Today went with Cenny to Kings as she needed more plants for her garden, and I needed potting mix. I had a trough free as my festuca glauca had flowered and was looking dry and folorn so I cleared it out and now have capiscums.
Another rosemary is going in the corner and I have moved the bougainvillea to another location on the border since even though it won't require much water it was absolutely parched where I hadn't reached it in the far corner behind the jacaranda.
Muehlenbeckia complexa now has a spot in the border as well, to climb up the chain link fence which is the cheapest fence there is...my choko isn't doing that well as Cenny's - hers has covered a lot of fence whereas mine has only one tentacle.
I have to admit I am not the best at watering and would prefer it if my plants put their roots down and survived on the rain God gives them. My thymes that I got cheap did not survive and look like they are dying. I should wait till autumn instead of thinking it was a good idea to plant in a dry bed even if it was 25% off. You win some, you lose some.
I have put in six sweetcorns even though it might be too late amongst the pumpkin and melon since it may give them more shade and something to climb up.
The sun has been relentless and dad mowed the lawn so close that its turning brown and bare, I remember one time I was feeling ambitious and wanted to dig up the entire lawn and put plants instead that would grow taller than my ankles but then my dad would be out of a job. I don't fancy living in a desert but sometimes you just can't tell men what to do as they are going deaf. I am considering erecting a sign to put on the lawn saying 'Keep off the dust'. I put up a tent in the backyard so am going there later to read Trees of New Zealand.
Martha also dug up half my fernery again, I will have to get giant pebbles in. I calculate how much money I am spending on this garden and think back in the days when there was no garden centres people would surreptitiously snip cuttings from the bigger gardens on their visits or do some kind of exchange but I'm finding now everything comes with a price even worms. In Victorian times I read of ladies of comfortable means travelling all around the world making paintings of rare and exotic plant life because thats just what you did if you never married. Captain James Cook would have a botanist on board the Endeavour and dispatch plant hunters for the aristocracy back in merry olde Englande. In that fashion the garden mad English made contact with people from all over the world. But I find it a all little mercenary, it wasn't actually the people of other countries the English were interested in, it was their plants?!
