Thursday 26 November 2009

Blue tongue lizard and garden

Life is getting back to normal here in Tassie, what with being away from home for 10days and coming home to a garden that had gone beserk, grass over 1m tall, foxgloves taller than us, and shrubs that now made it very difficult to walk on the very overgrown paths.  Ahhh gardening never go away in a good spring...lol!
The paths that I had been slowly clearing over winter when possible and early spring, well I wonder why I even bothered.




 The difference between two photos is one on left the day I left, one on right day 10 days later.
My DH was checking his new fences, which he with only a small help from me put in all on his own.  (How proud I am of his achievement).  He came to me and said I think there is a snake caught in one of the fences.  Now all snakes in Tasmania are poisonous.  With a little trepidation I walked over to have a look.  Turned out, thankfully it was a blue tongue.













You can see in this photo where it is still swollen.








We have seen a blue tongue in the garden since this, and it may be this one.  I am sure a blue tongue is responsible for stealing our strawberries, hmm not sure if I am okay with it..lol.  I just love the fact our garden is such a fantastic habitat and birds and critters live here and share our garden.  We get the delightful antics of the swallows and swifts.  The blue wren and his harem.  The lovely red robins.  Little finches, and the parrots.  Frogs croak at night and have even climbed our deck windows in the chase for bugs.  We have not seen our echidna for a while and I do hope it is still about.

Pink Flamingo rose.  My roses this year are looking fantastic.
My Mr Lincoln is still small but has buds and the perfume ohh
I have two other red roses both highly perfumed.
Daisies, California poppies and nigella seedlings which have now begun to flower.
I am lucky that my neighbour has very kindly let me borrow her digital camera to take these photos as mine is off being repaired.
We have picked over 8kgs of broad beans and still have some on the plants.  I have picked about 1/2kg strawberries but have to keep trying to beat the blue tongues.  Why is is you think ahhh that one will be ready in the morning, you go to pick it and there is only a part of it still there!..lol
Our cherry trees this year are very disapointing.  Hardly any cherries on them.

I have had to replace the nectarine tree that I put in winter before as it did not survive, and thought the new nectarine was going down the same pathway.  I am so thrilled as it is leafing up beautifully.  My only fruit tree out of 9 that has fruit on it is a golden gage plum.  This was bought for the pollinator of the green gage..so we may get some plums.
The hazlenuts are looking great.  My almond is not doing a thing, it is still alive..but.

I hope to have more photos soon, to share.

My hope chest has began to be planted out.  With the death in the family and being on the mainland things got behind.
I have dug into the tomato and bean bed some of my terracotta pots and they are working really well.  I can tell how moist the soil is and only water now the seedlings are bigger when the pot is empty.  I fill the pot and give the seedlings a bit of a drink.
I have still to get other seedlings in but they are looking great and my hope is that this weekend they will be in.

The silver beet has gone to seed and I will have many seedlings sprout, I have brassicas growing..think they are the brussel sprouts I put in ages ago..hmm will have to wait and see what occurs.
I have several myster plants too that have sprung up in the vegie plot.  Along with seedling tomatoes, which are cherry and pear ones.  So it is begining to look very positive down here in Tassie.
Happy Gardening all.








Thursday 19 November 2009

Life and death

Been off line for a while, we had a death in the family, my step dad, not really close but it did involve travelling to spend time with my mother on the mainland.  So I am hoping that I will be able to be back on and with more to share.