Weekend Reading

My apologies for not posting this on Friday. I had a few things to do yesterday, and it's almost the end of the year and I'm tired. I had a good sleep last night, I'm raring to go today and apart from a few odds and ends, I have little to do this weekend. This afternoon, I'll start knitting a new set of dishcloths for myself and a friend. This is a yearly task for me and it's one I look forward to because it makes me sit, think and relax with the repetitive clicking of needles.  

I have a walk around our back garden for you today. Everything is growing well although it's hotter and more humid than I prefer. Summer is our wet season and we've been in drought since 2010. A la Nina event has been forecast, this gives us much more rain than normal, so I'm hoping the rain pours down on us, fills the dams and rivers and gets us back on our feet again. I hope all the farmers out there have been holding on, this may be what we've been waiting for.

Here is our elder tree. It flowers almost all year and we have a constant supply of elderflowers and berries. We rarely pick from the tree apart for a winter tonic of berries in winter and summer cordial from the flowers. That gives us what we want and we leave the rest for the birds who absolutely love the tree.

We grow a lot of salvias because they're beautiful and they grow well in our climate.  This one is Amistad.

This is Buddleia Joan, it can grow to 4 metres tall and it's a magnet for butterflies and small birds. Some buddleias have become environmental weeds in our eastern states so we have to be careful. I make sure I deadhead Joan frequently and my two other buddleias are smaller and sterile.

A mixture of snapdragons, cosmos, buddleia and cornflowers. I never deadhead the cosmos because they grow easily from seeds dropped from dying stems.

This is one of the sterile buddleias - Purple Haze. This is as tall as it grows.  Above this photo: Mini agapanthus Peter Pan. It looks and performs exactly like the regular agapanthus but it is much smaller and never grows larger than this.  I have two in pots on either side of this pathway because they like being root-bound and that ensures they flower all through summer and autumn.

An old sandbox full of herbs. The two-year-old parsley is flowering and about to drop seeds . We also have newly planted parsley, capsicum, chillies, sage, basil, oregano and Welsh onions. 

This is the view looking over towards the chicken coop, rainforest and creek. The trees in the background are pecan, fig and assorted rainforest species. 

Hanno repaired the bush house a couple of weeks ago with a new back wall and shelving. Here are my orchids lined up with just enough sun to help them flower. There's also mint growing in the shade and a bird of paradise plant waiting to be repotted. 

I hope you're able to read through my list; these are some of the articles I've read this week:

• Stingless sugarbags: the joys of keeping native bees
• How to grow a verge garden
• Belgian racing pigeon sets fanciers' hearts aflutter in €1.6m sale
• 1% of people cause half of global aviation emissions
• Gifts - teddy bear
• Book fold Christmas trees
• Domestic bliss: Australian destinations that feel like an overseas holiday
• Chinese flower has evolved to be less visible to pickers
• How Do I Get My Family to Reduce Our Food Waste?
• Wolf wood carving

Thanks to everyone who emailed this week with news of buying the Down to Earth paperback, and, more importantly, how much they were enjoying it.  I have a few things to do inside this morning but I have a razor-focused intention of relaxing the rest of the weekend. I hope you can do that too.  Stay safe everyone!