Seven things I'm proud of.

Please ignore that enormous blank space above. I don't know why it's there, and I can't seem to get rid of it. 

How has it been over a month since I last wrote? Babies: little time thieves... 

In lieu of real blog posts about individual things, here are seven things from the garden which I am proud of. Photos were taken with an iPhone in one hand, and a grumpy baby on the other arm, but in all their daggy (and dodgy) composition they make me happy. My urban backyard is becoming my very own Eden... So, without further ado or waffle, here are my currents joys:

1. My baby fruit trees are in their second year of fruit! Here is my beautiful, not-so-little Moorpark apricot, loading up with fruit due around Christmas, and a representative from my posse of six plum trees, whose fruit should ripen in mid-summer.  

2: We finally have chickens! Introducing our three Isa Brown pullets: Marilyn, Rita, and Audrey. We brought them home around a month ago and are averaging two eggs a day already. 

3: My raspberries! I ate the first two today from this very bush. All the plants I've put in are going bonkers with flowers and fruit. I have seven different cultivars now, in both the garden and in pots, and 'Sandford' here is the first to ripen. Since its not even supposed to flower until November, I am pretty impressed (unless climate change is causing this very early fruiting, in which case I am concerned). 

4a: My roses, because I adore them and everything is just starting to bloom. This pinky-orange fluorescent delight is 'Summer Song,' which I have moved to a cooler position (I hope) on the eastern side of the water tank. It hated it on our hot north-facing patio, so fingers crossed for a happier plant this summer. 

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4b: More roses! Posing here from front to back are Munstead Wood (a burgundy newcomer to my garden), 'Golden Celebration' (yellow, obviously) and the ever-blooming, pink 'Sophy's Rose.' That last was bought on a whim 18 months ago, and had flowers right through winter until I finally steeled myself and pruned it about a month ago. The violet flowers at the left, by the way, are the Local Lovely, Ajuga australis. 

5: My 'hard to grow' natives: the bluer-than-blue Lechenaultia biloba, and black-fuzz-on-lime-green Macropedia fuliginosa (black kangaroo paw). Honestly, not really that hard to grow. Both need really good drainage (ie put them in a pot), lots of sun, plenty of water, and a quality native potting mix. And an expectation that they will probably not last particularly long is also useful. 

6: The sweet peas, because they are just so pretty. These are 'Matucana,' and doing a valiant job at attempting to cover up the shade cloth I've put all along my west-facing fence. 

7: Last but not least, my lawn! I am very proud of this lawn. It's far from perfect, golfers and cricketers would be appalled, but last autumn I piled loads of gypsum on that patch of compacted clay, spread out some brought in 'loam' (brown sand -ahem-), scattered a mix of lawn seed, watered it diligently until the winter rains were consistant, and lo and behold: it grew! And it didn't even drown in the swamp our backyard becomes in winter. It's daggy at the front, but will be paved there eventually so who cares?! And why is this last photo smaller? Well I have no idea, but never mind. 

Happy Spring, everyone xx

Presents!

I love getting plants in the mail, and it's even better when we've been away for a week and they are waiting on the doorstep! (Don't worry, they'd have arrived that day or possibly the day before, and hadn't been languishing by the doormat the entire time.) 

It's a mixed box of goodies this time. I have half a dozen different tomatoes, a couple of varieties of capsicum, two cranberry plants, a 'black raspberry' I couldn't resist getting (having never seen or heard of them before), a white strawberry, and hopefully best of all: a wasabi variety called 'Daruma,' which is supposed to be a bit more tolerant of warmer weather. The wasabi plant is the one at the top left with the gloriously large heart-shaped leaves. 

     

   

We were greeted on our return home by the most amazing spring-like weather: 26c today, with a gentle breeze and fluffy clouds in the sky... Not bad for the last day of winter, hey!? I spent the day ignoring the holiday washing and pottering about in the garden, pulling out weeds and cute baby beets. I suck a bit at growing beetroots, in my opinion, but I still go into raptures over those amazing crimson stems.

 

Happy Spring! 

  

Some small progress

Back in May I did a big overhaul of my poorly kaffir lime tree (clickity click). You know what? It hasn't died! I feel I should celebrate but perhaps I should wait a little longer... But so far so good, anyway. I do hope it starts to do really well after this, once the weather warms up a bit. Kaffir lime is a key component of a number of things we like to cook in this house, and it's a little annoying to have to buy the leaves and fruit every time we need it.

 THEN...

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NOW!

Meanwhile, I have invested in a miniature cherry tree, 'Cherree Black cherry,' (from Flemings). Gosh, it was expensive! But not much room left out there in the old backyard, and cherries are such a treat it will be worth it.

 

The backyard is a swamp thanks to all the rain we've had in the last few days. I can hardly wait for spring; less than a fortnight to go! We're making a brief trip to the snow because snow is all Miss 3.5 has been talking about for the last 6 months, and then when we get home it will be all systems go in the garden again.

Nature strip update

It has been a whole entire year since I last posted anything about my nature strip project! Click here for a picture of what it looked like last time, and for a complete history try here. To refresh your memory (and mine), this council-owned strip of land is hot, windy, very dry, and the 'soil' is compacted clay and dolomite with a roughly neutral pH (despite the dolomite). Before I got my gardener's hands on it, it was a strip of bare gravel with two trees poking out it it (foreground larger tree is Eucalyptus leucoxylon ssp megalocarpa, the large fruited SA blue gum, and the smaller tree further back is probably a weedy malnourished version of the same).
Well, look at this spot now! Starting to come along well and filling out nicely.

 

When I started I just planted 'native plants,' but after the first round of planting (about three years ago) I've only planted indigenous species in here, and ones I hoped would be suitable (obviously... but I know more now and can choose better!) In this picture there are Poa labilliaderi (most of the grasses), Ficinia nodosa (knobby club rush, bottom right), Acacia myrtifolia (dead centre, still small), Enchalaena tomentosa (left by pole), and Goodenia amplexans (clasping goodenia, at left).

This photo is looking at the same patch from the other direction. At the front-left is a non-indigenous grevillea (name escapes me), at front right is a Myporum parvifolium. Barely visible because it blends in so well, behind the grevillea, is the saltbush Atriplex semibaccata, and behind that is all those mentioned before with a better view of the goodenia (now on the right).

This picture shows the other end of the nature strip. It's a bit more bare because that's where we need to put our waste bins on rubbish days. At the far left is the original Juncus ursitatus (not indigenous), behind that is an indigenous Juncus (sarophus?! C'mon, brain, work!), doing surprisingly well despite the harsh conditions. Also in this picture, but much less obvious, is more Myoporum, Enchaleana, and Ficinia, a couple of eremophilas (cultivars and not indigenous species), a bit of dianella which has been struggling along since the beginning, and a little Calytrix tetragona. And some weeds. Oh yes! I improved the soil and the weeds have certainly taken advantage. Most of them are little thistles and dandelions and easily dealt with. A couple of months ago I also removed the biggest weeds in here: several large clumps of gazanias. 'Oh,' said a neighbour, 'but they grow so well!' Yes, indeed! That's one reason they're a weed!

The one major difference I have found between planting native plants in the nature strip, as opposed to in my front garden (behind the fence) is that the plants are growing far more slowly. This would be from a combination of the difficult growing conditions, and receiving far less water over summer. I only toss a few buckets of water about there when it gets really hot.

 And last but not least, a winter-happy for you :) The indigenous Clematis microphylla growing on my front fence and flowering it's head off. Very pretty!

Stay warm xx

My little mate

I am pleased to announce the arrival of my new gardening companion: Our little boy, Owen. At less than three weeks old, he's already been out in the Ergo (sling), wrapped in a woolen blanket, keeping me company while I prune the roses and my baby plum trees. If Miss Three, Emi, is our SP (Small Person), does this make Owen our 'ESP,' Extra Small Person?

 

 In other news, I've just eaten the last two raspberries off the bush. Raspberries in June? Oh, yes! I am as surprised as you are. And they were delicious :) These are an unnamed variety that I dug out of my Mother-in-law's garden a year ago. I love it when a free plant performs well. I have six other - known - varieties of raspberry scattered throughout the yard as well. If I have my way, we will be overrun with fruit in a few years. I can't think of a nicer fruit to be overrun with, either. The varieties I have should provide fruit for us from December right though to June, if the past six months are anything to go by.

 

Last but not least, another bargain which is proving itself a brilliant performer: A David Austin Rose I bought from an online store in a kind of 'end of season run-out' sale.  It's called Sophy's Rose, and it's proving itself almost impossible to photograph accurately. I appreciate this Hipstamatic snap is especially dodgy and not even in focus, but so far it's been the closest representation of the colour I've managed to get (real-camera photos are even worse, and show it as a hot pink colour). This photo on the David Austin website is a little closer, though my roses seem to glow more than that. Sophy's Rose is a glorious burgundy-wine-red colour, warmer than the red in the lower rose in my picture, but not as pink as the one on the top. 
Furthermore, it's still blooming in June and the plant itself has done wonderfully for one just planted last winter, not showing any signs of the blackspots and yellowing leaves of the roses in my front yard, and even still has a generosity of leaves.

Anemone de Caen

I think that dreaming about something -literally- is an indication that something is preying on your mind a bit too much. Dreaming about 450 Anemone de Caen bulbs would be an indication that you need to stop procrastinating and plant the poor buggers.

I love anemones of all kinds (oceanic varieties included), seriously love them. I bought these bulbs around 18 months ago. I had a vision of sweeps of blue and white beauties in and around the roses. And then, not long after my bulbs arrived in the post, I lost them. Like, proper lost, turned the house upside down, couldn't imagine where they could have possibly gone. I started to wonder if I'd actually accidentally thrown them out. Then, about two months ago they miraculously turned up in the study. Bingo! Now I could plant them. Except where were they to go? The rose garden vision has changed, or rather, has filled up in the intervening year with other plants (mostly native, which these anemones are not). What to do, what to do? So, the bulbs have been sitting on the kitchen bench for weeks and weeks now, getting pushed aside, while I've been trying to decide what to do (short of listing them on eBay!). In my dream, some of them had flowers already...

So, in they go, and this afternoon at the latest. It's a bit late to be planting them to be honest, but better in the ground than stashed at the back of the laundry cupboard for another year. The plan now goes: whack them in, in random clumps, wherever there happens to be a space.
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Today's job

After a strained groin muscle and two attempts at spraining my ankle out in the garden in the last fortnight, it has occurred to this heavily-pregnant woman that it might be time to take it a bit easy, before I find myself unable to walk in labour... Time for some non-strenuous work out there.

I found some garlic bulbs in the cupboard, neatly labelled, from last year's harvest. Normally they would have all been eaten months ago but this time, morning sickness put me off using them completely and so I have plenty left to plant (not to make this post entirely about pregnancy and garlic!)

I'm planting Dynamite Purple, Early White American, Cream, Melbourne Market and Australian White (not pictured). I love garlic as a crop: bung it in, and off it goes with almost no maintenance or care required at all. It will do better, however, if kept weed-free and fed.

String of peas

This plant is commonly called 'String of Pearls,' but SP says it looks like peas and I think that's a better name so String of Peas it is. It's Senecio rowleyanus (although my label read 'Senecio rowleyana, I wonder if someone wrote that incorrectly deliberately... assuming that Wikipedia has the correct name?)

Anyway, I came across a cheap little pot of the plant in the local Ikea (I do like them for their selection of cheap little house plants) and snapped it up on impulse. Fortunately, the web tells me it's relatively low care (though not NO care; I don't believe any plant ever really is). I've potted it up in another Ikea pot I've had floating around for a while. It did have a baby bromeliad slowly growing in it... and then the cat ate most of it and so I had to turf it out. The pot doesn't have great drainage - only a very small hole in the bottom - so I've filled the bottom inch with gravel, then potted up the plant in a mix if about 1/4 sand (borrowed from the retaining work D is doing out the back) and 3/4 ordinary potting mix. Cactus mix would have also been appropriate if I'd had any.
 

Let's hope the cat stays away from this one; the leaves are poisonous and not to be consumed.

Purple and yellow and...?

It's nearly rose time. Nearly time to plant and nearly time to prune. I am a bit ahead of myself this year, because Babe #2 is due when all this should be happening so I'm quite keen to get things done before s/he arrives and I am pinned to the couch for the next six months.
I made myself a short-list of roses that I'm interested in (all climbers, this time). I couldn't help noticing that SP has annointed it with her own ideas... Is that a 'no' to Tess of the D'Ubervilles, or a 'yes,' I wonder?

I have three roses arriving soon: The long-lusted after Reine des Violettes for the front garden, a Strawberry Hill, also for the front garden, and a Munstead Wood for out the back. I used my usual buying strategy for these plants, which goes: Buy now, work out where to plant them later. 

Now, I have this section of front garden along the eastern fence, which looks endlessly crappy. The soil is particularly rubbish (sandy, water repellant, and dry dry dry), and the heat from the sun in the west over summer fries everything when it reflects off the fence. When we first bought our house I planted a banana passionfruit here. There's an old post here, when I was still optimistic it would work out! Anyway, the vine grew but never especially well. It never had a single flower, and obviously never any fruit! So, this week I pulled it out. Bang. Gone. Poor bugger, but them's the breaks.

(This shot is post-passionfruit removal, but before I'd done anything else)

 

I still want a garden bed along this fence and I have two main issues to address: the heat and the soil. For the heat - and I'm reeeeally hoping this works - I put beige-coloured shade-cloth along the fence, thinking that beige would be the least conspicuous. Then I stepped back and thought, 'Good Gods, that looks awful!' 

But, fortunately, looking at that section from further away it doesn't seem quite so bad, a bit shielded by the little ornamental plum tree (reddish brown tree) and the Acacia iteaphyllas on the neighbour's side of the fence (very pretty yellow shrub/small tree, terrible invasive weed in the Adelaide Hills, and many other regions of Australia...)

 

To help amend the soil I added several bags of neutral compost, most of a bag of cow manure and a few handfuls of Dynamic Lifter pellets. For good measure I found some worms in another area of the front garden and gave them a new home in here (a good indication of the poor nature of the soil: there were no worms at all!)

 

Then, to plants! Roses, obviously, where this disjointed post started. I want to put a small climbing rose at the bottom left of the photo, but which one, or what colour? That small shrub that I've left in place is a Myoporum batae, very pretty weeping plant which should make it to several meters tall (though I'll probably keep it smaller). Great plant for dodgy conditions. Next plant in line is a new Graham Thomas rose I couldn't resist getting from a Big Box hardware store. It's not strictly a climbing rose, but can get to over two meters tall and it's becoming one of my absolute favourites, see why? Man, I love that yellow...

(This is not my picture! I got it from here: http://placespill.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/graham-thomas.html)

 

Next in line will be my Reine des Violettes, which I'm hoping will end up looking like this:

(Again, not my picture, this image is from here: http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/rosesant/gal0508135015639.html )

And that is the end of that space. Underneath there is currently a ground covering Eremophila 'Augusta Storm,' which I left because it was growing well and an Atriplex semibaccata (two more good plants for dodgy dry and hot conditions). I found some red 'Mrs Bradshaw' geums - my latest plant obsession' so I popped one of those in as an experiment, since I have no idea how they grow.  It's not a big space, really, but I'd like the purple and yellow roses to contrast (along with the mystery #3 rose... suggest colours/varieties to me! I'm leaning towards a red/crimson, maybe a Blackboy rose?)

Reconstructive surgery

Sometimes a plant just isn't happy. Take this little kaffir lime (Citrus hystrix):  Miserable; wonky in it's pot; losing it's leaves; covered in scale with accompanying ants. What to do? I had grand plans to plant it in our retaining beds (still being built right this minute, in fact, but that's another post) but it's so sad I wasn't sure it would be worth it. But I can't bear to turf out a plant - especially a relatively expensive one - on account of being a victim of neglect (probably never got enough sun; shouldn't have put that competitive rhubarb in there with it; not enough love AKA fertilizer and water etc). Some drastic measures are required. This may work, or it may not.

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First: take a deep breath and lop off most of the branches:

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Second (no picture, had wet hands): Put the entire contents of the pot into a bath of lots of water with a big dash of seaweed extract (to help with transplant shock and root development). I used the wheelbarrow for this. Gently tease out the roots from the bulk of the soil. Express some horror that after nearly three years in the pot the roots have barely developed and are spiraled and twisted (this plant was bought before I knew anything much about gardening and I must have chosen a pot bound specimen). Cut off the worst of the twisted roots, and trim the remainder to a manageable length. 

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Third: repot the plant - straight this time! - into a bag of good quality potting mix and water the bejeezus out of it. Leave it with all the other pots so you don't forget to water it. 

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Fourth: Pray to whichever gardening Gods you choose that this will revitalize and refresh the tree and this will be successful. Or just wish it luck :)

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If at first you don't succeed...

...Try, and try again.

Or, in the case of gardening in difficult climates and soils, do some research before spending any more money!

When we first bought our house, I ran out and planted a number of things. Mostly I got lucky, but one of my first failures was a couple of blueberry plants.

Mistake #1: Planting them up against that blasted (and blasting hot) Western fence. I've lost many plants against that fence now, and those that survive do not thrive over summer. All that radiant heat is a bad idea for nearly everything. Not to mention that a lot of blueberries are not very heat-tolerant at the best of times.

Mistake #2: Blueberries like acid soil, which is in short supply in nearly all of Adelaide and surrounds. I'm lucky: the soil in our yard happens to be a little bit acidic with a pH of around 6.2, except in gardening circles that's practically a neutral pH. Blueberries like a pH of between about 4-5.5. That's just not something I can provide for my plants in the ground, and I'm not about to go faffing about trying to alter it (too tiresome, potentially expensive, and a never-ending exercise).

The solution? Pots! And a couple of plants which hopefully will be a little more heat-tolerant (or at least are low-chill varieties).

Today I went out and bought four new blueberry plants (because I have four big pots to put them in). I had a chat to the girl at the counter about the plants, and she thinks these four should be OK in my area (hills, but not the cold-cold hills further behind Adelaide.)

My three 'real' blueberries (Vaccinium corymbosum) are 'Denise', 'Northland', and 'Sunshine blue'. They are all Northern Highbush varieties. I also have a Chinese blueberry (Vaccinium gaultheriifolium), which is a bit of an experiment as it's different to the other blueberry species commonly grown.

I also spent what felt like a small fortune on special 'rose/camellia/azalea etc' potting mix especially for acid-loving plants. I tell myself it's OK, because my SP adores blueberries and inhales them by the punnet, and they are usually really expensive to buy, and I've spent about 12 punnets worth of blueberry money on my plants and potting mix. If this goes well, within a few years we should be set up for fruit for most of Summer and Autumn, which will be super-nice!

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PS. The other little plants in the right of the picture are my latest obsession: Geums/Avens. I like the red ones, but I stumbled across these three yellow plants of the cultivar 'Lady Stratheden' at my local $2 shop and snapped them up as an experiment. Impulse buys being what they are, I haven't yet decided where I'm actually going to plant them..

Nepenthes

I'm doing a little experiment.

Nepenthes are my favourite carnivorous plants; they remind me of Malaysia, where some species are native to. Nepenthes are pitcher plants, with their pitchers dangling off the end of their leaves. I've never had one, because they're usually expensive and I'm not overly confident about growing them. Anyway, I found some in my local nursery, marked down to $6! Yes, please!

I brought one home and then got Googling: 'care of Nepenthes.' My new baby is some sort of hybrid, and there was very little information on the label, so I feel I'm flying blind here, a little bit.

According to the WWW, these plants are best potted up into a mix of sphagnum moss, peat moss, and orchid potting mix. I visited three different shops before I found some sphagnum moss, and I had a bag of orchid mix in the shed already, so I did a rough mix of mostly sphagnum with a big dash of orchid mix. I skipped the peat moss because you can't get real peat moss - I don't think so, anyway. It's not environmentally sustainable and not really a renewable resource, I believe, but I'll have to check that - and I've gone off coir peat after being told that as well as holding loads of water, it also holds loads of salts if you use tap water. I like to think that as the sphagnum moss was from New Zealand, it would be more sustainably managed. Anyway... What was I saying?

My new plant has a new home in a big vase, and it will live in the bathroom , because they like humidity and the bathroom is brightly lit. Wish me - and it! - luck. I will try to remember to update on my baby Nepenthes progress down the track.

My monster

Check out this 'baby': 724g in a single quince! Isn't he lovely?!

Quince is such a nice, fragrant fruit. Well worth the long wait for it to ripen. In fact, I picked this quince (and a few smaller ~500g siblings) a touch green because my poor tree was so overladen with heavy fruits that I thought the branches were going to snap in two.

Last year - the tree's first year in the ground - I had seven individual fruits, and this year I have fifteen. So, it's quite a productive little tree for one so young (in contrast, we are still waiting for the first of our three year old lemon tree's fruit to ripen).

It's been a remarkably low maintenance tree too. It is in an irrigated garden bed, but otherwise gets absolutely no special care at all. It doesn't get any extra fertilisers, or seaweed extracts, and I've never seen any serious insect problem or hint of disease on it. Every year I take photos of the blushing pink flowers, and then promptly forget to put any pictures on the old blog.

As I always do with quinces, I peeled them and chopped them, removed the seeds (and was generous taking the flesh from immediately around the seeds as this part can be quite grainy and spoil the texture of your finished product), and poached them in water, sugar, golden syrup, lemon and spices. I'm happy to say that cooking slightly green fruit hadn't been a problem and my quinces are just as much of a treat as always.

Internet recipes often warn you that quinces are very hard to cut, but I haven't found this at all; they are just as soft as their apple cousins. Perhaps it's the variety? My little tree is a 'Pineapple quince.'

Happy Easter, all xx

More chilli than you can poke a stick at

Pregnant woman loves eating chillis; who can see a problem with this statement?!
Our vegie patch is not doing brilliantly at the moment. Half because when it needed to be lavished with love, care, and water, I was in the throes of morning sickness and spent a lot of time feeling sorry for myself rather than working in the garden, and half because a reasonable amount got wiped out by the endless hot weather we had about two months ago (all the bigger tomatoes, in particular). However, excuses aside, the four chillies I planted from a mixed punnet are doing brilliantly. My favourites are the blasting hot Thai chillies (prik kee nu, literally 'rat shit chilli,' because that is what they look like), which we like to chop up small and soak in fish sauce (prik nam pla, ie 'chillies in fish sauce!') and eat sprinkled on practically anything savoury. I also have the bigger varieties Anaheim (lots of fruit, but suffers more from what may be blossom end rot than the others), Cayenne (not prolific) and Jalapeño (also not especially prolific).
Yet again, for about the third year running, I promise myself that I'll try to shelter the plants over winter so they have a chance or survival. Being tropical perennials, there is a chance they can make it through the cold if protected, but of course this does rely on me actually making an effort and not leaving it too late!

Five Sri Lankan Oddities

1. Sri Lankans like to use place-mats and coasters.
2. Meals are universally enormous.
3. Double bed sheets must be nearly impossible to find, because beds are nearly always made up with two single sheets arranged vertically. The sheets are often folded into origami-like patterns as well.
4. Smoking is unusual.
5. I've not yet seen  single child selling or touting anything. I think kids here are actually in school or playing at home. This is a refreshing change!

Five things which are the same everywhere throughout tropical Asia:

1. Stray, mangy, emaciated dogs.
2. Terrible roads, open drains, bad or non-existent plumbing.
3. Dragging poverty in some areas (though no one here that I've seen so far seems to actually be starving...)
4. Bus drivers with death wishes.
5. Bananas, papaya, mango, pineapple, rice...

I had a photo too, but Blogger doesn't want to play today...

I won't name names...

I knew this hotel was dodgy and chose it (online) because of it's proximity to the airport in Kuala Lumpur. We three (four?!) are on our way to Sri Lanka for a short holiday, and until recently our flight to Colombo left ridiculously early in the morning so I wanted to be close. The flight time has since be changed to 11am and there is now no need to be out in the sticks of KL at all, but nevertheless, here we are.

We have stayed in plenty of shoddy places before. And it's not like this place is particularly decrepit, really. First impressions were not great: the building is a  Classic Tropical Concrete construction, painted maroon and green. The corridors are painted an insipid lime green with chocolate brown doors and trim. Our room follows the lime green and brown theme. We seem to be on the edges of some kind of derelict estate and were not keen to explore further than making a loop around the block to find the only restaurant open (but busy, at least) for a quick dinner of ordinary nasi goreng and mee goreng. Almost all of the buildings are deserted and in a state of disrepair, featuring broken sidewalks, weeds, and even half-grown trees sprouting out of gaps in the concrete.
Still, our room is clean and dry, has hot water and electricity, beds, a TV... far more than we've had in many places before. So I'm not complaining about our hotel, as such, although it was exorbitantly priced for something so ordinary. 

Anyway, enough of all that. All things being even, this time tomorrow we should be eating dinner in Negombo, Sri Lanka, by the beach, and deciding where we are going to go after that. We're half backpacking it around the country, as in going with the wind as much as travelling with a toddler will allow. We have a rough idea of where we want to go, and are just going to get people to point us in the right direction. Our girl turns three years old in a week, and we're hoping her birthday involves elephants somehow.

Front fence revamp #2

So, the long awaited update! I get there eventually...

When last I posted, I was busy pulling up daggy lamb's ears and some Lomandras I was never happy with, and replacing them with a group of small, native ground covering plants (lots of daisies, plus a few ring-ins). I'm happy to report that most of my new flower patch is doing quite well. We have had a bit of a break in the hot weather recently with milder days and even a little bit of rain and the garden is loving it (as am I). A special mention here to my Helichrysum rutidolepis ('pale everlasting daisy'). It's a local species and classified as Threatened, and apparently it likes it in my front yard - with it's dripper irrigation and thick layer of pea straw mulch - because the few plants I put in have rocketed along, tripling in size in three weeks. Woohoo! Now, if only the rest of the plants would do the same thing...

Photo #1: Long shot of the front yard. The 'gap' at the front is actually a transplanted Poa lab and Scaevola 'mauve clusters,' which are still considering whether or not they are going to join the party.

Photo #2: Helichrysum rutidolepis going gangbusters.

Front fence revamp.

Those lamb's ears? They're doing nothing for me, so out they come, starting today. They're going to be replaced with an all-native flower border (so I'm calling it).

There are a number of little native plants right up again our fence already, including:

Brachyscome multifida var. diliata
B. 'Break O Day'
B. 'Pacific Sun'
Dampiera rosmanifolia
D. dysantha
Laurentia 'blue stars' (annual)
Chrysocephalum apiculatum prostrate form
Ajuga australis
Helichrysum scorpiodes
Wahlenbergia stricta
Billarderia cymosa (climber) and
Clematis microphylla (climber)

Today I'm planting a couple more Brachyscomes, Dampiera diversifolia, Halgania cyanea, Wahlenbergia communis and Helichrysum rutidolepis.

I will add a few more updated photos at the end (as well as a spelling and grammar check, which I can't do on my phone!)

Happy New Year, love Moorpark

My baby has borne its first fruit! My Moorpark Apricot was the first tree I planted in this house, in autumn of 2010. We have been waiting for nearly three years for fruit, and she did not disappoint us! We have been eating apricots since Christmas and have just picked the rest after the birds found them (I am feeling a bit too broke after the orgy of Christmas spending to invest in a good bird net). I never weighed or counted the fruit properly but we are drying about 40 apricots in the sun; I have another 80 or so (about 3kg) for jam; we have eaten uncountable numbers straight off the tree, and so have the birds. Pretty impressive!

Speaking of babies, our second child will be landing earth-side around the end of June :)