The garden battle continues

I am still steadily removing the ivy and weed from the small patch of garden leading up the path.

Things definitely look worse, rather than better, but hopefully this year we will sort it out. It is the only patch of garden unaffected by the issues we are having with slips and earthquake damage, and therefore the only part we feel we can reasonably spend time (and money) on.

On the weekend,  I was beavering away at the area just at the bottom of the steps (there is no real method to my 'gardening' - I just pick a spot and tear away at it), when I uncovered what seems to be an ancient (50 year old), retaining wall, made of piled rocks.

Hopefully it is still strong, as when it's cleared up, it will look a heck of a lot better than the ivy, weeds and whatever that pale-leafed thing is.

Happy New Year

I have been phoning EQC at least once a fortnight for the past 23 months. Immediately after the earthquake, I was phoning daily.  Most of those phone calls have been related to the land issues we're having, and not one of them has been rewarding. Most have gone something like this (and that was in June 2011!).

For the past six months or more, I have been repeatedly told that an 'information pack' is being sent to me with details of my claim -  I was convinced that this 'information pack' was fictional - a ploy to stop my phone calls..

Then it arrived. Earlier this month. Nearly two years after the quake:

And it tells us........nothing. This piece of shit 'information pack' is simply an acknowledgement that we have made a claim, and a guarantee that our claim is being processed. Every single item referred to in the letter is absolutely 100% unchanged from the situation back in June 2011.  It is completely generic, and useless.

Oh, except that they included a whole lot of photos of our place, which were taken in about March or April 2011....is this to prove that they visited? WTF?

And then they threw in this pamphlet explaining the claims process....pretty much printed straight off the EQC website. A complete waste of time, paper and money.

Hrmph. I'm not happy EQC, not happy at all.

Die ivy die.

About 12 months ago I started attacking the garden, and in particular the crazy ivy which was threatening to engulf us.  Progress has been slow, but we are starting to see something of a blank canvas in which to plant our awesome new garden. Until then, some before and after's:

 The garden path when we moved in (above) and more recently:

 

Unfortunately, clearing the left hand side of the path has also removed all privacy from our neighbours - before:

and more recently (I'm not going to say 'now', because this photo was obviously taken before our house was repaired):

I also made the most of a some tree-cutter-up-erers (otherwise known as arborists), and had the trees out the back removed -they had been kind of ruined by the ivy. Pre-earthquake:

And now (yes, that's a direct view into our neighbour's back yard - we will have to do something about that soonish):

This tree-trimming has also cleared the path that runs up the side of the house:

 

Thereby letting tonnes of light into the laundry:

 

The stairs....

 This project has been in progress for about two years. The stairs when we moved in were filthy:

Those dark bits at the edges? Grime and filth and disgusting-ness. We started sanding them back just before the September earthquake, then we started renovating the bathroom, and decided we should leave the stairs until there would no longer be workmen traipsing up and down them...little did we know that this would take a good two years!!

Anyway, we finished the job last weekend - a bit more sanding, then a few coats of Osmo Polyx-oil  (a nice and natural oil - serves the same purpose as polyurethane without the fumes and stickiness). And voila!

We didn't sand them back too much,  for fear that they would start to look a bit too new - it's kind of important for us to keep the history in them - the knocks and scraps and dents. 

Painting. Done.

In one week, they painted the whole inside of the house. It was awesome. They arrived at 7.30am each morning and finished by 4.30pm. 

 

And they did a much better job than we did first time round... our house is now crisp and white, with no cracks visible. Sweet.

They're inside!

That's a painter. Inside the house. Painting. And that means we are on the home stretch people!

Hack, hack, hack it apart

 We had a couple of trees fall down off the bank when it snowed a while back...  so today I paid a couple of guys to bring their chainsaws and clear them away..

 

We arranged for two hours work, as that's all we can afford right now, but fortunately they flew through it, and actually cleared masses of broken trees, vines and weeds, right back to our boundary.

That structure up on the bank is some sort of look-out. It's not ours, it sits just on the other side of our boundary, and it obviously hasn't seen sunlight for years.

It's amazing how much space we have uncovered. And it makes me all excited about landscaping and having a proper garden and lawn.....but we still need to wait for stupid EQC to settle our land claim before we can do much more.