My winter photo

 

Over the years my daughter Maya has taken pictures of me in my garden, usually in the middle of winter, starting in 2009, our first winter in this house. My husband had died the previous month, so the look on my face that year was a bit not me. But over the years things have improved, on my face and in the garden.

I did not realize that the winter photo had become a tradition until I looked back and saw that I had done it most years (except for 2012).  I have never made the photos public, because in them I am wearing my worst clothes, clothes which I very often wear in the garden.

2009

2010

2011

2013

2014

2015

2016

 

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.

 

 

Foggy Morning

A rainy Sunday in Quorn

We get so few of these as most of our rain falls in the night. But a lovely day, soft rain without a breath of wind. Perfect to sit on the outside sofa and watch the cats and local birds do their thing.

And didn’t it rain!

The only trouble was that we missed it. We were away, so the garden still got it. Five inches of rain one night in the middle of April. More rain in one go than we’ve had for years.

I’ve always said that for us to get a good rain (=2 inches), Melbourne has to be under about a foot of water. So it wasn’t surprising that the weather that brought the five inches turned into something that killed people in NSW a few days later.

After that I was finally able to start my autumn digging, and watch a few late crocuses poke through at last.

By the brick pond

I also got some mulch from the dump and a few ‘finds’, cacti and succulents that had been thrown out, which I rescued and planted at home.

By the carport

Pond #3 with mulch after a rainy night.

Happy Easter!

There is not much happening in the garden thanks to there being almost no rain since early January, but despite the dryness this Easter Lily has popped up out of nowhere to give us a lovely surprise.

This made up for the non-appearance of my naked ladies after the rain in January, even though they flowered just about everywhere else around here.

My first Andamooka Lily!

After years of driving past Andamooka Lilies in flower, in masses between Quorn and Port Augusta, I finally have one of my own.

My own Andamooka lily.

This one I bought as a seeding at Aridlands in Port Augusta, around 2009 or 2010. I saw nothing of it until 2012, when leaves appeared for the first time. And finally, three years later, the first flower. It’s a nice touch for Leyla’s grave, as I planted Leyla here last June – that’s her saucer there (she loved milk).

Andamooka lilies on a hillside at Saltia.

The Andamooka Lily or Darling Lily (Crinum flaccidum) grows all through the Australian outback, but isn’t so common in WA. I’ve seen them around here and also around the River Murray. They come up after summer rain. When I first saw them out near Warren Gorge a few years back, I thought they were some garden plant that had escaped, but they are natives. Like jonquils they have quite a pong, but the look lovely dotted through native vegetation, and I’ve been trying to propagate them for years with no success so far. I gave Kate Llewellyn a few seeds some years ago – wonder if she’s had any luck.

I love them, and that’s why I picked them for my gravatar.

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.

Things to look forward to

At this time of the year there is not a lot new and exciting in the garden, except in the area of food production (for a change). For weeks we have been eating Cape Gooseberries, which flourished despite the frosts of August and the dry months that have gone by since then.

Any day now!

Soon we will be digging into these apricots (above) that are growing in the septic orchard. This tree has been in five years now, as have the apple trees below.These have grown a lot in the past two years, after getting a few good doses of Sharon’s poop water. Many people have said that you can’t grow apples in Quorn, but this is one of the handful of success stories about the place. Others are the school garden and the Brooker’s garden.

We also have quinces growing in the citrus orchard near the purple garden but not much citrus as I keep promising myself that next year I will water it properly but next year never comes.

Vegie patch.

Maya has been carefully tending the vegie patch this year, she can’t stay away from the place. Despite the lack of rain over spring things have been growing well. She says that the smell of the tomato plants is the best smell in the world, so that might be what draws her back each evening. I love that smell too, it takes me straight to childhood summers in the gardens of my grandparents Kramer at Modbury and Uncle Martin and Aunty Net at Lobethal. Soon we will eat our first tomatoes and I am looking forward to that blissful moment as you bite into something with real flavour that you have grown yourself.

Survival mode vs Creative mode

Recent happenings in my life have made me return to survival mode, after a few months of creative mode.

In Minecraft, you have to work for every little thing in survival mode. In life, it’s working hard just to get the basics done, get through the day. In creative mode in Minecraft, everything is there for the taking, it’s up to you what you use it for. In life it’s the spare energy and motivation rather than resources that you have at your disposal. I don’t know if I need to say that achievements, whatever size they are, seem bigger in survival mode.

In the garden also there is survival mode and creative mode. In summer, when gardening wise I am in survival mode, all my time and energy go into keeping the garden alive, and even then there are still deaths. Needless to say not much else gets done. But once the weather cools, and rains come, and the watering is taken care of, then and only then can you get creative, and start building things – ponds, stone walls, gazebos, etc.

The watering

The above photo has Edi in it. He and I used to spend hours watering. Now it’s just me that spends hours watering!