Gardener in a dry land – five years on

Five years since my first post! I got started on my garden in earnest in January 2011, and started blogging in May that same year. For four years, 2011-2014 I put in loads of hours getting the garden off the ground. I have been a bit off the boil the last year or two, since I started a creative writing course, but fortunately gardens happily grow without you.

My main complaint about this place is that things take forever to grow here, but these photos will prove that this is not true. They just seem to take forever.

 

 

What’s it all for?

My son Antonio recently expressed concern that all my work in the garden might be all for naught. That in the future, when we leave this place and new owners move in, they might take a bobcat to all my labours and reduce it back to nothing but mud in minutes.

When there was nothing

We have all seen it, the work done by loved ones being undone when new owners come in, and in the case of my grandparent’s front garden, put back similar to how it was before sometime after that. Only the rare garden outlives its owners by decades or centuries.

Sometimes I wonder what a new owner might do, and my main concern is where he or she will erect their large shed, as all people these days seem to want huge sheds alongside their houses. The days of a small collection of sheds down the back of the garden have passed. So I’m hoping future owners will put one where the caravan and vegie patch are, and leave the rest of the garden in tact.

I have had other discouraging moments when I’ve planted trees thinking, “what’s the point, I’m going to be dead before they reach maturity,” but the years are going to pass whether or not I plant trees, so I might as well plant them.

I can also ask Antonio a similar question, “are all those boss battles worth it?”, because to me they aren’t. I chuckle at him sometimes, because he considers Facebook games to be beneath him – a total waste of time, while he, discerning gamer that he is, is actually doing something worthy.

And then I’ll quote Beth Chatto at him and tell him that there is more enjoyment from the achieving, rather than the achievement. Although without the achievements there is no further achieving anyway. One thing I love to do is look at photos of my garden this time last year, or however many  years ago and look how far it’s come in that time. I love to watch plants suddenly take off after 3-5 years of putting down roots. I love seeing the proof that that particular year, I actually finished something!

Just last year.

We have gotten much joy from the improvements that have been made since I really got going early 2011, from the pond, the big slide, watching the cats run along the stone walls, the lovely shade of the carport and verandah, the feeling of safety the came from putting up walls and putting pavers and grey shale over what was once mud. Although even though we no longer step out into mud when it rains here, we still manage to find plenty of mud to step in!

And then there was the comment made by a great lady named Coral I met through the Port Augusta Garden Club; she felt that you would never have a nervous breakdown if you had a garden.

 

 

 

 

 

A holiday at home

Finally after six dry months we had a good rain the other week, around 60mm. We did not see the sun for over a week. All through it the children played outside, mainly on the big slide, the bottom of which fills with water, but much time was also spent on chairs on the back verandah.

On the big slide

The weather was so different to our usual intense days of blue skies and heat that it felt like we were somewhere different and exotic. Meals also were eaten outside, adding to the holiday mood.

Amaru outside for a change.

However the holiday is over. With the ground soft at last, and no watering needed for a week or two, I have been busy working on pond #2 and pond #3.

May the 4th and 6th

On May the fourth, 2009, a couple of years before all the Star Wars stuff started appearing on that date, I began a garden. I finished clearing the last of the junk away in the area facing my kitchen window, and the first things went in.

On May the fourth

Two days later, when my husband died, the area became Edi’s garden.

Hope and faith

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. (Hebrews 11:1)

This kind of faith especially applies when planting a garden. Every project or garden bed has started with a picture in my mind, on which I have acted to make it come to pass. Two years ago when I planted out what was to become the yellow garden, there was mainly green, and a few other colours. But in my head, the  garden was already blooming with yellow, the colour of hope, with a few other things thrown in to break it up.

Not long ago it has begun to look a little bit like what I imagined.

Hopes realized

You will see Patches our hope-giving kitty there too!

But when I started this blog the garden looked more like this:

In the beginning

Two years and 4 months later:

Now

Proper rain at last

After two years of very little rain, we have finally had several inches over the past month. It has been a great time for renewal, and lots of planting.

I have also almost finished the paving of the back verandah which I began at the end of January. To celebrate, I have put in another pond at the end and made a delightful shady corner there, which will be a wonderful place to sit, when summer returns.

Before.

The above photo shows what the shady corner looked like a couple of months ago, when it was still just in my head.  Below is what it is now, straight after last week’s downpour.

After

Of course in my mind the plants are way bigger! We have four little fish that we have put in this pond, because the children wanted them. We have not seen many frogs around our other pond as it was such a dry year, but we are hoping to hear croaking again in the future. I might bring in a few tadpoles this year to make sure.

Dirt under my nails again

At last the day I’ve been waiting for it here, the first day of the planting season.  It’s one of my favourite days of the year.  Another favourite day is the first day it is cool enough to get out my trackie pants and ugg boots.  My favourite days used to be my birthday and Christmas.  Bit sad that they are not anymore.

Here in our part of the world, the Flinders Ranges, the best month for planting is March, and after that, April.  May to August are mediocre, while September to November are still good for tougher species of plants.  But nothing beats a March planting for getting a plant strong enough to handle its first summer.

With rain on its way this week I have been getting as much in as I can.  This morning I’ve planted a few things in Edi’s garden, including a salvia which was a cutting from Kate Llewellyn.  I also put in some more wormwood for the hedge around the orchard near the chooks.  I have been trying to grow this hedge for 3 years, and only one side is up and running.

Now I can look at plants at nurseries, and the kids will moan as I will have to “just have a quick look” each time I pass one!

Oops I did it again.

Oh gosh, it’s been awhile since the last post, and I’m afraid I only have myself to blame because my son got me hooked on Minecraft.  I had resisted until then because I knew I would love it, and I was right.  All those building projects etc are just so much quicker to achieve in the virtual world.  And no sooner do you step away from the computer than you dream up something new to do.  Anyway, I have had to discipline myself yet again and get back to work!  At least I am now on the paving and the stone wall, which is so much slower to do in real life!

 

 

The garden at Sol y Luna

If you haven’t heard from me it’s because I’ve been stuck on the painting of my pieces of carport.  This job is a drag and because I don’t enjoy it, it is taking me even longer!  I am halfway through doing the top coat, and will be able to finally get back to the things I look forward to doing, like working on the stone wall at the front of the house, and getting it done before the bushfire season starts.

In the meantime my friend Sharon was showing me some old abandoned projects hidden in the scrub up the hill from her  house and I was suddenly reminded of a wonderful garden outside of Coroico, Bolivia at the Sol y Luna. It rains profusely there and all a gardener needs to do is stick something in the ground and off it goes.  In this garden you can follow a path through the bush/forest and come upon a secret swimming pool or hidden cabin surrounded by flowers.  It’s probably changed quite a lot as it’s been 10 years since I was there.  I knew it as the Hostal Sol y Luna but I believe it’s now an ‘ecolodge’ with ecolodge prices!

The view from our room at the Sol y Luna

Edi and sons in the not so secret pool at the Sol Y Luna

But if money were no object, that’s where I’d go.

The sound of one beer can opening

I am happy because I have just planted 27 wattles (Acacia iteaphylla) around my septic orchard.  And I certainly deserve a [sound of beer can opening].  And it has just started to rain softly.  Night has fallen so it’s spaghetti again for tea but never mind.

The septic orchard has always been one of those problem areas, a part of the garden which I cannot picture as being any better than it currently is, where as a lot of the place is done or at least planned and I am only waiting for the trees to grow.  I planted two rows bunch of fruit trees July 2009 along the french drain and expected them to go wild with all the water down there.  They didn’t. [A shorter third row was added July 2010].

Problem area number one!

The soil is part of the problem, as the top soil got piled up in a heap and was lost underneath clay.  Some of it was put where I want my carport.  What went in the drain was the clay from underneath.  Which few plants love.  Only the weeds grew like mad.

Eventually I worked out that I might as well plant lawn there as I can’t have lawn anywhere else on the block, and not long afterwards Sharon arrived with 3 bags of lawn runners from her place.  They went in a few days ago.  The fruit trees also needed protection from hot and cold winds, hence the 27 wattles.  They will grow nice and bushy and I’ll end up with a hidden garden.  I can just see a little garden seat at the other end of the 2 rows under the fig trees…