Celi, from thekitchensgarden, has asked that bloggers all around the world show her what they see from their back door. So, this is what I can see from my Perth back door. I have joined two photos to get a panorama.
On the left is the garage. It is not the original garage. One evening, many years ago, I put my foot on the accelerator instead of the brake as I was parking the car … and that was the end of the original garage. The roof and walls collapsed onto the car. I had to crawl out of the car from under the rubble. I then realised that the interior light of the car was on so I crawled back in, avoiding fallen electric wires, and turned it off. I didn’t want a flat battery to add to my woes!
All that was standing was the door frame and two big wooden doors. I closed them as best I could. When Maus came home, her first words were, ‘Why didn’t you close the garage doors properly?” She had a surprise coming!
On the right is the ”wash house”, a separate building as was the custom when the house was built in 1926. Originally, it had a big wooden fire-place incorporating an old copper tub (we still have it) in which clothes were put. The poor old house wife used to stir the clothes with a big wooden paddle whilst they boiled. Fortunately, we have modernised the interior.
Behind the laundry is another garage, a later addition. It used to be Maus’ woodworking shed before she got one six times as big in Bridgetown.
The big tree in the foreground is an apricot tree. It was espaliered against the original garage but, when I knocked the garage over, we moved it to its current position. We have never had many apricots from it. It used to fruit and we would spray them weekly to prevent fruit fly but they were still infected so we ceased to worry about them. Each year, we would have rotten fruit splattered all over the brick paving. The tree has now stopped fruiting and all is well. The yellow leaves you see are from the apricot tree. We returned to Perth just last night so we haven’t had an opportunity to rake them up. Anyway, I quite like them. Here is a close-up.
We used to have lawn but, when we got two little puppies called Maggie and Lily, before long the lawn looked more like the lunar landscape than lawn, so we decided to go with brickpaving. We, specifically, requested a flat area to accommodate large dinner parties but alas, the last large dinner party we had was on the fore-mentioned lawn 
Here is a close up of the back section. I planted Cocos palms everywhere when we moved in (1985). They were all the rage in Perth at that time. Since then, cottage gardens were popular and, now, native gardens are in vogue. I figure the tropical look will make a comeback, one day soon.
The only edible plants are a kaffir lime tree (you can just see the pot on the right in this photo) and a curry tree, which is just out of this photo on the left.
