February 2013

We must have more rain soon...ants are still moving indoors and more disturbingly marching up outside walls into the ceiling.  If you sit still for more than ten minutes, scouts are running all over you to see if you are dead yet and having taste tests.  Do ants have cholestrol problems?...if so eating me could wipe out whole populations.

Spring and early summer saw our garden suffering even though I spent all of my gardening time watering.  I was in near despair when Cyclone Oswald remnants washed over us.  I am sorry for the people who were flood affected but for us, it saved our garden...but we do need some follow up.

My Brugmansia was almost bare but is now covered with leaves and buds....my salvias which I thought I had killed because I cut them right back early summer because they looked so ugly....leggy and stressed with dying flowers are a picture of health..I cut my clerodendrum back hard as well...same thing instant recovery..covered with flowers. It makes you wonder about our drinking water...although it does not kill our plants outright..they never flourish on it ..perhaps it is the chemicals...including flouride now.

So the ornamentals are all recovering...weeds are thriving....vegetable patch a disaster.  I have just pulled out my Cape Gooseberry bushes..the beetles have got to them again..their lavae just strip branches almost overnight...I suspect they were  an introduced pest perhaps in NSW because they regard Cape Gooseberry as a noxious weed.  I see on some very expensive packs ($19.90 per kg) of gooseberries "grown by approved grower" at the greengrocer.  I did grow enough to make some jam....shame it set like soft toffee....still considering my options there ...any ideas?  My passionfuit vine has lots of flowers but no fruit...my choko vine is still sulking and my silverbeet decided it was too hot. I was proud of my asparagas until I saw in ABC Gardening the female plants are not good...I am wondering if I should have a go at Green Harvest where I purchased them at considerable expense 2 years ago. My herbs are OK but I lost my mexican coriander during the dry..so besides mint, stunted basil and parsley gone to seed...that it is about it for my vege patch.

Well that is summer so far...I should really stop sitting...yes the ants have found me and go and do something..

Cheers,

Denise