Spent most of the day in the garden, planting bulbs. I'm wondering if it wasn't too early;
the info on the packages suggested planting from February to June, and some (the hyacinths)
are supposed to bloom as early as June (though presumably not if only planted in June). But
the weather's still pretty warm, and today it went over 30°. Still, most of these bulbs can
be left in the ground year round, so it's probably not very critical when you plant them.
Also to Big W to complain about some of the
bulbs I had bought last week, which were completely dried
out—7 out of 30 bulbs. I suppose it's typical of companies like Woolworths that they
replaced exactly 7 bulbs, by opening a pack of 16, rather than just give me the bag. No
apology, no recognition of the fact that their failure had caused me problems, and I'm sure
they'll just throw away the rest (of course, maybe the personnel will get them, which would
at least make some sense).
More work in the garden today; the weather has been
unseasonally hot for too long, and it's showing no sign of letting up. While looking around,
found yet another surprise:
No idea what it is, but it was growing where I hadn't even expected flowers and where I
hadn't watered. Clearly a survivor.
Peter Jeremy later sent me mail saying that this is a gazania
While weeding another bed, managed to break off part of a similar flower. I had been
planning to try cuttings of all this kind of flower once the weather got cooler, but it was
there now, so decided to plant a few anyway and see how they turned out:
The weather has been stinking hot for over a week, and it's showing no signs of letting
up. Today it wasn't just hot—in the high 30s—but there was a very strong,
unabating wind from north and west which made it all the more unpleasant and dried out the
plants, not to mention the bushfire danger. And that in the middle of March! Hopefully it'll
cool down soon.
The hot weather continues. The combination of that and the high winds yesterday has
completely dried out the bird bath. Here “before” and ”after” images
showing one day's evaporation:
Yvonne spent the day fencing off the south paddock, which also
involved Chris' help pulling down the branch of a wattle that had been damaged last year:
That was certainly not too early: we had found lots of kangaroo droppings in the garden
earlier in the day, made up for by the disappearance of our last Grevillea Thelmannia brought
from Wantadilla; they had had a go at them some months ago, and
eaten most of them, but today they ate the last one. It's fun having kangaroos around, but I
hope they now stay the other side of the fence.
Peter had a number of other comments: the yellow
flower that I mentioned a while back is a
gazania, ...
