Getting a hair cut

My grafted Australian finger lime got a hair cut today, a bit of a nip and tuck if you like. I love the weeping shape of this little tree, but it seems to have a bit of a nutrient deficiency (nitrogen?), probably mostly because it lives in a pot, and I neglected to bump up the feeding for it (whoops, my bad). All those yellow leaves were crying out to be clipped off, and tiny new maroon replacement leaves are beginning to appear... Should have tried for a close up! Alas, a broken camera lens denies me the option.

Before:

After:

Mulching

Mulching, mulching, mulching; blah! Never buying a jumbo sized bale of pea-straw again, not unless I have a small army to help me shift it, and a designated week to do it in. The bale has sat there for months, taking up space in the driveway, slowly mouldering and getting wet and soggy and revolting, hence: the industrial-strength washing up gloves! 

Smells like summer

An advantage of our unseasonably warm autumn is that we still have some basil doing splendidly in mid-June. 

My view

On holiday. Darwin. 

Meet Morry

Perhaps I need to rename my blog to 'Gardener on a Budget,' or 'The Bargain Hunter,' or maybe just 'The Cheapskate.'

Today I picked up a lovely little grafted mulberry (Morus alba 'Pendula') for the bargain basement price of $99, down from $150. It's grafted at about 160cm or so (about 5') I think, so it's also much cheaper than the $225-295 price I was staring down the barrel at for a taller grafted standard (180cm, or 6') that I was considering for my green-cubby. 

Of course, today I was 'just looking' in the nursery and hadn't planned on getting anything, but this tree was calling my name ('Katie, Katie, buy me, buy me! Look how straight I am, and look how wide I am at the top compared to the others, and I'm on sale...') so my quick browse became a shop of 1 x tree, 1 x bag cow manure, 1 x bucket Seamungus, 8 x long stakes (two to keep my tree straight, and six to use to form a guiding boundary for the cubby). Yep, a bargain ;) 

I think I'll call him 'Morry.' 

Impatience

That's what I'll call this one: I haven't even filled up all of the cells yet (ran out of coconut coir, my choice of potting media), but I couldn't resist getting a punnet of mixed lettuce ('baby cos') and filling up a few of those tempting pockets. 

I caved in

I bought a climbing 'Dainty Bess' rose. It's early to be planting roses here, and I can find no information at all about the growth habit of the plant (eg best for pillar, arch, shed, or fence). I can only find masses of photos of this particularly pretty single pink rose. It's a terrible picture of the rose here, but a rather accurate picture of the label. I don't know who would ever chose this variety based on this particular label, which, incidentally, says 'climbing' on the front, and then 'grows to 1m' on the back. Hmmm. Anyway, I hope to be adding my own beautiful Dainty Bess pictures to the hundreds already online within a few years, and all things being even, I'll let you know if it's an appropriate climber for a west-facing fence, or a flop, or if I've planted a fence-swamping monster.