First Garden Love Never Dies

We had very fond memories of our lives in Skudai. We had a pretty garden!  These are some pics. We moved in there in 2004 when Imran was almost 1 year old.  These pics were taken in 2006 when he was about 3 years old, Aisya was just born, and the garden was lush. 

See the bandage on Imran's hand? It was from water drip -
he was just discharged from hospital for high fever.
We thought he couldn't accept the arrival of baby Aisya. 

The garden was quite immaculate. My husband, Ian, had a back-breaking job every day and night doing up the garden. The land was originally full of big stones, cements, etc. 

We had almost every plant they sold at the nursery there. Close to 100 types if I'm not mistaken. Some made it. Most died. We spent a lot on the garden. We had the same routine every weekend - wake up, McD big breakfast (euwww, I know but somehow we enjoyed it back then), nursery hopping, gardening, gardening, laundry, minor cooking, goreng pisang for tea in the garden, gardening, gardening, out for dinner,..

Imran was complaining to MahMah about baby Aisya..
MahMah and KongKong used to come down to Johor regularly
to visit us. We didn't mind having free gardeners!  

We designed every aspect of the garden ourselves. I wanted to create an English garden. We didn't know a lot of the plant names, so we called them... white snake plant, the japanese plant, the lalang, I can't remember anymore.. We had Imran's 3rd birthday party cum housewarming party there. Everyone was quite impressed with the garden (and food of course hehe). It was a nice day, breezy afternoon. The garden was perfect as our lot only received morning sun. 

This sitting area was opposite to sliding door at the side of the house. I wish I had a better pic of it. The idea was to create a focal point, a view from the house. We planted morning glory as the backdrop. The flowers bloomed pretty purple every morning, up to 11 o'clock. That bench we bought from a second-hand yard for either rm100 or rm80. It was actually a school canteen bench. I painted it green to cover the original horrible, shiny, orangey paint.  That round pot that looked rustic was intentional - got it from one of the nurseries. I hated shiny, new things last time. So anything old and weathered found itself into my car trunk. 

Hello budak bulat... we used to call him Imran Doong

After staying in the house and slaving ourselves to do the garden for 2 years, we decided to make our lives complicated. We moved to the UK when I had to study. After one year, here's the garden in 2008. Abandoned and sad, but was still full of characters.

Aisya was bigger - almost 3 years old. Cheeky monkehhh. That's
the stone table we used to have our weekends' afternoon goreng
pisang and Mondays' pasar malam dinner. 

Ian built the bbq pit himself. Perfectly crooked but functional.
He even built little cubbies with doors at the bottom. The white
and red combo was intentional to suit the whole eclectic feel
of the house.  There used to be purple lalang behind the pit.
We buried our dead kittens there too!

Here's the whole layout of the garden. It's quite a good size.

I've got 8 fingers!

We bought the stone table for RM500, I think. Bloody heavy. Great investment.

The raw brick wall was also intentional to create that English garden feel. Ian chose the bricks himself. We wanted something which was quite rough and uneven in color. I remembered we told the contractor that we didn't want it plastered and even taught him how he should do the cement joining roughly. I'm sure he thought we were crazy. The un-plastered brick wall gave our house an identity. It was very easy to tell people where we lived. 'Oh rumah yang dinding tak plaster tu ke? Kenapa macam tu? Dah siap ke tu? Haha.. it was very different that time. Everybody else's house was smooth and nice with flowery and shiny wrought iron grill. 

The wall from outside. When we left, the ivy was just starting
to cover the bottom wall. It had grown so nicely since then. Ian also
built that plastic awning there. He was really Mr DIY then!

Didn't I tell you that we had a good life then? The house is currently being rented out. We are hoping that one day we could return.

Love you nee..abang...adik...