No roses here.

Have no idea what the meeting is about on Monday afternoon, but I do know ( by email)  that the venue has been changed and instead of using two venues – North Adelaide and

Norwood the entire Assembly will be held in only one venue – Norwood. Just as well the hotel I picked was at a halfway point between the two, although if  I knew it would be all Norwood, I would have picked something a bit closer, like the Royal Coach Inn at Kent Town. Still at least I will be well out of the way which feeds my Anti-Social tendencies  :o) I was doing some work out back and decided it would be a good idea to caress the thumb of my left hand. I thought about this and a hammerhead seemed like a good idea at the time. Actually I didn’t do it any damage and really, I only  “caressed ” it but  with some diabetics even the slightest knock is enough to cause bruising. Sadly I am one and although the bruise may look painful, it’s not. Did spend last night  finishing off the packing  now all I have to decide is what toys I am taking and what power cords I need  :o)

A lady blogger I follow ( a gardener) has recently moved house and she  did a post on the history of the house and the area . The house was built in 1885 and the history of the area was interesting. I have no such tales to tell. This place has only been standing since the late 1970s. I did say, I think, that the previous owner didn’t like gardening and everything is all concrete and gravel with only a limited amount of earth to play around with and even that is limited again because we have the feeling that he may have sterilized the soil before he put bark in the area. I have removed the bark and cleaned the area up, but it has very limited growth. I  put fertilizer and blood and bone without success I wanted a rose garden there and spent a small fortune on roses and without exception every one of them died. A friend has given me Frangapini  cuttings and I will try them, but I am not hopeful.  My successes are still the Desert Pea and the Desert Rose and I am really very pleased with the masses of flowers and buds. It’s interesting; I have loved these flowers since I came to Australia and have tried several times to grow the Desert Pea but without success, so I gave up. Last year I gave it another try and was rewarded with masses of blooms and the same again this year.

It rained a tad whilst I was  in  Adelaide so that, at least, saved Herself from trying to go around and watering the plants. The drive down to Adelaide was uneventful but on Monday evening it was so dark and the rain so heavy I took a taxi to Norwood rather than drive. A very interesting week which threw up some interesting problems one of which has reached crisis proportions, which will have serious implications for all of us.  My only hope is that when the dust settles after a meeting on 14th June, we will be able to live with the solution. Personally —- I’m not hopeful!

Fortunately the day I did leave Adelaide was a lovely day. No rain, no cloud, just sunshine all the way. To make matters even better, it was a lovely drive home. I had intended to stop in

at the Arid Lands Garden but since I had bought a  few plants during my stay in Adelaide I just  went home. I didn’t even stop at the Tin Man this trip, although I did have a ” pit stop”  at Port Wakefield.  It was good to be back home again and after greetings by Herself, I sat down on the floor with the dogs.

I keep saying that because of the gravel and concrete I only have a limited amount of space to plant things. However, I am in the process of removing some of the gravel so perhaps this might change. When we first moved here I accepted the concrete and stuff and decided pot plants were the way to go but although I bought good potting mixture I now have a plethora of unused empty pots – the occupants died long ago.