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Our roses seem to be coming out in phases at the moment. I walk down the street and see gardens (on the same side of the road) that have bushes constantly in bloom but ours don’t seem to do that.

One of my favourite and most prolific rose bushes in our garden is the Graham Thomas rose. Not co-incidentally that is also my husband’s name. Our daughters bought it for us 2 or 3 Christmases ago and I put it in the garden near the front gate where it gets the most sunshine. It grows crazily throwing up branches high into the air and I’m often pruning it.

It’s like one of those old-fashioned roses with a magnificent scent. I’m always torn between leaving them in the garden or picking them and having in them in the house to enjoy.

A couple of weeks on and my plants are growing well in the giant tea cup. The strawberry plant has thrown out a feeler in search of more land. I wonder what would happen if I put another planter nearby?

I’ve not been that active here for a few months. The latter half of last year got incredibly busy. I’d written and published a book and had no idea how much of my time and focus the book would take. Been exciting and interesting but meant some of my blogs lost my attention for a period of time. So I’m back!

The Australia Day weekend (long weekend for those outside of Australia) has given me opportunity to catch up with my blogging, to potter in the garden, take some new photos and just relax.  The first 3 weeks of the year are usually quiet but that hasn’t been the case this year - good for work, not good for catching up on things!

You will see from a previous post ‘Filling Our Pond With Water Restrictions’ that we’d put in a pipe to feed our pond during rainfalls. This has been an excellent thing to set up. The drought is still with us and we’ve had long periods of dryspells but when the rain comes, it comes suddenly and fast and in a short time our pond is full again! I’m sure our poor fish, if they were capable of thinking, would be wondering what on earth is going on out here in the dry world. Anyway, thought you’d like to see how effective this has been for our pond!

I was at Bunnings last weekend to get some more plants for our front garden to fill up the empty spots and passed by this gorgeous giant tea cup.  I looked at it and thought ‘no, I’ll get it another time’ and went off with my shopping list. But I passed it again on the way to the cashier and thought if I didn’t get it now, there might not be anymore the next time I come. There were only a few there. I couldn’t resist it - we have a large glass outdoor table on the back patio that was looking very bare. But this giant tea cup which now has Mint, Parsley and Strawberries growing in it, looks right at home. What do you think?