Update on our winter garden

Been a few weeks since we’ve worked in our paddock garden. A number of things such as family members staying with us, weather that wasn’t gardening friendly, and other activities. Was too wet Saturday but thankfully we had sun out on Sunday afternoon, although it was still very cold, so we were able to spend some time in the garden. Don’t think it got above 12C here today.

On Friday I went to my favourite plant market to purchase grevilleas, lomandras, liriope, dietes, kniphofia, daphnes and also a silver princess eucalyptus. I probably should have gotten some more! Didn’t fill the car as much as I thought it might 🙂

Anyway, we got the lomandras, liriope, dietes and grevilleas planted this afternoon. The rest will probably be planted next weekend. Thank goodness for our Power Planter. Makes such quick work of digging holes. Instead of it taking several hours to dig 27 holes, Graham was able to get them done in under an hour. Took me longer to take the plants out of the pots and put them into the holes, cover them over and then water them. But all the same, we got the whole job done in around 2 1/2 hours which is better than it taking a whole day to do.  In the pictures below: placing them out before digging the holes, new plants now in the ground, the new Silver Princess Eucalyptus and some interesting fungus we found growing in the bark in several places. I’ve been told it could be Peziza Repanda.

I dug up a couple of Bursaria Spinosa to shift. We were originally removing them, thinking they were spiky weeds, but learnt they are a native bush and would act as a deterrent to the wallabies that have been coming over or under our fencing. I found a spot where there was fresh wallaby poo and a gap where they were clearly coming under the fence. So Graham went off to get some star pickets to drive into the ground and tie to the fencing, while I collected some logs and small stumps from a wood pile nearby for putting at the base of the fencing to act as a further deterrent. It was then that I discovered a lovely brown striped frog under one of the logs. I took some photos and then replaced the log to leave it in peace. Investigation shows it’s an Eastern Banjo Frog, or otherwise known as a Pobblebonk. We’ve heard them in our billabong nearby and have seen several lots of spawn they laid late last year. There are tadpoles there now, but we’ve never actually seen any of the frogs till now. How exciting to find one!

I checked on the silver birch area before coming back in out of the cold. The bulbs we planted weeks ago are now showing and some are beginning to flower. The cyclamens are in flower, the hellebore growing and one nearly ready to flower. The silver birches completely bare and, at the moment, really just look like sticks in the ground. Looking forward to their growing bigger and having trunks with character.

And over the other side of the billabong a daisy bush I planted months ago has really bushed out and is blossoming well. It really was quite small when I planted it so am thrilled with how quickly it’s grown. Clearly very happy where it is and quite a picture, don’t you think?