Heat, drought, dust, fire and wind.

I haven’t posted a Six on Saturday for nearly two months. There hasn’t been a great deal to celebrate recently, as drought, heat, wind and water restrictions take their toll on the garden. Just now we are allowed to water on a day that corresponds with our street number (evens for us) from 6 am…

Hello Summer, December 1

It’s the first day of Summer here. In Australia, we don’t really wait for the solstice to say that Summer has arrived, and that’s hardly surprising considering the temperature is forecast to reach 31 degrees today. We are still having cool nights and mornings though, and during the last ten days we had rain, wind…

New Additions: SoS, November, 17th

Another cool Spring morning enticed me out early this Saturday, the sun just above the horizon and peeping into the garden, enveloping all in its warming glow and highlighting zesty colour combinations.  All the plants but one in this Saturday’s Six are new to the garden this year and it has been both satisfying and…

In Praise of Perennials

I love all plants, really, but the ones I love most of all are the herbaceous perennials.  They seem to be the plants that are best equipped to deal with the climate here on the western edge of the New South Wales Central Tablelands where the temperatures can reach forty  degrees plus in the summer,…

Hillandale

Driving anywhere from Mudgee (I’m including Gulgong and Rylstone in ‘Mudgee’)  is a reasonably lengthy business.  We’re slightly isolated here and it’s at least an hour and a half of driving before we reach anywhere else. This is nothing, I know, compared to the distances people all over Australia drive, but it sometimes seems a…