Getting the plants in the ground

We're off to the Southern Highlands this weekend to have our wedding anniversary doing something we both love. Before you jump to any conclusions, may I tell you we both love gardens and it's Tulip Time in Bowral with lots of open gardens on display. Of course, there are other activities we both love, but gardening is front and centre at present because we are creating the bones of the garden at present. This means lots of fundamental landscape design work, together with planting, planting, planting.  So, looking for ideas about garden design and also ideas about what to put in.

We've been doing lots of planting of things we have grown ourselves from seed. Yesterday and today, put in about 50 bottle brush plants that we had propagated. Here they are, all along the new creek below the dam.

The long term plan is to grow a riparian corridor with lots of other plants as well so that the creek eventually looks quite naturalised, but this is a start.

Each little plant gets a protective triangle for the first year. It protects them from the rabbits and the winds. Seems to help a lot.

This is one of the species from which David and Chris harvested seed. Bit of botanical uncertainty on the part of the collectors as to which callistemon/melaleuca it is. Various names have been bandied about. I'm happy to just call it a red bottlebrush.

David loading the back of the car with trombone, music stand etc. He played a gig with Great Lakes Band on Saturday morning. If I was a better more supportive wife, I would have gone to listen, but my eyelids just wouldn't open enough that morning...His solo went well.

Its the time of year for the frogs to be getting all reproductive in our dam. The frog chorus is deafening. I recorded it for my ring tone last night. Lots of frogs means lots of big birds. This handsome fellow is one of the regulars, a white faced heron, bit smaller than Harry, our white necked heron. This one stalks the water's edge at dawn, gazing into the water, almost motionless until that beak skewers something.

I'm really pleased with the look of the waterline tiles in the pool-under-construction. I can almost smell the water. Not long now. This week - paving.

David's landcare project at Diamond Beach has suffered a bit of a set-back. Some blockheads got in there and set up an illegal camp-out, with an old lounge, bongs, rubbish left around and sadly, damage done to some of the oldest and most beautiful native trees. This one was sawn in half and left hanging, half dead. David and Chris will patiently clean it all up and remove the damaged trees. A sign has been installed pointing out that such vandalism is illegal on a Landcare site. It's upsetting though. Environmental awareness? Social conscience? Well, what do you expect with a Coalition government?