11 April 2011

We went to sleep last night to the sound of rain. Not the sudden massive dowpour which is over before it really begins but the steady constant pitter patter of a good soaking rain. Let's hope its the first of many such soakings.

Could there be anything better than Autumn in Perth! The weather has been beyond glorious lately. Even this morning, though cool, its not cold and it definitely wont be hot. Everything is putting in a last mad growth spurt before winter truly hits us.

The three Magic Carousels are looking particularly good at the moment. I would never have thought they would do so well after I separated the bush into three last year but all are looking very fine.

After having bought a lovely urn for the "fronds-on-a-stick" and planting it up during the week, I examined it yesterday and found in fully rotted through. So as it turns out it didn't need repotting afterall... it needed replacing!!! I'm thinking of getting a dracena to put in its place. I'm pretty sure its the ants which are causing so many of these problems lately, they are everywhere!!! Whenever dirt is moved you can be sure to find them. On Saturday I cleared the bed under one of the plums. I was concerned about all the mulch Paul put around them and just as well I did because collar rot had started. But worse still were the ants around the base of the tree. I've moved a large amount of soil from the bed, fed the tree and hopefully it should give a good display this year. I'm hoping the jonquils will do better this year as well, not having a massive amount of dirt to try and push up through. I've sown some seed from the lovely poppies that Yvonne has in her garden so I hope they come up too... that would be nice!

Roger and Shirley have taken out the massive Wooly Bush which was on the fenceline, so its looking quite bare there now. I'm torn between putting the salvias in there now or putting them in Clayton's garden. Either way I want to get some cuttings so that while I do one or the other now eventually I can do both.

I need to start lowering some of the other beds like I've done for the plum. Because we lay mulch every year the beds are getting progressively higher, the front roses are slowly getting swamped.