Dry, dry, dry....

I know, I know, I complained about the bucketfuls of rain in December. Well, someone heard me and now it's payback time. 9mm of rain for the whole of January so far, and, combined with temperatures in the high 30's and low 40's, things, meaning garden beds and lawn, are drying out rapidly to the brown and crunchy stage. Paddock trees, mentioned in the last post, are needing bucketfuls of water every day or so. I thought I would make the most of the rain and plant 4 advanced and expensive Manchurian pear trees in our driveway as they were the best option for surviving heavy clay soil prone to bogging and drying out to rock solid, plus hot north westerly winds, once established...this being the main point. I am now barrowing 20litre containers down to them each day. Our driveway being 600 metres long, this is no mean feat and great for muscle development.

There have been a large number of caterpillars around this month as you can see by the many plants with holes chewed in their leaves, or leaves missing altogether. The one advantage of this, of course, is the incredible number of huge black and white butterflies with large orange spots on their wings. I chased one around my garden paths for quite a while the other day until I managed to get a reasonable photograph. I will include it in the post.

I decided it was now time to mulch garden beds that I put off in December, so that has been the main task this month. My mulch pile is decreasing rapidly. Time to cut down and chip some more pine trees. Luckily two have developed a severe and dangerous lean and one of those has already lost its top section which plummeted to the ground in a big wind, so time for the tree service man to come and quote again.

My husband welded a new garden arch for me out of some old metal frames he had stashed away. The beautiful pink climbing rose had to be cut right back and untangled from the mass of broken, rusted old arch pieces and the new arch inserted in its place. He did a good job for an amateur and my rose has now sprouted wildly again ready to climb up and over and flower again next spring.

Zucchinis, cucumbers, beetroot, silverbeet, loads of still-green Roma tomatoes and some delicious fruit-fly-free (try saying that 3 times fast) Pixie peaches are emanating from the vege garden as we speak. Still waiting on the capsicum and pumpkins. Speaking of veges, I bought some snake beans for Christmas lunch, having not seen these delicious greens since my childhood. They don't seem to sell them around here in the fruit shops, but I found an online supplier of seeds to grow them, so I have ordered 40 seeds, just in case some fail to thrive. Looking forward to their arrival in the post.

Time to go out and water again before the heat sets in.