A Growing Delight

Sunday, September 19, 2010

The Face of a Winner...

Sara...

... and her team.

University of Canberra A Grade Womens Hockey team defeated St Patricks, 2-1, in the second minute of extra time. This is UC's fourth consecutive Premiership.

I have just scanned the next two photos from Monday's Canberra Times.

Sara is #10 in yellow.

Friday, September 17, 2010

From a weather point of view we have had the best lead into Spring for many years. Very good rains through Autumn and Winter have left the soil in the best condition I can remember, and with quite a few warm (comparatively) sunny days, it's been ideal gardening weather. So what have we been doing? Quite a lot, actually.

Here is a photo of our backyard soon after moving into our house. All we had was the house - no driveway, no garage, no fences, no deck, and definitely no gardens.

Over the years (far too many to mention) the above deficiencies were rectified, although even now the garden is still not complete. It's undergone quite a few changes over the years, not only in planting, but also in landscaping. I have often posted photos of the front garden, the vegetable garden, and other areas, but much of the backyard has remained a seemingly neverending bugbear.

For years it produced nothing but weeds, due to neglect while the rest of the garden took shape. Although for a time it was sown down to lawn which eventually died. The area then became a depository for temporarily unwanted heaps of soil, moved from elsewhere on the block. I couldn't count the number of times I have weeded these heaps of soil of their metre high weeds. The only consolation was that it provided plenty of material for making compost.

Apart from the weeds, Californian Poppies and Alyssum flourished, and several good crops of pumpkins - 14 last summer - were harvested.

Alyssum and Osteospermum (African Daisy) grew by the thousand.....

..... largely as a result of the mountains of prunings dumped there prior to shredding.

For a few weeks in Spring it was transformed into a 'wildflower meadow' - where some very special 'flowers' could hide from Grandma.

BUT this year, we decided 'enough was nearly enough'!!!!

I wanted to employ someone with a bobcat to move the heaps and level the ground, which would have taken half a day at the most. However, one of the reasons it has taken half a lifetime to establish our gardens is because a certain person wants to do it all himself!

I have to admit that he didn't quite kill himself, and it didn't take as long as I dreaded it would. Between us we concreted a path on one side and made a blue metal path on the other. (The cost of hiring a roller for the second path was exhorbitant so I tramped the metal down myself - I knew my weight would come in handy one day.......lol.)

I think this photo and the one above should have been reversed, but we did eventually level the ground and prepared it for planting.

For the past few weeks we've had the dilemma of where and what to plant, although since our deck resembles a commercial nursery, much of which we have propagated ourselves, we've been spoilt for choice. We eventually selected about 15 smallish trees and shrubs. There's always the temptation to plant too close when you want to fill up a large area, and we may well have done just that - time will tell.

I've been 'in-filling' the garden with groundcovers and perennials from around the rest of the garden (nothing is safe from being dug up and divided anymore), and even this afternoon couldn't resist emptying some of the pots on the deck - about 21, in fact - into the garden. (I'll take more photos over the coming weeks.)

Whilst we can't really plant more trees and shrubs at this stage, as they need room to grow, there always seems to be space to fit in just one more small thing, such as a geranium, which will provide colour and can always be ripped out as the shrubs encroach.

Above and below, yesterday's plantings.

BUT ..... before you congratulate us too enthusiastically...lol, you may well ask, "Where did the excess soil go to?"

Of course, HERE IT IS, along with two truckloads of topsoil just waiting to be spread in this area to create the LAST of the gardens! Well, it only needs spreading, and the removal of the weeds and poppies ..... or should I let them flower first?

It sounds like HERE WE GO AGAIN !!!!!

Tuesday, September 07, 2010

Childhood Revisited

In mid July we spent a few days at the coast before travelling south along the Princes Highway to Melbourne. Along the way we spent a night in Lakes Entrance before continuing down through several Gippsland towns on the highway. It was a beautifully sunny winter's day, and as we were driving through Yarragon, I suddenly thought that I would like to go and see the farm on which I lived until I was 2 and a half. I had never been back to the farm since my parents, two older brothers and I had left there in August 1946........a long time ago!!!

We turned off the highway and set the GPS (or Persephone, as we have nicknamed the voice) for Childers in the Strzelecki Ranges in the South Gippsland Region of Victoria.

This is primarily a dairying area with good pasture and high rainfall.

As we climbed higher into the hills more forested areas emerged, with tree ferns....

... and tall eucalypts.

The only indication that we had reached our destination was 'Childers' on a large wooden sign and a couple of houses. I realised that I had no idea where the farm was so I rang my eldest brother who had been to the area a couple of times in the past two decades or so. He said that we needed to drive on until we came to Settlement Road and our farm was in the corner, on the left hand side. That sounded simple enough so we continued on for about 7km and sure enough we came to the intersection with Settlement Road. But rather than the farmland I expected to see, we were in a plantation of eucalypt trees. Obviously this was a commercial enterprise and nowhere could one fit a cow, let alone an entire herd.

Reasonably undaunted, we continued for about 17kms along an unsealed, winding road, with steep forests rising above us on the right and dropping away into deep gullies on the left. We were grateful that it was a Saturday afternoon and we didn't encounter any log trucks on a narrow bend.

Gradually the forest gave way to more open farmland with some quite spectacular views. Occasionally we were able to pull off the road a little and take a few photos.

It is hard to convey in these photos just how steep the countryside is, but we were impressed with this paddock which needed to be cultivated in one direction only, ie. the tractor would have to come down the hill, then skirt around the steepest parts until it could reach the top of the hill and then come down again. The land is too steep to drive up or sideways.

The next four photos give some idea of the beauty of this area, although the farms would not be easy to work due to the steep terrain.

We eventually came to the other end of Settlement Road. After receiving instructions from my brother we had actually headed south instead of north and come in at the wrong end of the road.

So there, on the right hand side of the road now, was the farm we were looking for. We couldn't see the house, and I think we may have passed it before we realised we had come to the farm so we didn't turn around and go back. I was happy enough to have found the farm and could take some photos.

My brother is five years older than me, so he remembers more about living there than I do. Apparently, the land had only recently been opened up for farming when my parents arrived there in late 1943 and much of the land was still covered in blackberries and bracken fern.

I don't know exactly how many acres Dad farmed but these are the views from the road just above the farm.

It is undoubtedly beautiful countryside now, although its beauty may not have registered too often with Dad as he tried to clean up a dirty farm and eke out a living for his family milking a few cows and growing potatoes.

As I stood there I tried to imagine what it must have been like living there more than 60 years ago with very poor road conditions and unreliable transport.

A few more scenes along the way.

Although it was a beautiful day, it was quite hazy in the distance.

I have almost no memory of living there and I wish now that I had gone back years ago. Perhaps even with Mum and Dad so that we could have talked about their time there. So often we don't see the need to do these things until it's TOO LATE!