I’ve just done my usual Sunday photo dawdle – plants, flowers, cats, dogs, sheep, views: you know, the usual suspects.

But these gorgeous Red Hot Pokers deserved a post all of their own – they are lining our lower driveway like tiki torches at the moment. It’s the best display I’ve seen them ever make – perfect to brighten up a winter’s day…

Our little plum tree appears to be confused: it’s autumn, not spring! Not only has it got a sprinkling of blossom but there’s even a tiny little green plum growing….most strange….

When our young magnolia tree flowers the rain usually gets to them first and stains the beautiful creamy petals a horrible dirty brown before I can get to it with my macro lens.

So I’ve been waiting for this bud to unfurl so I could snap it before the elements got it.

Well, almost…looks like a good breeze has scattered all the stamens into the petals below – they look like tiny stacks of raspberry-tipped matchsticks.

The past few months have been a bit of a failure when it comes to gardening round here and there are some days (well, actually, most days) when I daydream of coming home from eight hours of desk drudgery to find all the kikuyu weeded, all the new plants that I pick out in the latest Palmers catalogue installed in freshly composted beds and those vegetables I always intend to get round to growing all planted out as seedlings in neat weed-free rows in my raised vege patches.

Alas, gardening seems to have become more a chore than a hobby lately (mostly due to a lack of “nothing” weekends this year; that is weekends when there’s absolutely nothing planned, and I can devote a whole day or even a day and a half to my garden) and I have to go hard out trying to play catch up with weeding and clearing out dead beds in the spare time I do have, which all takes its toll on my already weary body – courtesy of  my new regime of running, weeknight roller derby practices and indoor netball.

All of which makes me fall asleep on the sofa on Saturday nights, shortly after 8.30ish,  completely exhausted.

I’m wondering what it is I can do to address this balance? Concrete the whole lot? Bulldoze everything and turf it in Readylawn?  Hire a team of crack gardeners? Completely replace everything with low maintenance cactus gardens? Knock the new extracurricular activities on the head to conserve vital energy stores?

Or just except that there is some days, or even weeks, where things round here just doesn’t look as good as I want them to…

Ouch, I have just spent six hours of weeding and what would be really, really fabulous right now? A highly trained masseuse (and dead-ringer for Viggo Mortensen, because if I’m going to daydream I might as well go all out…) turning up with lots of squishy towels, some scented candles and some piped whale music to give me a seriously good massage.

Chances of that happening are non-existent, so I will have to settle for a 10 minute shoulder rub from the Other Harf when he gets home from work.

I did pretty good in that I weeded the driveway border completely…

and half of the tennis court, before some of the key muscles in my body started to shake and shudder and quiver in protest and I had to go inside, take a long hot shower and have a bit of a lie-down.

Tomorrow, if I can stand up it will be the rest of the tennis court, then loading the whole lot up on the back of the ute for disposal.

Bloody kikuyu! I wish I could set fire to it all!

Linking up with Farm Girl Friday over at Verde Farm....

It’s been raining pretty much all day so there goes my plans for blitzing the kikuyu grass that currently has serious designs on taking over most of the old tennis court and surrounding garden beds and will not stop till it smothers everything in its path.

Kikuyu grass makes for a great lawn but oh how super-efficient it is at invading, infiltrating, snaking, sniping, worming, curling and finding the tiniest little hole where there be light (in the case of our weed-matted garden beds). It’s been the bane of my life since we bought this property and sometimes I lay at night wondering…what if I just let it go? Let it grow and grow and grow? Would it grow up the verandah? Would it find its way under the french doors? Would it grow up through the plug holes?

In other news, Pippa is also disappointed that it’s raining, seeing as it’s Saturday and Saturday always, always means walkies.