September 2014 Garden News

On the first day of the month we travelled to Nambour Garden Club to present ‘A Passion for Plants’.

It was a very big club and there were over 160 people in attendance.

My PowerPoint presentation was very well received.

          Peace Rose

      Black Beauty Rose

After lunch we headed up to see Maureen at ‘Mt Towen Tropicals Nursery’, we had fortunately sold enough plants at the club to make room for the one’s we bought off Maureen. We always enjoy going up there as Maureen is a really lovely person and always gives you the time out of her busy day.

I went to 'Ormiston State School' to give another presentation ‘Adventure in the Garden’ to the prep’s, well what a wonderful experience that is, you can really get the children excited and interested, I love doing this.

Then the following week another presentation, this time to Victoria Point Garden Club’s ‘Friendship day’.

The following week we had an evening presentation to the ‘Queensland Bromeliad Society’ at New Farm, so it’s been a busy month for presentations.

We had 24 mills of rain this month, that combined with the  100 mills of rain we had in August has been a blessing for us and the garden, I just cannot remember when we last had rain in August and September.

I am still worried about a lot of the more tropical plants as it has been the coldest Winter I can remember, I think I have lost quite a few plants, but there again I have planted 100s of new ones this year.

I have done some more fencing at Scott’s and built a concrete slab for a garden shed.

My helpers

We had our swimming pool area inspected in order to comply with the new Queensland (draconian) pool laws, of course it did not pass as expected but at least I knew what had to be done.

I have worked very hard these past two weeks taking old fences down and putting new ones up, I think I am there now and able to get the area re inspected and hopefully pass.

I never stop improving our garden, this time I have placed some large pavers and planted grass in-between them. I have tried on previous ocassions to gross grass in this area and have failed, see how we go this time.

I am starting to send out ‘Open Garden’ flyers to garden clubs and newspapers, from now on it’s going to be a ‘busy life’, hang on, I am always busy. 

I have also been busy making signs, very time consuming job doing it all by hand.

August Garden News 2014

We started August just so dry and almost out of water, it just gets so hard sometimes.

Our first gardening presentation for the month was for ‘Roselovers’, we have already been there on three previous occasions so I had to do a new power point for them.

The new presentation will be the last of four, it’s called ‘A Garden Journey’ and starts when I was 23 and goes to today, it’s interesting to see how far we have come in all those years. The club loved the presentation, so that made me happy.

Rode-Chermside Garden Club came on a bus tour and enjoyed the garden, seems they were as dry as we are and understood us having a dry garden.

Then, lo and behold it started to rain; a beautiful 100 mills fell, I was so happy to see the moisture go into the garden and start to fill our tanks. It was good steady rain so that allowed the moisture to penetrate the soil, I did not want a storm as that would of seen too much run off.

We now have enough stored water to take us to our November ‘Open Garden’, that has never happened before.

I managed to do quite a bit of fertilizing during the rain and that has paid off as the lawns are looking quite green.

I cannot remember when we last had August rain.

I have lost quite a few plants this winter as it has been quite cold, but I have bought more to replace the ones that I lost, so there will not be any empty spaces.

I received a large box of ‘Gardena’ products to review; this will not be a problem as whenever I buy anything to do with watering the garden it has to be ‘Gardena’ as there quality is second to none.

We went to give a presentation to ‘The Gap’ garden club having to travel fighting peak hour traffic for over an hour only to arrive there a whole YEAR early, that will teach me to read emails correctly.

I feel that once the weather starts to warm up the garden will spring into life, I am very positive that this year’s ‘Open Garden’ will be the best yet.

I could not find a place for a ‘Fraser Island Creeper’ that I bought at the Nambour Expo so I build a new structure for it to climb on.