Back into the Wattle Woods

 So pretty.
Magenta Lychnis

Walking around with the dogs early this morning, I saw several fix-it-quick spots which would benefit from ten minutes of bottom-wiggling, my current preferred gardening posture - helpful when the hips and the knees are a bit dodgy. I got the idea from the grand-baby, hee hee, who uses this technique to demolish succulents. Poor plants!

But I couldn't remember where I'd left my garden hand tools. And I'd lost my good kitchen scissors. Oops. It's Lychnis trimming time. I pull out the older (third year) plants and trim the rest, cutting up and scattering the seed pods around. Yeay!

And it's gum bark clearing time. So I needed the wheelbarrow, and a rake to keep the bending and stretching to a minimum. And after walking there and back and around again I still hadn't located either. Grr... How can a gardener who loses her equipment even think about seizing the moment? The dogs were rather keen to go back inside and seize their breakfast...

Then I thought about my latest garden commitment to sort out the Wattle Woods. I remembered where my things were, sorted out dogs and clothing, and decided to continue the clean-up. Look, the Wattle Woods are lovely, criss-crossed with winding paths, not deserving of gardener neglect. When an area in my garden is messy I tend not to visit it much, out of guilt. And self-preservation. Ten-minutes' worth of work is much easier to ignore...

 Yes I do!
Love the Eucalyptus trees!

The Wattle Woods greenery shines in the January sunshine, and I'm amazed that anything will grow in here. The soil is sandy, and out of reach of the irrigation, but the biggest problem are the huge Eucalyptus trees. As well as shedding leaves, bark, and self-amputating their branches, their root systems suck all the moisture and nutrients out of the soil. And I love them to bits, so there can be no question of removal.

So I scraped, weeded, and cleaned up the paths, and I raked up mess from the interior of the gardens, and trimmed off any Phormium leaves which were dead or sticking out sideways. I shifted the hoses and chopped out straggling Hebes. Then there'd be a whoosh of wind, and the noise of another piece of bark breaking off high up a tree trunk. Flutter, flutter, crash!

Happy Pittosporums!

Good news - not only are the Pittosporums surviving, but they look really happy! It's true - there is such a thing as a happy shrub look, shared by the larger species Agapanthus and rock lilies (Renga Renga). Alas, some of the smaller Phormiums are not so cheerful.

 Such a beautiful head!
Beau - the New Ram

+10And more news - the new merino ram has arrived. He is a 'stocky' (hee hee), good-looking chap, fourteen microns, and his name is Beau. Which sounds awfully like 'Bo', one of my dog park lady-friends. Hope she is OK with this. But think for a minute - Beau-Ram, Ram-Beau... It's kind of obvious, isn't it?