August Garden

After a couple of wonderful days at the 50th anniversary of RAAF working Dogs it was time to catch up in the garden.
The first job was to put a tank stand in for the new 5000 litre tank; this was easy compared to some of the other ones I have done.
I am putting another 15,000 litre tank behind the shed, getting this area ready meant a new entry/exit door to shade house, removal of old tin 5000 litre tank and stand, emptying both existing tanks and moving the existing 15000 tank forward to make room for the new tank.
Lots of work (what isn’t) but will be worth it in the end and we should now be able to survive any drought and not have to pay top dollar for excess water.
The ‘Garden Gurus’ visited our garden for the third time, this visit had nothing to do with our garden, rather focusing on micro irrigation, as we have lots of tanks it made a good backdrop for the story.
What a busy day, first my new Olympus E-520 DSLR camera arrived then the ‘Garden Gurus’ team, then 50 bales of sugar cane mulch then our two new rainwater tanks.
As well as this I finished of the new entry to the shade house, plumbed one of the new tanks and started work on the new composting area. I am moving the rear garden compost and wood storage areas from back yard into front as I feel that these areas now detract from the garden flow. The new garden created by removing the old wood storage bin will be an ideal area for a showing of Heliconia ‘Rostrata’.
August has been especially cold; we have had almost a month where the morning temperature remained under 5c with a couple of frosts. The Heliconia’s all look pretty bad at the moment from cold-burn. To my mind the winters seem to be getting colder and this combined with last years cooler than normal summer makes me a global warming sceptic.
I am looking forward to a long weekend on 29 August, in fact a very long weekend, its called Retirement.