The Garden August 2009

Well it has now been over two months without a drop of rain. Same old story year after year. The garden has really suffered this month due to the winter heat wave we have experienced here in Brisbane. The temperature has reached 42c in the sun, that’s just crazy.The plants do not know if it is winter or summer, some plants are flowering two months early, one thing for sure is that this years ‘Open garden’ is going to be very different.

This month I have given my ‘Smart Sub Tropical Gardening’ talk to Benowa Point Garden Club and also at the Cleveland Library.

Warrick and Fabienne returned from their six-week holiday in Switzerland and Scott has left for France to compete in the World Disabled Water Ski Championships’, hope he does well.

Judy goes into Hospital to have her feet fixed up, the rheumatoid has disfigured all the bones in her feet and it is terribly painful walking, hopefully this operation will help her.

I arrived home the other day to find two chickens in our yard, what a mess they made scratching in the mulch, soon found a home for them.

Not much in the way of garden news as I have spent the last three weeks painting the house.

Besides it gets depressing when the place is so dry and you have to spend hours and hours watering just to keep the plants alive.

Judy is having an operation this month to try and straighten both her feet, the rheumatoid has bent and twisted then and she finds it painful to walk.

Well, the last day of the month and 8mm of rain, not a lot but very welcome.

July 2009 Garden news

To start off the month I was asked by the Ormiston Garden Club to talk at their meeting, I was only given 24 hours notice but still agreed to do it.

As I now have a very good ‘Power Point’ presentation I needed a projector. Luckily they were able to source one at the last minute, but it was not compatible with my laptop, fortunately one of the members was able to source another laptop within a few minutes and the presentation went ahead. This mix up has given me the impetus to purchase my own data projector and screen.

I am really enjoying talking to Garden clubs.

On the day prior to the Nambour Garden Expo we had some visitors from the 'Sydney Tropical Garden Society' even although most of the tropical plants were in the dormant stage they still went away very impressed.

The Nambour show was as usual a great day out and Judy and I managed to source some new plants.

SMART gardeners are still having monthly meetings and I am booked to give a couple of presentations at the Cleveland Library.

My youngest son Warrick and his girlfriend are away on a six-week holiday in Switzerland and we are looking after their two Jack Russell dogs, this is hard work as they are both demanding pets.

The big news is that Warrick proposed to Fabienne and of course she said yes, it was nice as we were able to watch the proposal on ‘you tube’,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFz3L-KYfJ4

I built a new extension to a garden and planted some very rare Hawaiian Cordylines that I had sourced.

I think the back yard is finally finished landscaping.

It is back to being very dry and we are watering from the rainwater tanks at the moment.

My eldest son Scott is off the France shortly to compete in the ‘World Disabled Water Ski Championships’, these are held every two years. Scott is the present World Champion in his division (paraplegic). What really annoys me is that he has to mostly self fund this trip, he even has to pay excess baggage on his water-ski equipment. It seems like representing Australia does not count for much unless you are in a high profile sport, then they just throw money at you. He is a real hero to have conquered his disability with such outstanding courage. He Puts a few of the high flyer's to shame. I just wish I could help him more.