Land of Extremes

Drought, heatwaves, floods and fire – we seem to have experienced it all in Australia so far this year, and so it was with great relief that we welcomed the rain the day after my last post.

This is my citrus that I posted last time, with its leaves curled up in the prolonged heat – and here is the transformation the following morning, looking like a completely different tree. There were even a few blades of green grass that popped up during the night.

Before the rain

and after!

So now our tanks are overflowing and it has been raining on and off ever since. Amazingly, the grass, which was brown and so dry that it was painful to walk on barefoot, is lush and green and needing to be cut.

I love the sound of the rain falling on the roof and to have some relief from the heat at last. Blue, cloudless skies are all very well, but for now, my favourite colour is grey!

Summer Catch Up

So the summer is over and I am pleased to say that the tasks that I set myself for the New Year are underway or have been done. Much crafting has taken place, but more on that later.

More important has been the gardening that I started in January. Up and out each morning for a couple of hours’ work, mostly weeding and mulching, before the temperature started to soar. By mid morning it was just too hot to keep going. Temperatures in the mid to high 30’s have been pretty constant, with some days topping 40 degrees Celsius. Not much fun when the pool is too hot to swim in and it takes several minutes before the water coming out of the hose is cool enough not to burn.

I have gone from gardening for pleasure to gardening for survival – survival of the plants. One of our two water tanks is empty which we use for watering the gardens. Lucky we have town water and not reliant on them for supplying water to the house but it has made it difficult to keep the water up to the trees and shrubs.

We’ve hardly had any rain this year and each day we have our hopes up, only to be disappointed when we see another cloudless sky.

DSCN2306

This is one of our poor, sad looking orange trees. I am watering them when I can but unfortunately citrus like lots. The rest look about the same with their leaves curled up. Citrus is not a good choice for this region, but as they were already here when we moved in I have been trying to look after them as best I can. Our grass (I could not even loosely describe it as lawn) is so dry it crunches underfoot. However the frangipanis, petunias and most of the other plants are surviving.

We are supposed to get rain today and it is looking very overcast Is that thunder I hear in the distance? I hope so.

Winter Break

Despite the heat, my little pansies are surviving

After a quiet winter as far as blogging goes, I’m back again. My posts may have been inactive, but I was very actively enjoying everyone else’s and reading lots of books, quilting, cross stitching and getting sick with the flu. Also busy in the garden, pruning, weeding and mulching every tree and plant in sight.

Winter is a nice time to recharge, snuggling under a rug with the cats, eating chocolate and watching movies. The chocolate part was fun at the time but I’m regretting that now I’m back at the gym. I see some hard work ahead!

Now we are officially into Spring, but it feels like we have jumped straight into Summer! The temps have been soaring in Queensland to mid 30’s (c)!!! Everything is dry and brown and the fire danger is high. Yesterday we had a brief storm which resulted in about 5 mls of rain, but we need so much more. The grass is actually crunching underneath my feet, but hopefully we’ll get some good rainfall soon and everything will suddenly turn green again.

Just back from a nice little getaway in New Zealand. More on that next time.