kathies-garden.com

Not a success story at all I’m afraid. Back of the garden, out of sight, out of mind. Readers will remember that it’s also by our rabbit cage but some days we wouldn’t feed them till late in the day when it was getting dark - too dark to work in the vege garden. And because of the hot weather and drought the veges have not done very well at all.

However, I’ve found another spot in our garden much closer to the back door. I have a Bonsai that was given to me for my 50th last year and I’m nursing a treefern we almost lost due to lack of water. I take our watering can out there every day after filling it from the buckets we keep permanently in our bathrooms.

So, once the weather is cooler I’ll clear out the space by our back patio and prepare it for vegetables, hopefully with more success this time.

Readers of my family blog at Thomases.org will know that Graham and I went to Japan in August/September to visit our daughter Meredith who was teaching English over there. I loved looking at the gardens - both public and home - and was delighted to see they grew many of the same plants we did. It was summer there and lots of colour everywhere!

What did I do when I came home? Chose to put in a few Japanese style plants and ornaments to add something extra to our garden.

And by our front door

We’re having cold weather now - frost, snow in the mountains, and rain, thank God!

The corner of our roof at the front of the house outside the office tends to overflow and I was despairing about the loss of the water in the recent drought we’ve had. So we got a plumber in to run a down pipe to the ground and another pipe under the paving into the garden, leading to the pond, and now when the roof overflows it waters our pond. The pipe has a tap on it attached to a second pipe so we can redirect the flow to the garden if the pond gets full - much better idea.

The poor pond was half empty but now looks almost full again. I felt sorry for the fish but there wasn’t a lot we could do - I would periodically catch fresh water in buckets to put into the pond but it would have taken a lot of buckets (and backache) to successfully fill it again.

 

I’ve noticed a lot of petunias and pansies out in flower outside florist shops and supermarkets and just couldn’t resist buying some for my own garden too.  Also cyclamen. But I’ve had a sore wrist and not been able to dig easily so am waiting on my husband to assist.  In the meantime, they are sitting in pots in the garden and do not look out of place as the surrounding plants have pretty much hidden the pots from sight.  And the recent rains have kept them looking great!

The vege garden is slowly progressing and I check on it daily as I go to feed the rabbits at the end of our garden - the vege garden is in full view of the rabbits cage - it must be a tease for them, I’m sure!