Gardening.... and many other ramblings!

It was becoming very apparent to me that even though I really enjoy gardening and have a vague idea of how it works I was desperately lacking knowledge in how to garden here in Oz.

To start with the seasons are different, Autumn is proving to be colourful.  Non-native trees very briefly changing their leaf colours to colours familiar in the northern hemisphere and then suddenly drop their leaves.  Possibly due to stress at not having enough water during the very hot very long summer.

Instead the colour comes from native eucalyptus 'gums'  and a lot of the native shrubs starting to flower, their colours are amazing and the bees are still happily buzzing away.

A lot of the things which I have learnt from Northern Hemisphere gardening just do not apply here, from pruning the roses to growing tomatoes.  For instance now is the time to put seeds in to harvest tiny tomatoes in the winter months... how wonderful.  Some rules of course are the same like nurturing the soil, dead-heading the roses to continue the blooms as long as possible and planting winter crops.

So I joined the Diggers Club, a gardening club, offering an amazing array of seeds and advice Australia wide.  The magazine is fascinating, full of really useful information on what to do right now.  It came with the seed catalogue which is choc full of a huge range of seeds and fruit trees. Traditional English cottage type, self-pollinating stone fruit (peaches, nectarines, cherrys and plums) berries (from traditional to choke and wolf berry), apples, pears, green manures to improve soils, grains like quinoa, amaranth AND various bush tucker.......phew!  The choice is startling and almost overwhelming.  Most we will be able to grow here and on the block.  Excited feels like not a 'big' enough word to describe how I feel.

I've a huge amount to learn and probably lots of mistakes along the way (it is after all the best way of learning) but what a fantastic opportunity. And of course I've now got The Diggers Club to hold my hand.

On the back of this excitement the boxes from the UK which were sent on their way here in January finally arrived.  It was like Christmas, I'd forgotten exactly what had been packed... more excitement and surprise as I unpacked and it's so good to at last have all my clothes in one place!

And then there was the hard waste collection.  The local council, as part of their service to the community, offer to do a curbside collection of any hard waste.  The hard waste can be anything, old beds, mattress's  furniture, electrical goods etc., etc., only TV's are not collected. All these things are normally destined for the 'dump' at a cost to the 'dumper', so there is a great saving along with a huge opportunity to de-clutter to be had.

It also becomes a recyclers dream, even I caught the bug, it's very hard to ignore perfectly good tables and chairs.  As THE day of collection approached the wide grass verges became piled high with all sorts of goodies.  It was  amusing to watch just how many cars with trailers were driving slowly around the area. We had to stop looking due to lack of space after giving a good home to two tables and three chairs!

We went to the block at the weekend, Fred was very helpful when it came to watering our newly planted Loquat tree and searching out cobwebs!

Hard to believe that once this tree's got it's roots down (in a very short space of time) we will almost be able to see it grow.  It should start fruiting very quickly too.... yum, yum!

Landy the older landrover was moved into a different shed, for the winter.  She is now resting her weary wheels on a couple of carpets and is covered over.

The huge and very heavy Jarrah wood bench is now reassembled and ready to use.  And Rick worked on mending the roof leak in the shed.  After a huge down pour of rain we realised it hadn't worked.  Back to the drawing board... another job for another day.

We met another lot of neighbours, very curious but friendly looking as long as Fred doesn't go to close to them.

We've marked out a site for the house, and now we're doing research on composting loo's, all very exciting and a lot more pondering to do.

That's all for now.....

Apologies in advance as there may not be a blog for a couple of weeks due to a wedding and new grand daughters.  More on those wonderful events later.......

Ooroo!