My grandson says, like many nearly three year olds that he 'wuvs' things. Elephants - he wuvs them. Edie the dog? Wuvs her.

Me, I wuv my windows. I'm going to miss my windows out onto the garden. It's one of the selling points of the house - nature is visible from every window. The outside creeps in. And everytime I look out, I feel like I'm in a treehouse, except I'm in an ordinary timber framed house on the ground, in Australia, once plonked in a paddock, and now in a bush block.

In taking these shots for the Hive Garden challenge this week, I didn't want to take the photo of the frame as it makes for a dark photo, so I went right up against the glass this very cold morning and snapped a shot from nearly every room - I have a lot of windows, and some would be the same view. Some are wider angles, or taken angled left or right - whatever gave the best view or a slightly different one so as not to bore you.

The first, from my spare room or yoga room as I did exercises this morning to help my back and hip. Sigh.

From here you can see the nankina - sacred bamboo - flowering with red berries, providing gorgeous late winter colour. You can see the bus, the east sunshine, the gazo - and if you look carefully, the mandarin full of small orange fruit.

Gosh, look at that sky. It's going to be a beautiful day. If I shift over one room to the bathroom you can see the other edge of the nankina, the bird baths, gum trees, the veggie patch, and probably asshole rabbits.

One room over again, and you get a similar view - this one is my kitchen window, and I included the frame as it's such a prominent part of the view from the house. See the lovely sunshine on those far gum trees? You can see how sheltered my central veggie garden is here. The westerlies are cold and the northerlies hot, so it's perfectly placed. Permaculture principles ask us to think about such things.

Turn to the north, and the front deck looks cold and dark - it's only 8 am, and the sun hasn't quite drenched this part of the block yet. It's coming - being north facing here in Australia means lots of sunlight, which streams in through the front windows most of the day in winter as the sun is low. These two bird baths bring tons of birds - around 4 pm, it's better than Netflix, with parrots, cockatoos, smaller birds and magpies taking their turns. Looking at this reminds me I have to pick up some decking paint - last time I painted was just before the pandemic, so it's looking tired. I don't like the paint - it picks up all the dust - but it covered the sin of horrible boards we couldn't afford to replace, and it'll make it tidier for sale. They say the front of the house makes a good first impression.

The back deck is new - it's quite wet most of winter so we'll need to oil it again come Spring. This is the west side of the veggie patch - and the native garden. I've actually trained the chooks to stay over that side and not mess up the other side, mainly by using a hose and throwing shoes every time they got near. Turns out chooks have reasonable memories, which last weeks where they're too scared to cross the boundary. Every now and then they need a refresher. I only let them out on weekends when we're around.

This is looking out the same window, the main bedroom, to the left though, where you get a better view of the deck. I always wanted to crazy pave that part of the slab that isn't hidden by the deck, but Jamie was reluctant, mainly as he has too much else to do. It's always annoyed me though.

And now looking further right out the bedroom window, where you can see the spindly branches of the crabapple, which come season is spectacularly pink.

In fact, it's so stunning that I have to include a photo of it in September. If the house doesn't sell soon, I'm sure that once they see the crapapple blossom, they'll up the offer and then some.

This post was written in response to Hive Garden's question of the week, a writing challenge for gardeners on Hive. Anyone can enter, and it comes out every weekend - follow the community for more fun challlenges, and connecting with other like minded gardening folk.