The aftermath

Yes, the hail really WAS that big!

Melbourne copped a you-beaut storm on Christmas Day (thanks SO much, Mother Nature), which you can read all about over here. We were lucky in that our house is undamaged; not so lucky when it comes to cars.... but hey, stuff can be fixed. It's unfortunate that even with insurance, there's mega-bucks involved, but lots of people are worse off than us, so I'm not moaning too loudly.

I'm still cleaning up around the garden though. I sorted the front yard out on Boxing Day, sweeping soil and mulch off the footpath and back into the garden beds, righting pot plants and clearing up masses of shredded leaves, small broken branches, etc.

I'd had a quick look around the back yard, but it was only yesterday that I looked really closely:

Smashed

Smooshed

Punctured

Pulverised

Shredded

Before - Christmas morning

After 

Some grooming required

I have no idea how the Kaffir Lime escaped damage, but - phew!

Today I'll be out with the secateurs and the broom, restoring some order. If only cars could regrow damaged parts like plants do, we'd have nothing to worry about.

Horticultural happenings

Having been away for a few weeks, I was itching to get out into the garden this weekend to take care of some overdue tasks. The weeds have gone feral while we were away, a whole bunch of plants need pruning or light trimming or something, plus I want to deal with a snail plague and a minor case of scale on the citrus before it gets out of hand.

Of course, the weather has turned absolutely vile and I have no hope of doing any of it today. Instead, I'm stuck indoors thanks to violent storms. Luckily, I managed to chuck some snail pellets around on Thursday night. The rain we've had since has brought all the little snails and slugs out to play, and they've been enjoying the "treats" I left for them. Nothing gives me greater pleasure than the sight of a bunch of dead snails:

Our fejioas have put on phenomenal growth while we've been away, and all four have burst into flower.

Let's hope we get a slightly bigger crop than last year's....

In other news around the garden, I'm finding I've made a few bad decisions when it comes to plant placement. These kangaroo paws have quite tall flowers, and tend to hang out over the path. After heavy rain such as we've had the past couple of days, they like to have a little lie down...

The bed along the rear wall of the house is really narrow, so I'll be moving them to a wider spot and replacing them with a dwarf variety, I have a couple of those further along the wall, and they don't get in the way of pedestrians at all. Live and learn...

Whilst a lot of our plants are still coming out of their winter shabby-ugly stage, the good old cannas are already putting on a spectacular show. These are outside the dining room window, and just gorgeous:

Tomorrow I have to take care of that scale and the weeds (should be easy after the rain), do a little pruning, and go around the garden taking note of the other jobs that need doing. We need to oil the deck and merbau screens before summer and give the bamboo screens a coat of sealer, but I'm sure there's a lot more to be done.

Once we have the (slightly late) spring maintenance out of the way, we can relax and enjoy summer in our outdoor "rooms".

One year on - part 3

One year on

March 2010:



March 2011:

Random stuff

This is a bit of a random collection of photos and ramblings, in no particular order....


The Christmas tree looks a lot better than last year, thanks to the addition of some new decorations. Swapping a four-foot tree for a seven-foot tree and changing colour schemes meant we had a lot of empty space on the new tree.



Thanks to the trusty $2 Shop, I have these...



...and these...



...and these...




Plus these from K Mart...



...and these from the Reject Shop....





Add some coordinating wrapping (of course, because I'm a bit OCD), and it's looking almost perfect. Still room for some more bead garlands next year, plus more lights, I think.



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Of COURSE, now that we've had our shade awning installed, ready for the blistering summer heat...there isn't any. It's done nothing but rain for the past few days and more rain is forecast pretty much for the rest of December. Great.

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I bought this tower of gift boxes about five years ago from Target to use as a Christmas table centrepiece.



It came filled with different kinds of lollies, which of course were nought but a memory by the time New Year rolled around. I kept the boxes though, and after much nagging by The Baby, decided to refill them today.



I may have to do an audit each night to make sure they last more than a week.

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Remember way back in winter, when I pruned the weeping mulberry and it looked like a stick? Here, I'll refresh your memory:



I'd never really grown a weeping tree before. Well, there was the cherry I put in at the old place, but we sold before I saw the result of my one and only pruning experiment there. So I was a bit terrified that it wouldn't grow back, or would turn out looking a bit mental. I needn't have worried:





Awesome gardening skills, or what?

Holy cow!

Look at this growth!

November 22nd:



Yesterday:



In other news, I discovered that we have a community garden nearby - walking distance, in fact. I went on a fact-finding expedition this morning, only to be foiled by locked gates, so I'll be making a phone call Monday to find out if we can rent a garden bed to grow our own veggies.

We really don't have much room here, and we miss our old veggie garden. We used to grow tomatoes, several varieties of lettuce, cucumbers, snow peas, chillies, and various herbs, among other things. While I've managed to fit in a few fruit trees here, I'd love to have access to the orchard that's apparently been planted for neighbourhood use.

Stay tuned.

My piece of tropical paradise

When we were planning our landscaping, I decided I wanted a gorgeous, lush, resort-style garden with a tropical feel. That led to a lot of research, hunting for plants that would give me the look I wanted, but which would stand up to Melbourne's winter. Most real tropical plants were ruled out straight away, because they don't like frost and cold winds, but I wasn't giving up.

Eventually I came across an online article - I think it was from the ABC's Gardening Australia TV show - that featured the gardens of the elephant walk at Melbourne zoo. They listed a whole lot of plants that would give that tropical feel, without being prima donnas about the climate. I also spent a lot of time looking around nurseries and stalking gardens that I liked the look of to come up with some ideas.

I did most of the planting between March and May, and six months later, it's all coming along very nicely.

By the way, I've completely forgiven the cannas for being all ratty during winter. In the past four weeks they've redeemed themselves in a big way....