The shedding season...
Gum Bark Mess
I have spent the last two days cleaning up behind the cottage. This area is called the Wattle Woods, but the Wattles share the space with Eucalypts. It's the shedding season, so the gums have been shedding leaves and bark.
Both trees are gross feeders, robbing the soil of nutrients. So what will grow happily underneath? Aha! Ta da! Drum roll and trumpet fanfare! Pittosporums and Agapanthus. Lovely plants...
The paths in the Wattle Woods are overgrown with weeds, the Phormiums need trimming and cleaning, and the Hebes, as usual, are struggling to reach the light. But guess what? Underneath the shining green foliage of the Pittosporums, swathes of Agapanthus, sleek in darker green foliage, look fresh and beautiful. It's their flowering season now, but these plants are in the shade and don't produce many blooms. And I'm happy for that.
Wattle and Gum Trees
The little stream which wriggles through the Wattle Woods is, alas, water-less, which does make it easier to clean out. Non-Gardening Partner has not re-floated the river pump as yet. He was last seen - or should I say 'heard' - using some rather gender-specific swear words, wrestling with it on the banks of the water race, trying desperately not to get his feet wet. Hmm. So how come a river pump is a female?
Anemanthele Grass
Hidden underneath some huge sprawling Anemantheles I've found a cache (?) of firewood logs - well and truly dead, ready to be stacked in the woodshed. The Anemanthele grasses have seeded all over the paths, and its easy to scoop up wadges of seedlings for transplanting elsewhere. Easy, I said. One just needs to be terribly thoughtful and follow through.
The River Pump
Waiting for the river pump...
So I've planted some clumps down by the little footbridge, I've cleared debris out of the little stream bed and the little pond, and now I wait patiently for the re-installation of the orange river pump. And then one of my prettiest water features will be again running.
Yeay for Agapanthus!
And some more good Agapanthus news. Last year I planted lots of clumps of a miniature variety alongside an open part of the little stream. Then I forgot about them. And now I see them growing really well, with far fewer weeds to cope with. Yeay! Good sense and great design, methinks?
Today it's been raining steadily all day. And that's good news for my garden, and my 2018 garden calendars (which I've had time to create and upload for all to enjoy). Now I just need to print out the dogs and cats one for the house.
Download a Moosey Calendar!
I enjoy making the calendars - choosing the best photographs, trying to get the days of the week lined up right, remembering 'Thirty days hath September' and all that. Lovely garden related work to do on a rainy day inside.
2018 Flowering Shrubs Calendar
So here's the trade-off. My garden needs rain. The lawns are covered with strips of gum bark, which I need to clean up before they can be mowed. But you can't mow lawns in the rain, hee hee. Oh well. There's always the jigsaw...