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The garden is not our first priority. We first want
to have the house fit to live in. Then we will spent time to design our
dreamgarden. Though we have done some things
already. The christmastree on the front side and the large conifer at
the corner of the house have already been sawed. We like to have plenty
of light in the living room and these two trees did stand in the way a
bit. We removed some other small trees as well and immediately had lots
of garden litter. We had already bought ourselves a shredder, but
unfortunately it doesn't cope these big trees. So we have to hire a
professional one some day.
Just before Christmas the weather was fantastic for a few days.
Temperatures a few degrees below zero, it's dry with hardly any wind and
the trees are full with white frost. We made some beautiful pictures,
like the ones below.
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Two months later the snow has disappeared for a long
time now; it hasn't been a very hard winter. Unfortunately, but for us
it was quite convenient as well, for we could do a lot of word in the
garden now. The front garden is, except for a few trees, empty now. Here
we will have our storing place for some time. And in the big garden we
have chopped a lot too.
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During all this work our neighbour from the other side of the road kept
us some company quite regularly. We call her Mabel. She is a real
beauty, and she will have, so we are told bij another neightbour,
a little filly in a few weeks from now.
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In the big garden we made a lot of space and light so we can see all
kinds of lovely spring flowers showing.
The weather has helped us a bit. Quite a few trees have been blown down
in our small forest, so that saves us from cutting them down. The trees
are planted in a row, so if one falls, you have a domino effect. So we
spent a whole day sawing trees.
And sweating..... 
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And taking a rest when needed.
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The garden at the front is now almost completely empty
(i.e. except for the pallets with chalk stones) and in the big garden
there are just a few trees left. We're gonna wait until summer to see what
trees will give us enough shadow or maybe too much and to get some ideas
for a practical plan for the terrace and things like that.
In spite of all our work and the business around the garden a couple of
blue tits have chosen one tree to make there nest there. Now there is a
continuous coming and going of the parents with food for their offspring.
A very nice sight indeed.
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Our first winter here is beautiful! With a thick layer
of snow on the house and in the garden.
The birds in the garden are well looked after, for we want to assure them
that they, and hopefully many more of their mates, are welcome in our
garden the whole year through.
The feeding table
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It is now april already. After more than a year
watiting the moment finally arrived. Riet could make a start with her
hobby, gardening. Until now it was just getting rid of all the old stuf
we didn't want. But this weekend the first new plants could be put into
the front garden.
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The first thing to do on saturday was to remove the
hence and equilize the earth with black soil. Next some yellow sand was
placed on the spots where the footpath and terrace will be.
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And Riet was ever so pleased she could start planting
the flowers. On the pictures it still looks a bit empty, but hopefully
this will change rapidly.
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The end of april and the garden looks like this.
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Today, May the 16th, we bought the
lavender plants for the new hence and planted them as well. The scent is
already great.
We planted a 100 pieces in total.
And after that it was time to rest and enjoy.
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It's july and the garden is getting more colour now.
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Just another picture of the garden,
this time the back garden. You can hardly call it a garden yet, but we
have a few flowers! And that turns out to be enough to invite birds a
butterflies to come and visit us.
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The spring has started. In the front garden the
crocusses have finished blooming, but the daffodils show all their
beauty now.
I think Marcel misses the hard work, for he has found himself another
sweaty job. This winter the store of wood has decreased a bit (because
of the stove), so here he goes again.
And through the internet we bought a cutting machine that has only be
uced once. It works great.
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This summer we try another time. Last year half of
the lavender plants died. We're not sure wat caused it, the dry weather
or the rabbits?
This year the rabbits again are all over the place. We hope we have
found a solution for this: an electric wire to keep them at a distance!
In the back yard the white sand for the terrace is there already.
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Three days of measuring and huddling and the terrace
is finished!
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The celebrating! 
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This is, undoubtedly, a very rare butterfly, spotted in our garden!
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Winter 2010
We asked a professional garden designer to make a design for the backgarden. When the snow has gone we can make a start there.
Having the
design we have a good picture of what the garden will look like. The
kind of flowers we'll have to plant we can decide ourselves.
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This time of year the birds are having a hard time
finding food. But by feeding
them we try to make their lifes a bit easier. The score uptill now is:
11 finches, 3 robins, 5 blackbirds, 1 starling, 3 magpies, 5 great tits
en 3 jays!
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March gave us very nice weather. That was convenient
for us because we had a lot of work to do outside. First thing was
felling a birch tree, because it was blocking the build of our new garage. So we
ended up with firewood for a few extra winters now.
Also the forest has been chopped down. We removed several bushes and made a "wooden
wall" from the branches. So now we have some sort of a fence next
to the roadside that has a natural look without costing us anything.
Using the garden plough we prepared the garden for
planting. Fortunately the plough still worked (after some grunting).
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The birds are busy too. As far as we know now, three
houses are occupied and this year for the first time we have a couple of
blue tits.
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