Garden Works

It's been a busy spring (and now almost summer) here in Uralla! Between work and house and garden, keeping up the Maydwell business and having American guests, it seems there's always something else to do and I'm pretty behind on my blogging. This weekend I'm hoping to post the next segment of Hokkaido photos and photos from a two weekends ago trip to Grafton and the coast, but first, a bit of housekeeping!

It was a wet spring which means for the first time here we've had to deal with mosquitos in any quantities and there are multitudes of flies. Our wet spell seems to have come to an end, however, as it's been two weeks since we've had any precipitation and only three days with rain so far this month. The green was nice while it lasted but the grass is turning brown again. Storms are forecast for tonight and tomorrow, which would be very welcome indeed—our water tank emptied out this week and it'd be nice to have a break from watering the seedlings.

Black cat, neighbor's fence by the enormous fig tree, not yet
fully leafed out in mid-October when this photo was taken.

Black cockatoos in the neighbor's fig tree (late October)

Some of the plants we've been planting.

It's been quite the adventure starting an Australian garden, first of all to have so many plants we've never heard of before we came here (banksia, callistemons, leptospermum, philotheca, crowea, etc etc etc..) and to live in a climate to be able to grow plants we never considered before (most notably figs and mandarin oranges). Water has also been a challenge and we have gravitated toward natives and other plants which can withstand dry spells. Because of our “cold” winters, landscape plants have to be both frost-hardy and drought-resistant, which can be a bit difficult when looking at Australian gardening books and magazines. Reid has done a great job putting irrigation over most of the garden beds so we can efficiently water our vegie patch throughout the summer, which will be most convenient. So far, our vegie garden is coming along pretty well!

Back yard garden.

 Along the back fence.

With the row covers off (and a heap of radishes)

Carrots, beets, turnips, beans, peas. Despite this being our first year garden,
we have volunteer tomatoes!

Quinoa along the side fence, between strawberries and amaranth

Our front fruit trees are doing well, considering they were just sticks a few months ago.
It's still been cool enough we haven't switched all the plastic in the sunroom to screens.

Slowly filling in the yard from grass to other plants.
(Someday, we're going to have a little patio between the trees..)

Today's harvest is radishes!