garden ramble: sprinter

Sorry for the absence! Work is super crazy at this time of the year and I come home mentally wrung out. I’m writing and editing like a demon all day, so the last thing my frazzled little brain cells want to do after hours is even more — especially thoughtful, creative stuff. All I want to do is sink on the couch with a juicy gin and tonic and a magazine full of pictures, absolutely no words at all please.

My garden is a calming retreat (especially with that G&T in hand), and finally the days are getting brighter and better. It’s ‘sprinter’ here in Hobart — have you ever heard that word before? It’s perfect for this hopeful but maddening time of year, when there’s a day or two of glorious weather followed by too many of frost-forecasts and gloom. It’s when everyone starts grumbling that winter really has gone on for too long now, please (and my goodness, it’s been a doozy of a winter this one).

The daffies and jonquils and freesias and blossoms are providing much needed colour after the grey of winter. But we all know realistically that we could still have a treacherous frost or snow dumping in late October. That’s sprinter.

But I’m out in my garden. Last weekend I dug in the green manure crops I had going in my hibernating vegie beds. ‘Crops’ may be too lofty a word: it was a motley patchwork of soft wheat, chickweed, sweet peas, a lot of nettles and other assorted weeds that I let do their thing.

The garden bed before digging over. I grow good weeds, especially nettles and chickweed!

 

First I hacked the lush, soft green growth into pieces with old shears from mum ...

 

Then I chucked about some sheep poo and mushroom compost, before finally digging the beds over to cover and incorporate everything. The bed that held the tomatoes was particularly hard work, as it had been walked over all summer when tending and harvesting the toms. So after a few hours of that, a scalding hot shower, the couch and that gin was very much in order. Anyway, I’ll let it sit for another couple of weeks — early to mid October is when I’ll start sowing my planned crops.

 

After. I couldn't bear to dig the dark purple violas in, so they are safe for now

Some of the vegies that have been slowly, valiantly persisting over winter: Broccoli, purple peas, silverbeet

 

 

The resident blackbirds loved my work, of course. They are so very tame: they know that whenever I go near the beds,  chances are I’ll uncover some worms for them, so they fly right down next to me, waiting for me to unearth their dinner. I think we have a bit of a deal brokered; they can have some juicy worms, but they aren’t to eat all of them. Anyway, I do like their company (and their lovely melodic song) and a few worms is a small price to pay for knowing they feel safe and welcome in my suburban backyard.

Oh, and my PSB

What else? Two new passionfruit vines (from mum and dad) are in...

... and swaddled and coddled like babies. Literally — the day after we planted them we got frost and snow warnings, so I constructed a frame, and for a few nights I wrapped and pegged an old sheet around them for protection. The vines are beautifully soft and tender, so I was not going to risk them being damaged by cruel frosts (that’s what killed my first passionfruit, a year or so ago). It’s perhaps rather apt that the result makes me think of crime scene tents.

Framed ... and tented

A victim of the process. Sorry, pansy

In other major news, dad, mum and I spent the good part of one Sunday finally getting a frame up on the front wall of my house for the climbing roses (a soft pink Pierre du Ronsard and a hot pink Zepherine) to clamber over. It looks a bit pathetic at the moment but I am patient, I know in time they’ll cover the blank wall beautifully, fragrantly.

I also took the opportunity to get mum’s advice on the pelargoniums that were in front of the roses; once so pretty but now, frankly, taking over the joint. The result is that most of them were hacked out to make way for a greater variety of plantings.

It looks bare and ugly right now, and there is much to do here and elsewhere in the front garden. I have a specific list of new plants I want — a green boronia, a purple perennial wallflower, one or two bird-attracting grevilleas, and some pretty annuals such as zinnias and petunias.

I am learning that gardening is a long journey over many seasons, requiring great wells of patience as well as creativity, team work and hard work.

Some more colour from around my garden