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The wonderful water ratI was awash in a flurry of the facts and figures, joys and anxieties that are an inescapable conclusion to the business of writing a book. Around midday I downed tools and headed out to Oakleigh, in middle Melbourne, to take the first car that I have ever owned for its first service – three months overdue. Continue reading
Dame Elisabeth Murdoch‘s memorial service this week in Melbourne’s towering St Paul’s Cathedral was full of grace, dignity and joy (which, coincidentally is her second name!) And also of people. The cathedral was jam-packed. So was a marquee alongside. Crowds in Federation Square watched the service on-screen. Continue reading
What a morningIt’s hot and the sun is blazing sharp. Top temperature forecast – 33 degrees. I’m enjoying breakfast on the deck in the back garden. The vegetables are already watered for the day. The tomatoes are growing fast and the little snow peas are just getting moving, twining up their supports. A couple haven’t come on. I think I’ll pull them out. Continue reading
Another person in my householdIt’s like having another person in my household. I swear that this banksia is speaking to me! Eleven months ago I wrote for GardenDrum about how my two Banksia petiolaris, planted some five years ago and doing OK – but not that well – got a new lease of life when I put worms into the soil around them. Their growth rate stepped up markedly and the leaves went from sickly yellow-green to a deep and alluring dusty grey-green-silver. Which is how they are meant to look. Continue reading
I don’t like pink in the garden‘I don’t like pink in the garden’, I declared to a friend a few years back. ‘I’m not going to do it. Instead I will have orange and soft yellow, lime green, cream and white, blue and mauve and purple.’ Well, I’ve managed this in the front garden – except for the crab apple tree, Malus floribunda. Luckily its blooms come out before anything else, deep pink then turning white. Continue reading
The Loire ValleyBack home again after two weeks in France’s beautiful Loire Valley, its sights and sounds are still singing in my mind. Most of all I remember the ducks quacking gleefully as they zoomed in to land on the still green waters of the River Cher, then the soft splashing as they sailed off to go about their daily business. Some mornings they were in groups of ten or twenty. Continue reading
The lawn sagaThe lawn saga got under way many years ago when I decided that weeds shouldn’t be allowed to grow in our new lawn. So I used to kneel down and yank them out. The kids and their friends would play around me. It got a bit dangerous when they were belting hockey balls against the garage wall. Continue reading
Who gave me that plant?Gardens are made of memories – and it is surprising how little work it can take to disinter them. I’ve been cleaning up some of the wilder parts of my own garden, ahead of opening it early next year for the 25th anniversary of Open Gardens Australia. Continue reading