OK - so it shows how long since the last update when the title is the season "Autumn" but I've been busy in the garden and lazy on the puter...
Well actually Lily and I have been busy in the garden... Lily now comes out every morning and diligently waters all the plants and feeds the animals - I'd like to say that she's enthralled by the sight of emerging seedlings and seeing her efforts result in beautiful flowers and food on the table - but really she's quite happy just to be making a mess with the water in the mornings and yelling "go get it!" to the dogs with a gleeful chuckle after she pours their kibble into the feed bowls - She does enjoy giving the flowers a good 'ol sniff though
The front veggie garden has been dug up and and had some compost and blood and bone turned into it - the compost is from the grass clippings and leaf litter that has been getting put across the back of the garden to keep the grass off the fence and to act as a bit of a path. Apparently, as this sort of mulch decomposes (well actually when wood chips decompose...), it draws nitrogen from the soil , hence adding blood and bone replaces this and keeps things happily balanced - that's the theory!
Anyway, out the front, Lily and I have planted lots of winter veggie seeds - this was done about 2 weeks ago - say 10/5 (I'll update my calendar) - veggies in the ground from memory are lettuce, silverbeet, broccoli, cabbage and possibly some other similarly boring winter veggies - yes, the guarding part is fun, but the range of winter veggies falls very short of the exciting and flavoursome summer crops!
Out the back and under the roses, the butternut pumpkin continues its battle - seemed we'd only get 1 pumpkin of this as the vine isn't agreeing to well to the colder weather, but some rain a few weeks back saw a flush of female flowers, and with a bit of help from father farmer brown nature, 2 more pumpkins now seem to be taking quite well - fingers crossed!
The roses have had their time in the sun - The standards have all had reasonable prunings and are no slowing down - Yes, it is a bit early as they should be pruned after the last frost but they were in desperate need of some taming, especially the strong one which had branches about 3 times as long as the main stem!
Some action in the garden though! Some nasturtiums that were kindly given by Sandra have been planted under the crab apple trees - these appear to be taking well and already have 4 flowers! Also starting to flower are the zygo-cactus which are all budded up and ready to bloom - will post some photos soon once these are all up and going!
Another winter chore yet to be done is spraying of the lawn - Seems to be alot of garbage growing through this year- much too much for dealing with by hand as was done last year with good results - seems the lack of spray last year has given the dormant weed and seed a chance to grow- oh well, at least its green!
So anyway - that's about it for the moment - next post will have some exciting pictures - I promise!
