SoS 20/11
It’s still wet! Wet wet wet!
Everything in the garden is done at breakneck speed as we literally only have one clear day between multiple wets. Are there still climate change deniers out there? Seriously?
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?
It’s been an age since I contributed to SoS, despite that I’ve always visited all the other gardens across the globe. Life’s been a bit busy and to be honest, it’s that time of year where nothing much is going on in our gardens.
Autumn supposedly begins here in the southern hemisphere on the first of March, but I’d venture that it actually began a couple of weeks ago. For a start after a pretty bad summer (grey skies, not much sun and warmth, rain and windy windy, all because of El Nina)…
Our big garden is tired and begging for autumn to arrive. We’re in the tail end of meshed weather systems today and the humidity is tropical. Rain is falling and the waves are crashing on the beach. The garden needs a good fertilise and for the windiest summer for ages to cease. Hopefully next week I can post on how it looks but in the meantime – on Thursday I was in the city and took some pics of our little Matchbox garden…