In My Humble Abode

Paradise is taken for granted if you live here. Even if you are a 'stop and smell the roses' kind of person, when you live somewhere as idyllic as this, there are times when you need to remind yourself of how lucky you are. Take this week for example, my two favourite men in the world, this week, have not been my two favourite men. It's hardly fair of me to say this because however horribly they barked cranky little comments at me, they are normally fantastic and I could not even in my wildest dreams hope to have a family as wonderful. When they are ill you have to give some leniency, just in consideration for their state of health. The other side of the coin is I have been cranky too. Looking after two males with a head cold and cough, lets just say I have no idea why nurses do what they do. You couldn't pay me enough. And then of course there is the garden competition. So the only thing I have wanted to do despite the FREEZING gale force winds is get out there and garden. Judging for the competition of course is in the worst weekend possible for my garden. Thank the heavens for the lept-toe-spur-num. (That spelling is off the charts wrong there but it should sound similar to the correct name) What as show for such a small little native plant. Apart from the above photo, everything is browned off with the few light frosts that we have had in the past few weeks. The magnolias, that my garden is full of, at least have beautiful lime green new growth. Unfortunately the flowers are definitely finished. The wisteria is still a scraggly bunch of sticks with just a promise of growth.
Optimistically speaking everyone else is in the same climate zone as me. Pessimistically speaking, most of the gardens in the competition have at least a decade of growth on mine. Realistically my chances of winning anything are about zero to zip. The announcement of the competition has been great in terms of motivation for me. All these jobs that I have had half done, I have suddenly had to finish. The succulent garden is now cleaned up, it even has a few new spiky things that will stab me. That's good, gives me an excuse to curse every time I need to weed in close. I even skirted the finger lime. That task is a death of a thousand scratches! If sleeping beauty had had this plant growing over the walls of her palace, no prince charming would have been dumb enough to hack his way through that plant. Love the finger lime fruit its almost worth the loss of blood. The fruit are very special, do a Google search on Finger Limes Australia. The fruit is like lime caviar. You can see the finger lime in the above photo, it is the thin, lime green spiked plant, top middle of the photo. It does have small leaves between the spines about the same size as a pencil eraser. The fruit is about the same size as a smallish sausage. As the leaves are so small I have been told, unlike regular limes etc in the citrus family, it can only handle small amounts of fertilizer at a time.

The bank area in front of the shed that had a pile of timber (see above) and many a weed! Has been cleaned out much further around in preparation for the judging and now doesn't have that half lived in, eyesore, no house pride atmosphere, I hope! The second photo is from the other end but in the background you can see this timber pile has been moved, the area mowed and weed cleared (well at least cut well back from the growing jungle you can see in the first pic).

The area behind the shed near the large tank has been cleaned out and landscaped. I just have to finish the pond there (Yes another one). Poor Sam fell into this one too on that really cold day we had about a week ago. I'm sure it didn't help his cold.

This first shot, doesn't give a good look but its the only photograph of I have behind the machinery shed, you can see the area of brown tufted grass, that's the area I am working on atm. That grass has been killed it's taller than I am.

This photo gives you and idea of what I have to do with the rest of the area. Looks a little sparse doesn't it? I still have plantings to do and the plants will spread and get bigger.

I just cant put in gardens without a pond, its a genetic trait. This has been frantic too. The garden competition deadline is a cruel mistress!!

From whoa to where it is now has been I think about three weeks. My next spewing of a contorted version of the English language will go deeper into this new garden I'm very excited about it and like most gardeners I will need to practice Patience, wait for the plants to grow in their own time, but if there was a way of cheating I would be there.