you go. Our garden/outside to-do list. I think I mainly wrote this for me to refer back to but I hope you enjoyed it nonetheless :)