Spring has sprung...

The grass has riz, I wonder where the birdie is?.....Well spring has definitely sprung in Sydney at least. I know it's not officially spring until next month, but someone forgot to tell the weather and as usual it has arrived during August.

But for the Avalon it is Autumn, and will be permanently so.  Here are the pictures of the first part of the garden.  There is still a lot to do of course.  I was going to do the trees with autumn foliage from the railway shop but I don't think I'll use these after all.  I think I'll possibly make my own armatures from wire so that I have more branches.

Looking in more detail, there is a nice little patch of sunflowers at the side of the house, with a ground-cover softening the earth between them.

At the front of the house there is a flower box in front of the chimney.  It is filled with a vine that is spreading up the chimney, and some calendulas have been planted to provide colour in it as well.  The chimney is flanked by two camellia shrubs, in full bloom.

At the front corner is a small tree, resplendent in autumn foliage.  For this tree I took a small tree and removed the green foliage, added lots of little 'branches' made from wires left over from the flower kits, twisted together and glued on with super glue.  I then stretched a layer of rust-coloured 'foliage' over the branches and dabbed small spots of glue onto that, adding small pieces of coloured foam over the canopy.  It's come out quite effective, I think.  I'd quite like to have a similar effect for the two trees on the left of the house.

So that's the result of over a week's work.  It took four days to make the camellia shrubs.  It is very time consuming to make flowers but I do find it really rewarding and take great satisfaction in knowing that I've made the contents of a garden.  

As I said, there's still a lot to do but I wanted to show you the progress.  Hope you like it.