Our Garden in October

One of the reasons we wanted to be home in October, is that lots is happening in our garden.

The season has been wonderful for all our plants, as we have been so fortunate to have not received the worst of the flooding rains and our yard is fairly well drained.

Let’s take a walk around the garden.

Of course, we missed most of the daffodils, but there were just a few still flowering at the end of September.

In Autumn, we planted some renunculas in the front garden, for a pop of colour.  They were just starting to come out when we arrived home and have only just finished, so have been great value.  Our front garden is leafy, so the pops of colour really looked good.

We had missed the flowering cherry blossom, but the crab apple was just starting to bloom.

We have had a pot of bulbs for years and years, that came from Mick’s dad.  The bulbs have never flowered….. until this year, when we were greeted with some lovely bluebells when we returned home.

The little pink azalea was putting on a show.

And the lavenders, of which we have several, have been a mass of colour…. and bees.

Now that Mick isn’t going to work he has been enjoying having the time to spend in the garden.

Once we had been home for a couple of weeks, he got ruthless in our back garden beds. We had some shrubs in the side garden that we hadn’t pruned and they were looking rather messy and not in the best positions.

Gonksy.  This bed looks rather bare at the moment, but is a nice canvas to play with.  We have the two dwarf plum trees that will fill things up and the feijoas to be espaliered.  The mass of green groundcover is all strawberries.  We’ll have them coming out our ears very soon.  Some jam making will be on the agenda, methinks.  They will then be thinned out to a more manageable area. There will be a few other extra plants added over time.

The back bed was just a mess, although the little birds loved it.

My, what a difference.  We (that translates to “Mick”) have planted a grevillea to the left of the bottle brush and a kolkwitzia to its right.  A salvia has been planted and ajuga has been devided and planted along the edging.  A trailing flowering thyme is in the pot.  We’ll now have fun filling up the rest.

Two big trailers full of cuttings were taken to the tip.

One thing that is making us happy is that our wisteria has flowered this year.  The plant is three years old and this is the first time it has flowered.  We had a wisteria walkway when when lived out of town and were very disappointed, as they never flowered in all the years we were there.  We were fearful we would have the same outcome here, but it looks like all will be well.

Doesn’t the yard look bigger now all those shrubs have been removed.

The veges were planted in their raised beds as soon as we got home, and have been covered to protect from frost on several nights.  They nearly got zapped one night, that didn’t look like it would frost and then very nearly did, but fortunately survived.  They are coming along nicely. 

I don’t think we will have tomatoes for Christmas, but we can live in hope.

As one flower finishes, another starts to bloom.  The oriental poppies are starting to put on quite a show.

We have just one surviving foxglove, which is starting to come out.

The flowering cherry now has tiny cherries on it.  For only three years old it is establishing nicely.

We have a mass of unruly sweet peas in one corner.  I like to take bunches of spring flowers over to Mum’s when I can, so sweet peas will feature for the next little while.

Our street trees were just starting to open their buds when we arrived home and it is nice to see them in nice fresh full leaf now.

We always love seeing birds in our garden.  Once again, the blue wrens have babies in one of our shrubs and there are pee wees nesting in the TV antenna of the house over the road.  

I looked out the window on the day we were all Zooming and saw a bird in the back yard that I haven’t seen before.  No photo, as it was too short a visit.  Straight away I got out the bird book to try to identify it.  Apparently, it is an Eastern Spine Bill.  It was so colourful and had that very distinctive long curved beak.  I hope we see it again.

I hope you enjoyed our stroll around the garden.