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In The Garden – December 2023
This has been a year-long project where I photograph our garden each month. The garden is still sporting some thigh-high weeds that grew up while we were away but I’ve got a fair bit of it weeded and I gave the Myoporum a massive haircut today. I thought it might be fun to compare with the photos from January. The growth in the garden over the year has been amazing. I’m looking forward to the plants growing enough to fill in the gaps in the next year. The biggest surprise in the garden has been the everlasting daisy I planted in February. It has been flowering constantly since then and…
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In The Garden – November 2023
It’s now the 30th of November here, so the end of NaBloPoMo. I just checked my number of posts for November and there are twenty-seven, this post makes twenty-eight and I just found two that didn’t post on schedule. I think WordPress may not have liked my multiple time zone changes. So today you get this post and the two that are sitting in my scheduled folder. In the interests of keeping it real here, I now present to you my garden after a month away and no one to tend it.
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In the Garden October 2023
Now it’s Spring everything is taking off in the garden. When I planted it last year I chose a mainly purple, yellow and white flowering scheme. The long-purple flags went in after they would have flowered so this is the first time I’ve been able to enjoy their flowering. They tend to flower in one hit and they are winding down now. They are so bright and cheery when they do flower and go well with the yellow flowers. They open up in the morning and close again in the afternoon. I caught this one peaking out between the neighbouring everlasting daisy which has not stopped flowering all year. The…
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In the Garden September 2023
I’ve had these photos sitting on my camera since I took them in September. The section of the garden near the water feature has really bushed up, filling in a lot of the gaps, although there are some spaces where Riley dug some big holes that we might need to look at. I planted several native orchids in this section and at least one has survived and flowered this year. The flowers only last a short time but it made me happy seeing them there. The section of the garden above still has a bit of growing to do to fill in the gaps but it’s getting there. I’ve cleaned…
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In the Garden August 2023
I pottered around the garden today and marvelled at how much more pleasant it is to garden in mild weather. Even though it is still officially winter here we are having a spring weather day so at least for today I didn’t come back into the house with freezing hands. I even had lunch outside which was a treat. The garden is looking reasonably good. I finished my tidying after our holidays and because it has been fairly cold it has remained mainly weed-free and neat. Unfortunately, our dog has been digging and dug a big hole in the corner behind the tree below. I’ve replanted the plants he dug…
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In the Garden July 2023
The garden is growing pretty slowly at the moment with the cooler weather, although my peas are a bit wild. The cages keep getting blown crooked in the wind. It’s hard to see from here, but they are varieties that have beautiful pink and purple flowers. I’ve harvested a small bowl of veggies each week since we arrived back home consisting of kale, sprouting broccoli, broccoli raab, lettuce and snow peas. It’s probably time to pull up the beetroot before they get too big and woody. I’m also looking forward to some full-size peas that should be ready this week. The yellow everlasting daisies have been an unexpected star in…
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In the Garden May
I’m doing this early in May because we will be away on the 22nd. We leave this Friday, so I spent some time today tidying the garden and preparing it to look after itself for six weeks. I finished trimming my unruly herbs, mulched the broad beans, pulled a few weeds, and then swept the tiles. I also picked all the chillies which will go in the freezer and gave the plant a trim to help it survive the winter. Later today, I’ll pick and cook up some rhubarb as well. The maple tree suddenly changed colour in the last week and has almost dropped all its leaves. The strawberry…
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In the Garden April 2023
The garden continues to grow well. Some of the lilly pillys are only about 30cm off the top of the fence. The pond area, which was partially dug up by our dog this month, looks to be surviving. The plants that I had to dig out of the pile of dirt survived, and it looks like the lilly pilly at the centre of the disaster area is going to survive too. In the other major section of the garden, my veggie beds are fully planted and ready to mulch now that the peas have sprouted. The kangaroo paws are also doing very well with multiple new flowers popping up in…
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In the Garden March 2023
Everything is growing well in the garden. I haven’t yet lost any plants, except the seeds that didn’t succeed in the veggie gardens. One disappointing aspect of the gardens planted by the landscapers were the lack of trailing plants in the the concrete planter boxes. They really needed some softening when we moved in. I’m happy to say that the herbs and other plants I planted are doing well and achieving the desired spillover effect. Some of the annual herbs will need replacing now. Both rhubarb plants are doing well, but the one on the west side of the garden is going bonkers! I plan to eat some this week.
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In the Garden February 2023
There’s been a few changes in the garden since last month. I finished the planting in the main beds with mainly a mix of indigenous and native Australian plants, with mainly purple/blue, yellow and white coloured flowers. I’ve also included a mix of leaf colours and forms for year-round interest. I’m looking forward to the plants bushing out and filling the gaps. We also got our new outdoor dining setting and our clothesline installed this month. Now for some close-ups …