AUGUST, 2010 - Rain and wind ... and more rain and more wind!

It seems we now have a "Property with Lake View"

CARN THE FROGS!
Yep - it’s definitely winter! Rain and rain again as well as VERY cold for the first few days – then the sun began to make a few welcome appearances. It was just possible to detect some warmth in it and it seems that maybe the frogs have decided it’s time for a little mating action. For the first time, instead of those individual calls to each other, we heard a whole heap of them together down in the puddles on the side of the road. It sounded very much like a froggy chorus of ‘Loves old sweet song’ – so we have high hopes of finding tadpoles very soon when we inspect those puddles. Watch this space!

A FEW MORE WATTLES OUT.
The sunshine has encouraged buds to appear on a number of grevilleas and brought a few other varieties of wattle closer to blooming. The Gold Dust Wattle (A. acinacea) is absolutely covered with buds which are just starting to open and the Varnish Wattle (A. verniciflua) is much the same. Another longifolia (don’t know it’s proper name) is also blooming beautifully – its photo is on the August Picasa site, as are the others mentioned.

KANGAROO GRASSI found a plot of Kangaroo Grass outside the local Demo Dairy the other day so brought home a handful of dried heads for the seeds. There don’t seem to be many seeds left inside them but I’ll plant the few that I have and see how they go. This grass is indigenous to our area and should grow well but, with the drought, I’ve lost two or three pots of it over the years, so I’ll be interested to see if these will grow and survive.

RECYCLING
We’re very lucky with re-cycling in our shire – Corangamite. As well as the usual weekly garbage bins, we have a fortnightly pick-up of a big bin for paper, cardboard, glass, certain plastics etc. and on the alternate fortnight, we have our green bin collection. This collection accepts the normal garden prunings, weeds, etc. as well as any organic waste from the kitchen – including meat scraps, bones, small timber off-cuts, grass clippings, tea-bags, eggshells, etc. Of course, most of my kitchen and garden waste goes on the compost heap but there are quite a few things that don’t, so I’m very grateful it’s pretty easy to ‘do the right thing’.

WEEDS
Talking about ‘doing the right thing’, I have to admit to reluctantly having to use certain weedkillers in my garden. Being in a farming community we have a responsibility not to let weeds proliferate and send their seeds into the surrounding crops. Only a few months ago we had to get a farming neighbour to spray our paddock with a selective broad-leaf spray for cape-weed and now, from a paddock that was more cape-weed than grass, we now have only a few spots where that African invader has survived. Hopefully we’ll be able to keep it under control and won’t have to spray again for a long time. I also use glyphosate in the Bush Garden to control all the foreign weeds that come in from the roadside and, also (I guess) from the farmers – things like phalaris, Scotch thistles, marshmallow – the list goes on and on. After I’ve sprayed in the early spring, I manage to keep them under control with mulch and hoeing (or kicking out with my foot!), but that first spray is absolutely essential until the ground-covers take over. I’m happy to say that there are now a number of areas where very few weeds appear. Some of this can be put down to being in a shady area, heavy planting, ground cover and plenty of mulch, and some of it by simply by getting rid of them before they seed – by digging, pulling or spraying. My aim is to achieve that in most of the garden. Unfortunately, seeds blowing in from outside just can’t be helped.

WEDNESDAY, 11TH AUGUST – the day of the Big Flood!
We have had so much rain over the last few months that the ground is quite sodden. Now the heavens have opened yet again and sent us down 60 mm in about 24 hours. The drains all over town are rushing and overflowing, the garden is soggy underfoot and the paddocks over the road are looking like swimming pools. As Geoff says, we now have a property with a ‘lake frontage’.
The long-time locals are all saying: “This is what it used to be like!” and “Those paddocks always flooded every winter!” and “I remember when I was at school …”
All we hope is that the drain behind our place doesn’t overflow across the road and cascade into our block. And we thank our lucky stars that when we moved here we didn’t buy one of those blocks that are now under water.
The farmers, of course, are all smiling.

STOP PRESS!The drain did overflow and sent water cascading down our block.

Not nearly as disastrous as it could have been, though. It missed the house by about ten metres and only flowed over the paddock. A narrow escape – whew!

AFTER THE BIG FLOOD – the Big Wind!
After Wednesday’s downpour, Thursday and Friday blew with gale force – first from the north and then from the south and west, so trees and shrubs were battered from all directions. The whole garden became littered with bits of trees – branches big and small, twigs, leaves, you name it. Everywhere we looked there were signs of winter at its most ferocious.

We were very pleased we’d had a bit of weight reduction done on the big wattles down the drive, otherwise it could have been much worse. As it was we only lost a few medium sized branches from there, and one very big one from a gum tree along the front fence.
The water that flooded into the block on Wednesday weakened the roots of a couple of shrubs and on Sunday morning we discovered that a Melaleuca nesophila (the one with pretty pink bobbles) had been blown right out and was flat on the ground. The fairly young Hakea laurina on the exposed upper fence – which took the full force of the incoming torrent – was at an angle of 45 degrees and looking very vulnerable so Multi-skilled-Geoff hammered in a star picket and we dragged it up as much as possible and tied it a little closer to upright. Five years ago, at about the same age, my older H. laurina fell right over but is still happily growing along the ground. Maybe that’s what this one wants to do – we’ll see.

AND SO TO THE END OF AUGUST
The last half of August was spent indoors as more and more rain descended on us – as it did over most of south-east Australia. No more flooding in the true sense of the word but lots and lots of water lying around in the surrounding low-lying paddocks. We took a drive up to the top of Mt Leura to check out the countryside. It was great to see Lake Corangamite shining in the distance – the water’s been so far out that it’s been hardly visible for years. Local lakes: Colongulac, Purrumbete and Bullen Merri are all showing signs of welcome water increase though there’s still plenty of room for further improvement.

Lake Corangamite is away in the background, with low-lyng paddocks flooded.

VEGETABLES AND FRUIT
At the end of June I optimistically put in a bed of Silver Beet seedlings; well THAT was a bit of a mistake! They have sat there – and are still sitting there – without moving for the whole of August. If they don’t start growing soon, I think I’ll be taking them out and starting again.
I managed to find ONE day in the midst of all the rain when I could spray the Nectarine tree to avoid curly leaf. I only put the tree in two years ago and last year every leaf was affected. It’s apparently all around this district so I’m hoping that the advice I’ve had to spray it JUST before the leaves burst, will do the job. Time will tell.
Geoff has some grapevines ready to go in, planning to grow them over our pergola at the west side of the house but it’s been so cold and soggy we think it might be better to wait until we get a little warmth in the ground. Let’s hope the next couple of weeks brings some spring weather.

MORE TREES GONE!
The first week of September brought more wind to attack the trees and we lost one of the quite old wattles (A. longifolia) which had been there when we came to Camperdown seven years ago. It was rotten at the bottom and probably close to the end of its life anyway. The other major disaster though, was losing a big, beautiful Manna Gum (E. viminalis) which I’d planted as a tiny seedling in 2003 and which had been loved and nurtured all those years. It would have been about 10-15 metres high and quite solid but it seems the long drought had meant it only had shallow roots and now that the ground is so soft, the wind on top of all that was just too much for it.

LOOKING FORWARD
This month’s entries spilled over into September due to a number of causes – some of which were weather distractions and some computer problems, all of which seem to be solved now – whew! We’re now looking forward to spring more than ever. It seems to have been a long winter for everyone.

MORE PHOTOS
You can see a complete collection of photos for August here. It's an update of what's been happenng all through the month - what's flowering, what's getting buds, etc. and there are some more 'flood' photos as well.

SEPTEMBER ENTRY
Next weekend I'll be visiting visiting three Australian Native Gardens in Warrnambool. They look really interesting so I'll be reporting on them next Blog entry.

Till then, remember: "Gardening is good for you!"
Gillian

EARLIER ENTRIES
For earlier months' Blog entries go to "Previous Posts".
For earlier months' photos, you can click HERE.