Sunday in the garden

It's only a few days away from spring, and time to get back in the garden. It's all mad planning and planting and digging around this place. The fact that the local nursery had a big sale on this weekend also helped inspire us to get out there.



After doing his last spraying of the nectarine tree for leaf curl the Mister discovered this spiderweb, all pretty and sparkly from the blue spray.



I had to dig out all my old strawberry plants from one of the wine barrels a couple of weeks ago as they were finally slowing down after years of solid production, and the barrel was infested with cooch grass and lilac suckers. I've replaced them with a different type of strawberry (and I've improved the soil and removed the weeds) , and I'll be interested to see how it goes.



And for the first time ever, I remembered to build a supporting structure for the snow peas before they were planted. Let's hope our local possum doesn't take a liking to my little pea seedlings tonight, as I totally forgot to protect them with wire netting. Whoopsie.

After all our little jobs in the garden were done, we popped over to our friends' place up the road to have some morning tea and "inspect the property" (as we say around these parts).



Bindi the dog is auditioning to be Australia's next top model. She's just so beautiful and she loves the camera (and the camera loves her!)



Magnolia stellata. I think I want one of my own. But where to put it?



I've never been attracted too much to Euphorbia before, but I may have changed my mind after seeing Susan's.



This is Susan's Pieris japonica. We have a few of the cream form at our place but they are nowhere near as old or majestic as Susan's. I'm looking forward to ours growing more and flowering as spectacularly as this one.



These are the chooks. They used to roam free around the garden until a fox attacked them. So the three that survived are safely behind chicken wire. I long to have chooks but I'm losing that battle with the other gardener in this place. Some excuse about responsibility and barely remembering to feed ourselves at times, let alone living animals, apparently. He may have a point.

Seeing gardens like these, and constantly planning our own makes me so glad that we made the big step four years ago to own a bigger block of land so we could have a garden. We spend so much time out in it and it gives us so much joy and back pain. Oops - did I say that? But seriously, I'm looking forward to spending time outside over the next few months, feeling the soil in my hands and picking lots of produce for the kitchen. Just so long as those allergy shots work.