Garden Update

Lots of harvesting to be done. The olive tree is one but I am not doing so as I am not keen to do any pickling : Been harvesting these ripening hot chillies. They are really hot stuff.

My beautiful protea pink ice in bloom in its pot.

Gorgeous aloe vera. Harvested for some steamed dessert with sugar.

Big Day Work

Warm and still day. A good day to do major gardening and so we did. We spent a good 3.5 hours at our new property.

1. Clearing all the bark mulching revealing a layer of weed mat. We did one stretch today. Pulled up all the rose shrubs which are not growing very well due to neglect and the drought. Dug only three holes as that almost killed my husband. Probably another seven more to go for that stretch. Add composted cow manure. Planning to grow hedges. I like the spittosporum shrubs, either the silver or the golden sheen. They make good tall hedges (at least 1.5 metres) if pruned regularly in the first few years to establish bushiness. I would love to establish a privacy screen for this large area to house my fruit trees (tendatively planning persimmon, fig, nectarine, grape, peach, apricot) and flowers (sunflowers, daffodils, nasturtiums are among my favourites). Of course, not forgetting my beloved herbs and veges. It's going to be an exciting journey establishing a wondrous green haven right at my door step!

2. Pruning the lavendar on the left side of the patio. We bought a pair of Friskar Pruning Shears, a super light one and it made work easy. I do hope the lavendar bushes on the right side of the patio will survive as I think I have cut into too much of the old wood. One book 'The Complete Burke's Backyard' says they will almost certainly die. I hope not. :( But well, there are a lot of lavendar on this property and I jolly well can grow some other fanciful plants if they really die. A grape vine? Good idea!

Lavender trimmed on left of patio

Lavender cut back way too much into old wood on right of patio.

3. Fertilising the 3rd vege and 4th patches (below) in the backyard with cow manure and blood and bone. Then covering with weed mat after watering. The unidentified vine (below) growing at the corner was rescued by me previously as it was overwhelmed by the sprawling parsley. I cleared the corner of parsley, fertilised the area with cow manure and gave the vine a stake. Today, it looked very well.

One of the vege patches in the backyard. Researching now to assess if the dwarf fig can fit here.

The unidentified vine. Either keep it or may replace with passion fruit which can climb the green wooden wall.

4. Harvesting a bucket of parsley which have filled up patch #5 since the the last harvest few weeks ago :

5. Mulching around the olive tree.

6. Mulching around the plum tree.

7. Weeding. That's Samuel's job. :) He was pulling up the easy weeds which had triangular leaves and pinkish flowers while I handled dandelions and lamb's tongue which sprouted up among pebble-mulch. Tough weeds!

A tiring but fruitful time. Looking forward to more work before we finally can move in in December.

The Garden of Our New Property!

We have purchased a new property and I am looking forward to moving in in December. For the time being, I will be kept busy doing gardening for two houses - rental house and the purchased house. Recently, hubby and I cut down three short native trees in the backyard of the new house. They have nice purple flowers but I really would like to use the limited backyard space for growing something useful. I have prepared part of the narrow gardening patch in that backyard by digging in cow manure, blood and bone and vegetable scraps. There are some lovely parsley, a lavendar bush and a pomegrenate tree growing in the backyard. I do not use parsley but it is worth finding out how to use them.

The short trees which were cut down to make space for vegetables. Some dead shrubs which I removed eventually.

Three beautiful drought-resistant plants which were too lovely to uproot. I decided to keep them. And I have pruned the lavendar (on the left).

Also pruned four giant lavendar bushes on the front of the new house. Almost died doing that! Out on the large front yard are an olive tree, a plum tree, a camelia (that looks dead) and a giant oleander shrub. I had always wanted an olive tree for years and I am very glad to get such a huge one that comes with the house! With some research and planning, I hope to grow : calamasi lime, kaffir lime, persimmon, apricot and many other vegetables in these two areas.

This little space with pebbles. I am leaving it as it is at this moment.

Another few lavendar bushes which have to be pruned.

The oleander on the left and olive tree in the middle. Grass is really parched from the heat wave.

The huge oleander shrub and the dead-looking camelia on the right.

Recently, I made two new friends - Winnie and Shih Yi. It is a wonderful thing making new friends especially those that come from the same country. There are so much we can identify with! Shih Yi is also keen on gardening. :)