Sunday Selections # 89

Welcome back to Sunday Selections!

Originally begun by Kim at Frog Ponds Rock, now continued by me as a way to show off photos that might otherwise never see the light of day.

The rules are very simple and few.
1.post photos of your choice under the Sunday Selections title.
2. Link back to me, River
3. Leave me a comment so that I know you've joined us.

This week I'm going to show you one of the many homes I've lived in since coming back to Adelaide.
This house is no longer there, a huge block of flats stands in its place.

Looking down the side of the house we rented to the shed/garage.
The garage was kept locked and was off limits to us as the landlord still had stuff in there. 
Behind the house and garage is a huge garden block, with the best growing soil I have ever known.

In this shot I am standing against the back fence, in what was the chook yard, looking down the path to the back door. 
That little black rectangle in the centre of the photo is roughly where the back door is.
In the foreground here is a young fig tree on the right, on the left, the feathery foliage is asparagus.
The fenced off areas on the right, behind the fig tree is vegetable beds. I grew enough vegetables in here to feed us and several other family members. And a few friends.

This is the opposite photo, I'm standing at the kitchen door, under the grapevine covered pergola, looking towards the back fence. 
On the right is the garage, big enough to house a tractor! On the left is the washing line, beyond that a low fence, behind that is an open patch about the size of the flat I now live in, beyond that again is the fenced vegetable beds. Right down the back, the chook yard stretched all the way across the yard with a small chook house on the right.  It was always dark and cool in the chook house, so I bought a boxed mushroom farm and grew them in there.

Here I am standing against the side fence in the open space looking at the fruit and nut trees that were behind the garage, going right down to the chook house. Along the path were three more grapevines.
The trees were peach, apricot, plum, almond, nectarine and lemon.
The small patch of foliage in the front of the photo is mint.

This is the vegetable patch side of the yard. 
I have another photo taken a few months later when everything in there was huge and green, but a couple of the kids are in there too, so I can't show that one.

This is the sultana grapevine that shaded the back area of the house.
When the grape flowers were blooming there would be hundreds of bees out there every day.
The grapes were beautiful; plentiful, plump and sweet. The vines down by the fruit trees had red grapes, the original family used to make their own wine from them.

This is me, just coming in from hanging some washing.  Note the overgrown grass which nobody wanted to mow. The small tree trunks you see there belonged to a small mandarin tree. Yum.

Inside, the house was large and cool, but the decor was........ummm......different.

The dining room, separated from the kitchen by the arch. The window looked onto the driveway.
We had the fridge on the kitchen side of the arch and the freezer on the dining side.
Beside the cabinets was the door leading to the bathroom.

The other side of the dining room.  The fridge and freezer still work after all these years and my daughter K has them now.

The hallway, which we stacked with stuff while we decided permanent homes for it all. 
Most of it ended up staying right where you see it.
Here's what I mean about the "interesting" decor--see all those vine leaves on the walls?
Painted on.
Hand stencilled. 
They were also in every bedroom, but in different colours.

The front sunroom which we used as a lounge room, although we mostly spent time in the kitchen and dining room when we weren't outside. No vine leaves here, the walls were mostly window.

My room, covered in stencilled vine leaves. Originally intended as a lounge room, but appropriated by me as all other rooms were filled with kids, partners, grand daughter #1.
And the cat, Harley. You met him last week.

The kitchen. Not pretty, but the comfortable scene of many family gatherings. The sink (and back door) was to the right and looked out over the yard.