Noxious Weeds

The weather in Sydney was just gorgeous yesterday. Blue skies and plenty of sunshine. We were in shorts and t-shirts yesterday and the thought of going for a kayak was briefly entertained, albeit briefly.

So how did we spend this gorgeous day? We spent it battling noxious weeds. Well in all honesty I watched Nick battle the world's most noxious weed while I encouraged furiously from the sidelines. We only have one saw, one pair of secutears and my weapon of choice would have been a chain saw for the job we had at hand.

See recently the council notified us via mail that we had a Noxious Weed in our yard. We were then notified by our real estate agency that as the tenants our job was to remove it. Typical. We have the worst landlords ever.

Apparently as far as Noxious weeds go, this one was right up there on the scale. So we looked carefully around the yard with the Wanted Poster in our hands attempting to identify this small shrub with yellow flowers. And walked and scratched our heads. Where on earth had council seen the weed?

After consulting Google we realised that while best managed as a small shrub this weed had the ability to turn into the Hulk of Weeds and take over a huge space. The lightbulb went on and we realised immediately where the weed was in our yard.

In support of a better post I should have taken a photo of the weed to show you what it looked like. But let's just saw we thought we had a tree at the top of our property - a little like this

This huge monstrosity which totally obstructed our view of the house next door was a weed. A weed which Nick had to remove single handedly.

After many hours he looked like he had been in a fight, and lost, with a cat. He was scratched and itching all over. Remembering the good old days when people used to just 'burn off' in their backyard, he then began the massive task of hauling the weed down to the bottom of our property. 

It took hours and while Nick did the above I worked on the remainder of our garden for our inspection this Wednesday.

And then under the weed monster we found a bathtub. Nick couldn't lift it, it was filled with putrid water and so on the top level of our yard sits an old filthy bath which people like to comment on as they walk past our property. Nick just comments that we are relocating our ensuite..

Noxious Weeds may be a problem but the real issue with this rental has been Noxious Tenants. Some of the things we have found while cleaning up this place have been incredible. When we dug the vegetable garden we found entire window frames with panels of glass. We also found a HUGE stash of plastic baby coat hangers. Previous tenants or perhaps the owners had discarded the old carpet by throwing rolls of it directly under the house along with an old water system, a hamster house, timber, plastic piping, some and random plates. In the laundry every time we use the sink small fish hooks come up out of the drain - who knows what they did in the sink.

So now we add a bath and the King of the Weeds to the list of items discovered

I hope you spent the weekend doing something more enjoyable.