We have had a week of relative warmth, redolent of spring, and we’ve even had sunshine which has been superb. I can hear the groans from the Northern Hemisphere as I write, but truly, it’s been an awful winter – too wet, too cold and too long! And the weather boffins are telling us that thanks to La Ninã and the Indian Ocean Dipole, it will be wet on the east coast of Australia until at least December.
I swear I’m done with it.
Anyway, my six:
Back in the little Matchbox garden this week for SoS. My main garden is having a rotten winter with chill rain and wind and it’s reassuring to see it survive; spring will be a lovely reprieve for it. But in the meantime, the tiny city patch has its own microclimate. When the streets, hedges and gardens beyond the garden fence have been white with frost, this little space is showing that it’s moving forward quietly and with no fuss.
Hurrah, I made it to SoS with pics of our main garden on the coast as opposed to the tiny little Matchbox in the city!
Spring has sprung upon us and scared the hell out of us with three days of 18-26 this week! We literally watched the blossom emerge from the trees and then fall before we could even rush to get cameras and things, in between dashing around with a hose, moistening dry soil.
But then all day yesterday it rained and so the garden is looking satiated and as if it now has time to really think about spring. It’s about 13 today and a few things have opened. One must take the time to look because one finds spring is done and dusted in our neck of the woods in next to no time.
I think we’re really moving very swiftly into Spring. So much that the Dwarf Iris Reticulata flowered and finished in five days. I don’t think I will bother with them again – a floral disappointment.
But onto better things and my Six on Saturday:
I haven’t been around for awhile. It’s not that I haven’t been in the gardens, not at all. It’s just that my writerly work requires long hours at the screen and I couldn’t face blogging. It’s also difficult to load things where we live on the coast, as our internet has slowed dramatically and mostly, I have to work off my phone. But happy with progress on the latest manuscript, and with a hot chocolate drink seasoned with marshmallows and Lindt chocolate shavings, I feel revived enough to post about the gardens.
Very quick SoS today.
We’re in the city for a few days and the weather is astonishing – twenty degrees and the garden is so confused. And dry…
We’ve finally sunk into a true winter burst, with chilly temps and snow on the mountains. Whilst the snow will be gone by Monday, the cooler temperatures remind us that we need to consider frosts and planting seeds for spring. We’ve planted broad beans in the veggie garden (traditionally on Anzac Day April 25th, here in Tasmania but we’ve planted as late as August) and begun to rest and feed the veggie garden. There’s always more for us to do in our garden in autumn/winter, I love it. Pruning, feeding, mulching, planting, planning – and so we’ve begun.
We’re back in our big garden on the coast after dallying in the city last week and I was happy to see the garden breathing again as temperatures drop and the nights have welcome dews. This garden suffers in summer, as I’ve mentioned before, and in order to try and create a more temperate micro-climate, we’ve slowly been filling the old orchard with trees of all sorts. Hopefully they’ll act as not just wind protection, but feedlots for birds and insects AND lower the overall summer temperature of the whole garden. Trouble is, it may not be in my life time. But that’s gardening, isn’t it? A measure of future-proofing?
