Garden News until end of November 2025

 

First, please accept my apologies for not writing a blog for the past few months, life is just so very busy and I am usually exhausted at the end of day, work in the garden never stops.

I must work through pain in my knees and hips and cannot get into a specialist until early February, anyway I can still get in a day’s work every day and have no intention of downsizing at the moment.

What would Judy and I do without our beautiful garden and plants.

Now to get on with garden news.

In August we had visitors from the Victoria Point Probus Club, no visitors in October and in November we had a return visit from the Lota Community Garden Group.

 

The Tropical Foliage Festival was held very early November which was a disappointment as virtually none of my Amorphophallus had come up, so now I am stuck with about eight trays to try and get rid of. Anyway, we still took a nice selection of plants and people know that our plants are good. Dammed hard work getting ready though.

As usual all the fruit trees needed trimming over winter and I cut them back more than usual in order to make it easier for next year.

It was our Granddaughter's Birthday in October so we decided to do a surprise visit to Agnes Water to surprise her and we certainly did so. She was at the beach and I jumped from behind some bushes and really and truly gave her the surprise of her life, one of those memories that will stay for the rest of our lives.

Everything has grown so much with all the rain but that soon stopped in September when we had to start hand watering the garden again.

We had contemplated having a Plant Sale here in November where people could walk the garden for free and hope they would buy a plant, but that changed as we had a massive storm here late November with GIANT HAIL some hailstones measured between 10 to 13 cm wide, it was like someone was throwing bricks on our roof. Damage was 12 broken roof tiles which we were fortunate to find someone to fix two days later.  Solar Panels damaged and we think the solar hot water system was also damaged. We have an insurance assessor coming soon. Surprisingly the garden suffered very little damage other than a mass of leaf litter and a few gum branches.

We had a visit from peter and Genya from Lagoon View Nursery and they were happy to dig out some Alpinia 'Big Pink' from a spot in the garden where they had multiplied.

Photo was taken at Lagoon View.

My Amorphophallus collection died back and stored dry for the winter and in September I started to repot. Had some very nice ones in flower.

Garden Blog from April to July 2025

 

I just do not seem to get enough time in the day to write a monthly blog these days, I am pretty tired after working in the garden almost every day and this year has been especially hard as we have has so much rain that everything has grown so much that I am continually cutting back to let light into the garden.

I had my 80^th Birthday in April, how did I ever get to that age?

We had a few nights in an apartment at Mooloolaba as we needed a break from the garden as there had been a very large clean up after Cyclone Albert. It was nice and we see our friends at Natrakelp and Maureen Simons at Mt Towen Tropicals were we bought quite a few new plants.

April was quite wet so not much hand watering had to be done.

In May we had a bus visit from Caloundra Garden Club, Jimboomba Garden Club and Bethania Community Garden members.

In June we welcomed the Budding Group to the garden as well as hosting the international Cordyline Society meeting, a garden presentation to Logan Garden Club and a bus visit from Aspley Garden Club.

Possum beat me to it.

In July we went to Agnes Water to see family then they followed us back to Brisbane.

While we were away a mini-Cyclone ripped through and caused some damage.

We then hosted a bus visit from Laidley Garden Club of 59 people.

Towards the end of month we went to see our friends Genya and Peter at lagoon View Nursery, it is beautiful and well worth a visit.