Ah, some of the busiest weeks of the season are past... concerts and large projects are done, and this week I only have to present two education workshops. Easy enough... I think. Anyway, that has meant that I have had time to spend a few hours in the garden each day over the last few days. Actually, that was only two days... the day in the middle was broken up by rain and thunderstorms, so that wasn't going to be a good gardening day!

The tulips and daffodils are poking out their heads quite definitively now... and according to one of my older students, this is normal... so, I'm not quite so scared that they have popped up early only to be steamrollered by the remainder of the winter season. Only the front row has poked up... this is the row that gets the rain when it is raining...the second row is covered by the eaves, and so I will have to water those by hand.

Only one of the daffodils has started to flower... but it is a nice first bloom! Some of the tulips have their little buds ready, so I'm expecting to see a bit more colour in the coming weeks!

Mulching continues onwards... I'm starting to make a decent sized dent in one of the woodchip piles at long last! I'm hoping to have a good bulk of the uncovered and exposed ground mulched over before the spring and summer hits... just in time to hold back some of the weeds and grass, and hopefully not causing too much of a fire risk in the incoming hot fire season. Australia is predicted to have a potentially dangerous fire season due to the switch in climate pattern from the last wet few years... and the last wet few years has left a lot of growth that will be the fuel for fires.

Taking the time to dig up and pile aside every large rock that I can see before I mulch over them... we will need the rocks for the path borders and for some of the retaining walls.

This wattle is in nice full bloom at the moment... I have yet to decide what to do with it. The main trunk/stump is actually mostly rotted through, but for some reason, the tree just keeps growing quite strongly on the sunny side. It does mean that it is growing sideways quite close to the ground... and I am starting to wonder if this can keep going for much longer! At the very least, I should do some heavy pruning to reduce the weight on the damaged stump.

Lots of the little plants need a good trimming to make sure that they are ready for the growing season. Cutting off the dead and dry bits will help the new shoots take hold...

I saw these bumps popping up on one of the smaller eucalyptus plants... I looked it up, supposedly a small wasp insect egg or something like that. Harmless to the plant, so just a cosmetic thing... difficult to treat, and not worth doing it.

Meanwhile, I discovered the passionfruit vine had started to climb up another bush... previously, the large net of vines was busy choking pretty much everything in that corner of the garden... we had removed most of it... but it does appear from time to time, there still is an underground network of roots that still needs to be hunted down and pulled out, but that is easier now that it is more obvious where it is growing... this one was pretty sneaky though, it was growing up in the middle of the bush, and I only noticed it when I was pruning the bush and wondering why some of the new shoots were growing at weird angles. It turned out that they were being held in place by the passionfruit fronds, so I had a good look at the base of the bush and found where the vines were coming out of the ground.

Did a huge prune of this small eucalyptus as well. It is a remnant from when this corner was overgrown with a huge passionfruit vine net choking everything... everything was just trying to outcompete everything else and survive, which meant that most of the plants were weird shapes... just trying to get any hint of Sun... so, this one was really quite lopsided. I have cut it back quite severely to give it a chance to grow in a larger space that doesn't have so much competition... hopefully, it will grow to be a better shape instead of just poking out in one direction!

The kids did help out for a bit... but then they got distracted and started making mud pies...

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