Mini updates #5 and #6

We've moved in and I'm back at the old lappy! I am slowly trying to read all the blogs I have been missing (getting there). I feel I have 100 things to write about and am still playing catchup, so here are two more update snippets.

#5

Look! Look! It's a nearly completed and tidy house space! Very exciting :)

This shows some of the things I have been rambling on about for the last 15 months: 'Australian Chestnut' hardwood floors (really up to four different species of Eucalypt), high double glazed windows (looking east), Danish couches (new to us, IE second-hand), 'Parchment' wall paint (Solver), and good old ceiling-white paint on top. And I do believe this is the first appearance of D's fish tank on this blog? It may feature in later posts, on and off.
Still to do in this section: my photo wall, adding a rug or two, and a reshuffle of the furniture. I am pretty happy with this corner of the house so far, especially considering that from the point that I took that photo, if I'd turned about 180 degrees to take it you'd see complete chaos and it would look like a different house (with quite nice floors).


#6

The Great Fence Project.

This is what I've been attacking over the last month or so: planting a variety of fruit trees along the fence (mostly figs and citrus so far), and removing the clumps of old Agapanthus planted along there. Apologies for the dodgy photos; I didn't realise how blurry they were until I loaded them up! So far I have removed well over 200 individual Agapanthus plants (rhizomes?) This is, in short, a crap-load of hard work. They're surprisingly shallow rooted, but very heavy and bulky. I feel that rather than using a spade to remove them, I'd be better off with a machete. It's an unpleasant and particularly dirty task, made worse by the sticky and slimy gloop that the broken leaves exude.


It feels a little thankless, at times, to have been hacking away at the clumps for hours and only have cleared a small space, and then to have looked up and see the meters and meters of plants stretching away in front of me still waiting to be cleared. I persist because of all that lovely warm and sunny west-facing garden space they will free up once they're gone.
Bottom left of this photo is a representative of one of my new espalier-babies (a Eureka Lemon). I plan to try my hand at espaliering a whole row of fruit trees along this fence, but I'll devote a whole post to that later.



FWIW, many of these Aggies are going to family member's gardens. I feel a bit torn about it: I hate to waste a perfectly usable and useful plant (drought tolerant, fire retardant, endlessly green), but on the other hand a fairly serious environmental weed, though not a declared one, and often still available for sale, and mainly a problem when garden waste is dumped in bushland. If the old flower heads are removed before they scatter seed everywhere they're not really a problem (but still...)

Must go. Need to be up at the crack of dawn for the early-bird plumber tomorrow.

Mini updates #3 and #4

#3 Three cheers for indoor plumbing: hip hip hooray! And, if the Gods are with us, we'll have hot water by the end of Tuesday :)

#4 An autumn colour happy-snap: my crabapple seems to be settling into the rose garden nicely (Malus ioensis 'plena'). I suppose I won't know for sure until next spring when it bursts back into life with blooms, but I'm looking forward to viewing it from our bedroom window!

Mini update #1 and #2

The idea here is to do a series of quick updates over the next few posts, seeing as I don't seem to be able to get to the old blog very often any more (and I haven't been able to read many others, either, sorry everybody! I have been neglecting you, though not intentionally.)

#1 Renovation update:

While we've been pottering along and things are slowly happening, not much of it has been particularly newsworthy. The big news of the day is that our bathroom bits and bobs should be arriving at the end of the week, and all things being even the plumber is going to visit early next week and we'll have an INDOOR TOILET! (I want to hash-tag that #firstworldproblems...), and if he's really on a roll we might even get, like, running water inside and not need to bring it in in buckets anymore. Actually, I lie, D brought home an empty 20L olive oil cask from work and we've been filling that with water. From time to time we've slept over at the house, but the lack of plumbing is terribly inconvenient so we limit it to once or twice a week.

In slightly more photogenic news, I've tried out some samples of paint on the exterior of the house. I wanted to paint it purple or mauve, so we tried it: everybody hated the lavender tone on sight - including me - and although I quite liked the darker purple I was the only one and well outvoted, so I came to my senses and went off the paint shop to look for what I like to call 'dove grey.' I'm not sure if this qualifies as dove grey - suspect that's a matter of opinion - but is IS very pretty, and no one is looking at me like I have two-heads with this colour, this time. (On a side note: I can hardly wait until I can tackle the landscaping in the backyard and stop ignoring the weeds, though Heaven only knows when that will happen.)



Mini Update #2: Microcitrus: for the gardeners.

Back in August last year I bought myself a Fingerlime (Microcitrus australasica). Recently I finally got around to repotting it in a terracotta pot and he's doing quite well so far. In the last 7 or 8 months he's grown perhaps an inch higher and is lovely and healthy. At that time I also bought my first Australian ground orchid, a greenhood Pterostylis curta). And although I don't have any photos yet, I'm happy to report that it has come out of dormancy after the Summer and resprouted from five bulbs. One fell victim to a snail or slug the moment it poked it's green nose out of the sand, but I whipped the rest away to safety and surrounded the new shoots with a protective ring of snail bait (bad greenie, I know!)

Hardenbergia's revenge

I have a blind spot with plants. I read their labels, and then assume that they won't grow as large as is suggested. Case in point: planting four hardenbergias in the rose garden, thinking they would spill out over the ground like a ground cover. Wrong, of course. They grew at a rate of knots and were attempting to take over completely. It was time to bite the bullet, admit my mistake, and say goodbye. But not before these plants could exact their last bit of gardening karma on me: I began by digging around the stems of the plants with my pitchfork, and quickly moved on to a levering action, using all the strength in my arms to push and pull these plants, feeling the snap and pop of the roots and their springing resistance, until finally, with a great crack, and as I was standing on the handle of my pitchfork using it like a trampoline in an effort to remove these tenacious beasts, the handle of my well-loved fork snapped completely. Lessons learnt: some plants will hang on grimly to teach you a lesson; a plant in an appropriate spot will indeed grow to its projected size; and never plant strong climbers unless you are absolutely sure they will grow as you want them too.

Rose wish list Mk2

Eons ago I made a list of a few roses I wanted to get for the garden. Now that Autumn is here, I am browsing rose catalogues again and making more lists. Long, long lists. I need to pare my rose wish list down to less than a dozen, because I just don't have the room out the front really, and because if I bought everything I wanted it would cost me a small fortune. If I spent as much time reading about native plants as I have about roses lately, I'd rapidly be becoming an expert in my job...

You might remember that my front garden is packed with Iceburg roses, in other words, about two dozen white shrub roses. They bloom profusely and seemingly endlessly, but have virtually no scent and are on the boring side. Last year I ordered and planted five David Austin roses: Graham Thomas, Jude the Obscure, Charlotte, Crocus, and Lichfield Angel. These are all yellow/peach/apricot/buff tones. The Graham Thomas, Jude the Obscure, and Charlotte have all done well and are lovely, healthy plants which have bloomed all summer though are still small. The Crocus was attacked by a mysterious leaf-eating bug all Summer and has struggled along with barely any greenery at all. Now, at the change of seasons, it's finally got some leaves and has stopped being eaten so I'm hoping this will help it get lots of energy back ready for the Winter dormancy. The Lichfield Angel inexplicably died almost immediately after it was planted.

So this Winter I want to plant more yellow roses, some pink, and one or two others that I love too much to not plant even though they don't really fit in with my front garden colour scheme (white/lavenders/blues/yellow). I'm hoping this post will help me shorten my short list!

First, thinking of the garden bed which goes from the front gate and down the side of the bed...

By the gate I'd like a Raubritter rose (Rosa macrantha 'Raubritter'). It's supposed to be a largish groundcover/sprawling rose. I have a low wall along there and I think it would look nice spilling over the wall, but it's apparently quite thorny so that might not be the best place if people are going to walk past it. I'm determined to have one, however!

Source: google.com via Katie on Pinterest

Source: davidaustinroses.com via Katie on Pinterest

Further back along the path I think I should stick with the pink tones. I'm in love with Strawberry Hill (a David Austin rose). This medium sized, arching shrub made my original wish list and since it's still on the list I think it's a goer;

Source: treloarroses.com.au via Katie on Pinterest

I've got a real soft spot for Saint Cecilia... way back when I was in a Catholic highschool and most of the other kids were choosing saints for their new middle names for their confirmations we all had to research a particular saint and I chose Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music (that might not be why we were learning about saints. It was a long time ago and my memory is a little hazy, but that's how I remember it in any case). Anyway, Saint Cecilia is another shrubby, upright David Austin rose with lovely pale pink/apricot blooms. This one was on my original list as well.

Source: davidaustinroses.com via Katie on Pinterest

Up the back of that side bed, by the house, I'd like to plant a gigantic climbing rose. It's not the most sunny of spots, being squeezed in between the fence and the house, but I want a rose which soars overhead so I think once a plant grew upwards it would get enough light. I'm tossing up between a yellow Banksia rose (Rosa banksiae lutea, enormous, close to my heart), or a Crepuscule (awful name, lovely noisette rose, yellow/apricot flowers), or something old-fashioned with lovely red rose hips like a white Rugosa rose (Rosa rugosa alba). Descisions, decisions...

(Banksia rose)

Source: google.com via Katie on Pinterest

(Crepuscule)

Source: diggers.com.au via Katie on Pinterest

(Rugosa rose)

Source: davidaustinroses.com via Katie on Pinterest

And at the risk of a total rose overload, here's just a few others (all shrub roses, all David Austins) that I keep thinking of and can't strike off the list.

The Pinks:

William Morris;

Source: flickr.com via Katie on Pinterest

Brother Cadfael;

Source: sugarfromsunshine.com via Katie on Pinterest

The Alnwick Rose;

Source: google.com via Katie on Pinterest

The Yellows:

Golden Celebration;

Source: treloarroses.com.au via Katie on Pinterest

Teasing Georgia;

Source: magicgardenroses.com.au via Katie on Pinterest

Molineux

Source: google.com via Katie on Pinterest

And the randoms I can't get past:

Summer Song (in a pot because it wouldn't fit anywhere else)

Source: magicgardenroses.com.au via Katie on Pinterest

and finally, Munstead Wood (I'd like a climber).

Source: treloarroses.com.au via Katie on Pinterest

Hope you enjoying this look into my brain tonight :)

(And for referencing purposes, none of these photos are mine - obviously! - but if you click on them it will take you to my Pinterest boards, and then if you click again it will take you to the website where the photo was originally posted. Or at least, that's the idea).

Gardening by moonlight

No, not the kind where you refer to a chart to see what to plant when according to the phases of the moon, but the kind when it's already dark outside, and the Mosquitos are out in their hordes, but it's such a beautiful, balmy, sublime autumn night that you steal half an hour outside to do some planting (raspberries into styrofoam boxes, in this case).

The current moon phase, by the way, is a waxing crescent and supposedly a good time for planting and encourages leaf growth. I only learnt that five minutes ago...

More interesting to me is my SP's current complete fascination with the moon. She tells me she wants to sit on it; bless little toddlers! Always seeing our world in a different way.

Virtually free food?

Last time I told you about my butternut pumpkins (that's butternut squash too, for any overseas readers). Those were the pumpkins I planted myself in carefully prepared ground. But then, up the back are three GINORMOUS self sown pumpkins. They came out of the compost heap which I moved - and spilt - because it was in the way of the chicken coop which we were building (and still are, slow work in progress). I'm not sure what kind they are, I'd guess Jap or Queensland Blue since they're what we'd generally buy from the supermarket.

(Please ignore the weeds, they have gone mental and I'm telling myself I'll get on top of them once we move home...)

These three pumpkin plants are a demonstration that plants can - and will - adapt to the conditions they have. Self sown at almost exactly a meter apart, they have never had any water beyond the rain and yet never got wilty except on the very hottest of days. The butternuts, on the other hand, wilted at the first hint of heat and had to be watered almost daily through the summer. The butternuts got completely covered with downy mildew after some summer rain and the few nice warm days which followed... Not one spot of mildew appeared on my mystery pumpkins. Now, they're covered in male and female flowers, and although I was tempted to continue to leave them completely to their own devices I have been hand pollinating the baby fruits at every opportunity (many more fruits on each plant compared to the butternuts too which had about one each). Now I just have to wait and see if we get nice pumpkins from my irrigation-free plants or if they are completely inedible.