I think a lot of the problems we have here is that we lack imagination. Let me qualify that! When we leave Europe and come to the far flung fringes of the Southern Hemisphere, we tend to bring our ideas of gardening with us. So, we plant the flowers we are used to, we plant good old European Lawns – in essence we seem to make every attempt to recreate the kind of garden we left behind – the kind that our parents lovingly tended and we, their children, spent our youth in. So we plant our garden , watch things die and come to the conclusion that the problem is not enough water, so we water the plants and lawns with copious amounts of water morning and afternoon. However, with the drought of recent years and water restrictions the cost of continuing with this has become prohibitive. I have gotten rid of lawns and replaced it with weed matting and treated coloured pine bark (red) I have tried roses without much success and out of the dozens that I bought three are hanging on for dear life. I have planted other pants and watch them burn up and die in the sun – despite watering mulching and soil treatment that didn’t work. So, native plants it is. I have started with two Sturt’s Desert Roses and two Sturt’s Desert Peas. I have also planted four silver leaf Eremophila – two out front and two at the back. I will wait to see how these all survive before I do anything else. A neat European style garden and 40c heat just don’t go together.Not up in this little corner of the Commonwealth. And it’s only taken me 20 years to figure that out!
Oh what a joy! We had a major thunderstorm last night. It started about 1:30 am and I was up and trying to comfort a dog who believed that the sky was falling. The vet had given me medication (ACP 10 mil.) to calm her down so I gave one tablet to her. I also brought both dogs into my room so that herself would not be wakened. The little man curled up on my bed and went back to sleep. Chienna kept pacing up and down and stressing out. I really feel sorry for her and the combination of noise and pressure really gets to her. The way she stresses out and the constant panting, I am surprised she doesn’t have a heart attack. But she doesn’t want to be comforted or reassured because when we try to hold her she breaks free and continues her pacing and panting until the noise and the pressure stops- which it did around 4am but by then she had started to clam down. She settled down at the foot of my bed and we all went to sleep until my alarm went off at 6:30. I gave them their sticks, let them out and went back to bed for an hour.
Edgar's Page 