A series of mishaps

A whole ten days ago I posted that I had some penstemon and geranium cuttings waiting for me to pot them up. It has, as I mentioned, been a long ten days since then. Apart from the various illnesses doing the rounds of the family, there was also the part where I was walking home from work, after getting off the bus at 3am last Saturday night. One minute I'm calmly, but quickly, walking along (it was very cold, wet, dark, windy...), and then next thing I know I'm lying on the side of the road. In the mud. I'd stepped right on the edge of the asphalt, and my ankle gave way beneath me, tossing me over into the gutter: SPLAT. All very undignified. My ankle hurt; the palm of my hand hurt, and there were some furious embarrassed tears too (although, at 3am, it's not like anyone saw me.) And I'm then sitting there, ankle hurting, owwww, how am I going to get home now? Before my better-self piped up with, oh just get over it, stand up for Heaven's sake, can you walk on the ankle, or not? Staggering to my feet, I realised sheepishly that my ankle was not, in fact, broken, and I could limp the last 200m home, where once I got into the light and the warm I realised I was quite literally covered in mud, leaves and debris to my waist, and I even had mud in my eyebrows. In my eyebrows! Good work, if I do say so myself. The next day my ankle hardly hurt at all, my hand had barely a scratch, but my wrist was hurting and my whole knee had turned purple (and still is) which is ironic because I didn't even realise I'd banged it at the time.

Anyway. Moving on.

So, as I said, it was a bit windy that night. I discovered in the morning that apart from my purple knee, the wind had blown my cuttings off the table outside -where I'd left them because I was going to pot them up 'any minute now,' and smashed the glass all over the paving. Bugger.
I rescued what I could and put them back into some water (where they languished for another week).


During the week we went around to our little cottage and I pottered in the garden out the front, clipping roses, planting strawberries, planting my second persimmon, and also, as it transpired, doing a little impromptu pruning on one of my favourite correas by being careless with the hose, accidentally ripping off the entire leading branch. Feck. I guess that particular plant is destined to be even more of a ground cover than I had intended. I thought I might be able to save some of it somehow, so took it home and put it in a container of water by the sink. Look how big it was!


What's a girl-gardener to do? When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. (An unfair judgement on lemons I always think; I like lemons particularly.) Or when you accidentally rip out half a correa, try to take as many cuttings from the poor soul as you can. Like so. Or not like so. This is not meant as instructions because I have very little clue, I'm just winging it really, but more of a record of 'What Katie Did Next.'

This is as far as I've gotten with my propagating for a week: filled pots. They've been waiting, and waiting... and waiting... for me to get my act together.


Then I clipped off as many usable correa twigs as I could and pulled off most of the leaves.


I trimmed them all off to the same sort of size and dipped the ends into the rooting powder.


Then I made a little forest of them in a pot. There may be too many in here, but then I'm assuming that most of them, if not all, will not strike.


While I was there, I finally got around to making cuttings of the penstemon and the geraniums too.


Like little ducks all in a row...


I'll update this one in a couple of months or so when I know if it worked or not.

May your working week pass quickly xx

The nature strip takeover continued.

Today I finally, finally, got the chance to plant my native babies into the nature strip out the front. To set the scene: the Weather Bureau is predicting that we here in Adelaide will have the average rainfall for March over these few days (beginning last night, we dreamt to the sound of it drumming on the room and spattering off the gum trees). This morning SP had her swimming lesson with D (how very suburban of us) and I took the opportunity to get digging out the front. It was drizzling a little when I started, and the rain continued alternating between heavier and lighter, spotting and spotting, grey and misty. The cars splashed past me, and I probably got a few sideways looks as I got wetter, and wetter and wetter. No doubt my neighbours thought I was odd (Honey, that girl next door, the one that never wears shoes, is even weirder than we thought), but I was having a brilliant time: scraping away the dolomite layer with my mattock; cutting into the slippery clay; adding the peat and compost mix and stirring it all about with a hand fork. There is something sublime about playing in the mud and the leaves like that.

Anyway, here are the babies ready to go with their peat and compost bedding;

and here they wait in the mist while I dig their beds;

down the western end of the nature strip the water runs off the path and over the gravel. I chose this spot to put the Common Rush as it prefers boggy ground;

and now they have been all snuggled into their holes with a little basin around each to hold the water.

Later on I'll add a row(?) of Tussock Grasses along the path to tie in a little with the planting along the fence;

Species List:

Correa 'Dusky Bells'

Poa poiformis (coastal tussock grass)

Eremophila 'Rottnest Emu Bush' (red flowered form)

Eremophila maculata compacta (red flowered form)

Eremophila 'Kalbarri Carpet'

Melaleuca fulgens 'CF Payne'

Grevillea lavendulacea (Victor Harbour form)

Juncus ursitatus (Common Rush)

Bargain plants make for happy gardeners.

We might have moved temporarily to another house, but it hasn't stopped me shopping for the garden and the nature strip takeover.Since we're now within walking distance of the 'Village of Stirling' (which, by the way, is a very pretty place to spend the Autumn even if I am dreading Winter here just a little) I was able to wander up to the monthly Stirling Sunday Market, where I discovered, to my joy, that there were many stalls selling plants and one in particular even had cheap plants (bonus for the gardener on a budget). These little beauties were $2.50 each, or 10 for $20 (5" pots, woot!). Naturally, I got 10 plants without even blinking, asking the plant-guy for bags to put them in as I walked around choosing my babies. 

I got:

Catmint 'Walker's low' (Nepeta × faassenii) because I've read it's a traditional rose under-planting, and very pretty, and attracts bees to the garden.

Pepino Gold (Solanum muricatum) for it's 'melon-like fruit,' even though I've never eaten it in my life.

White butterfly bush x 3 (Gaura lindhermeri) because I've recently fallen in love with it. 

Common Rush (Juncus usitatus) because I'm quite taken with rushes and grasses at the moment.

And to help me in my quest to bring in the birds I bought:

Correa 'Dusky Bells', One of my favourites, as you should know if you're a regular reader. 

Eremophila 'Rottnest Emu Bush' (Red form).

Eremophila maculata compacta (Red form).

Melaleuca fulgens 'CF Payne'.

Those four are Australian natives though not indigenous to my area. Stay tuned for updates on their progress.

New Baby

I got a new baby in the post last week, all snuggled into a box and tucked into shredded newspaper, and now she's sitting on my breakfast bar, waiting to be planted. This is my black mulberry tree, and I am ridiculously excited to have one :) Memory here: one of my mum's work colleagues farms on the Eyre Peninsula. It's hot and dry; the family live in a giant tin shed. The adults put down tarpaulins on the ground and shake the mulberries from the tree, which is enormous. We kids gorge ourselves on the dark fruits and run in and out from under the tree's overhanging branches. It's another world under there, cool and dark and light-dappled. Now I have my own treeling, and whilst I don't think I'll let it get to it's potential 10 x 10 meters, it will take it's pride of place in the middle of the lawn.


In other news the air is becoming warm and the garden is blooming. The old rose along the fence, near the letterbox, is shooting into life with pink-blushed leaves. At least one nasturtium has shown it's floral face, and it is a golden yellow with red cheeks, and I have my first correa flower gracing the rose garden.