Wagga Wagga to Worcestershire & back again
Summer seems like a bit of a distant memory now. The days are cooler, shorter and darker and leaves are falling from the sky like giant, colourful raindrops.
I was amazed by our little Malvern garden during the warmer weather. Every week it felt like a new flower or plant was blooming and the air was thick with the sound of bees buzzing about.
Our little patch of green has been slowly falling asleep over the last few weeks, but it’s still proving to be a source of inspiration…
Oh what a difference a week can make. Last week Adam and I were sipping sangria under sunny blue skies in Gibraltar. Over the weekend we’ve watched flurries of snow showers from our kitchen window, whilst warming our hands on big mugs of coffee.
It still seems a bit magical to me that you can wake up one morning and have one type of weather, jump on a plane or train or in a car, and suddenly be in a place completely opposite to where you were. It’s why I guess so many people get wanderlust.
I find there are two sorts of people in life – those who love wrapping presents and those who’ll happily pawn the task off to others. I’m in the first camp. As a child growing up my mum was always pretty particular about the styling of her Christmas tree. Gifts had to coordinate with the tree and a general colour scheme was adopted every year. I have fond memories of the two of us sitting on the floor in the family lounge room surrounded by rolls of paper and boxes of ribbons and bows, televised Christmas carol special on in background, wrapping presents in the days leading up to December the 25th.
It’s a tradition I continue to keep and over the last few weeks I’ve seen countless images on Instagram and Pinterest of fresh foliage adorning beautifully boxed presents. As it’s so warm in Australia around Christmas, adding a sprig of spruce as part of the wrapping process never really crossed my mind. This year however, I decided to use harness that inspiration and try it myself!
I raided the garden at the front of Adam and my apartment finding holly leaves and a large shrub with red berries, which I believe is cotoneaster horizontalis (budding gardeners, is that right?!) and got busy!
It’s been just over a week since Adam and I moved into our Malvern house and I’m in full nesting mode, trying to turn our new space into a home.
Our apartment is virtually fully furnished, which is great if you’ve only got limited possessions like we do, but also a challenge when it comes to decorating. There is no clean slate, or fresh start, it’s a matter of adapting the already established style and making it your own.
Adam has a small collection of chicken jugs – as soon as we walked into the kitchen I could see the large sill on the window that overlooks the Severn Valley would be the perfect spot for them. We’ve added a string of fairy lights around the window for added festive cheer, and the chooks seem pretty happy in their new glowing home.
As we don’t own a lot of ‘stuff’ we’ve also had to be a little creative in how we fill up the space that now surrounds us.
One of the first purchases Adam and I wanted to make when we moved into our new home was a Christmas tree. When Adam was growing up he fondly remembers going to the Leigh Sinton Christmas tree farm, just north of Malvern – the trees are so well regarded they’ve even been used outside of the British Prime Minister’s house at 10 Downing Street!
I’ve only ever had a ‘real life’ Christmas tree once before at my brother’s house in Canberra. Growing up in tropical Queensland, humid summers and fir trees just don’t mix, so we always had a fake tree.
I was amazed at the huge variety of trees available…
Blimey, what a weekend! Adam and I moved into our new house over the weekend – it feels like we haven’t stopped. Even though we didn’t have a real lot of ‘stuff’ between us (two suitcases each, plus a few boxes and bags of Adam’s cookwear, linen and knick knacks that his family have been minding in his absence) it’s still seemed like a massive effort.
It’s far from being ‘complete’ yet, but take a peek at our new digs…
Wattle and Ash 