August 2012 Garden News

Today is the first day of spring.

Boy, am I glad to see the last of winter.

I have had three bouts of the Flu after going many years without even catching a common cold.

I am now a bit behind in my garden preparation and really need to rev things up; trouble is I am still suffering effects of the flu.

With the end of each winter I look at the garden and wonder how an earth will it be ready for opening in November?

It always seems to work out except 2009 when it did not rain for seven months.

Talking about rain, we are in a very dry spell at the moment, six weeks without any rain.

The place is very dry but fortunately we have 107,000 litres of water stored, it’s just so time consuming hand watering a garden as large as ours.

After over 20 years of driving up a kerb we finally decided to have it ripped out and redone and concreted.

In-between bouts of flu I replaced the retaining wall opposite our back patio; it was part of our swimming pool fence and was not legal. I had to bring the whole thing forward and add another sleeper height. My main worry was the Cardinal Creeper vine; would I have to cut it back? Fortunately not but when we eventually sell it will have to go along with other vines and limbs that are close to the pool.

Digging the holes were the worst job as our ground is solid clay; it was a crowbar job cm by cm until I reached the desired depth, I was well and truly worn out by the end of it.

I did two garden presentations, one to the ‘Redlands Horticultural Society’ and another to the ‘Logan City Garden Club’. Both went well and nice people.

On a very sad note was the passing of our Queensland ‘Garden Guru’ Colin Campbell. He was a true gentleman and we were privileged to have him visit us in 2010 with ‘Gardening Australia’.

All gardeners throughout Australia will miss this fine man.

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