Mirror mosaic placed around the garden

Another day at The Shute and am so delghted with the amazing result - after 9 years all the privet on the 3 acres has been removed......such a huge job - but its gone...The land is so steep where we have been working - rather tricky....

Now we can enjoy the hinterland.  The next job is to plant camellias, magnolias and some Cassia Rainbow showers and one jacaranda.  This photograph is taken from our front verandah - looking towards the coast.

Mirror Mosiac placed around  The Shute - every now and again I get fired up and make something - the latest is a crescent moon - which will swing from a very large eucalypt in the bottom of the garden. 

April Garden Club

April 2012 

This morning was Garden Club, we meet in a Club Members garden, or somewhere on the Sunshine Coast or Hinterland. We have coffee - always a chat, as it consists of  a great and diversified group of women - we wander around and look at plants etc etc.... Today we had a speaker - an interesting topic,  propagation.  Such a rewarding part of gardening - here at 'The Shute' we have propagated many box (buxus) for hedges and lots of Duchess de Brabant - or as we call it on the Blackall Range, the Montville Rose -a soft pink, as it grows well in our wet summers.  I have cut back on the variety of roses as only a few can cope with our climate.  Monsieur Tillier is a favourite, as is Lamarque  - a lovely creamy-white wild climber.  Mutabilis - a china rose with a single yellow/golden bloom that turns pink then red - a wonderful show if mass planted. I am fired up to do more propagating - as we still have many spaces to fill....

Monsieur Tillier

Lamarque with a bee.....

The Montville Rose

This is the missing Blog.....
it just arrived back from where ever it disappeared to....but as my favourite roses are here I thought I should include it.

The June full moon from our front verandah - looking over the  Sunshine Coast.

A young Black Cockatoo sitting on a white cedar tree - the parents bring their young to our garden each year - we feel privileged to have them visit  - they drink from our ponds and eat the pine cones.

 A future concern is that many of the local Nursery's are closing down - what to do, and where to buy in the future... even so we had a wonderful time this week buying many plants at half price  - large camellias, hydrangeas, grasses etc.

These are to go in front of the house where we are now clearing the privet - it will be so good to have camellias that are bigger than 10cm tall.....instant gratification - have not got enough gardening years to plant too small plants!!!

  The constant challenge is to turn this mess into an interesting garden.....I cannot wait to get it under way.....  the fun thing about a Blog is that it will be such a good record - pity I did not begin it years ago - the clearing and planting has been on going for 9 years.....we are now on the last of the clearing .....so exciting !!!!     The person in the red shirt is my  husband and chief garden helper....none of the garden would happen without him.                                                                   

Work at The Shute......

My last Blog has dissapeared off into that place I cannot find...that was about a month ago - so now I am over being cross and will start again....

We have been clearing more land - its the last of the pirvet - which originally covered the entire 3 acres of the  property.  This is the steepest scarey part.....down in front of the house - we have several more days of clearing  to go - but it will have to wait until my lovely husband returns from work.....he is lucky to have survived last week as I rolled an old tyre down the escarpment which hit him in the legs - thanks to my screaming he did not go over the cliff!! The next day I came home to make lunch - he was to follow.....after an hour I decided he was in trouble and went to look....having climbed back down the very steep rock face - there he was waiting peacefully on a large rock - unable to scramble back up - now  I have watched  Rescue on television so knew exactly what to do... .rushed back up the  what felt like a huge mountain to find a rope and new gloves..... .what a chuckle.......but at least he was safe!!!

The weather report also said that rain was forecast......as usual we believed them......therefore thought we should burn some of the heaps of cut up privet....after two days and three large fires we have cleared quite a large area.  We are delighted with the result - but in reality it still looks as if a bomb has gone off!!

Lots of imagination is required - but one day this will be a lovely area........tree ferns, plams, birds nests and ferns etc etc

An Arty Gardeners Scrapbook

It has taken some time to make this entry - for the first three months of this year we have had 60 inches of rain.......during one of those very heavy drenching the ceiling in our kitchen leaked......underneath on the kitchen table was my laptop and mobile.......both drowned..... it has taken the insurance company from the 24th February until now to acknowledge the claim - still no money!!!!
So fed up with them went out and bought a new laptop so I can chat again.....

Easter has come and gone with a rush - we had one of our lovely daughters her husband and two little girls here - which was lots of fun. . So keen to teach them about living in the country - running freely in the garden - with dogs in toe, watching the birds, catching caterpillars ..... Cooking over an open fire - food always tastes so much better!!

We have been planting lots of plants - last weekend bought about a dozen climbing roses - can't wait for them to grow into the trees and over the timber.  Today is the first sign of Autumn - chilly with wind....the leaves on the tropical birch are turning as I watch them through the window.
The plan is to keep planting ground covers so that we can stop mulching - as its caused a huge weed problem and costs a fortune - and in several months time its all disappeared.... A lovely gardening friend called in the other day with her car full of plants - she was concerned that we had so much to do and needed so many plants - it seems to have been an on going programme for the last 8 years.....
Chatting about the work - I had best get out there and do something...

Summer on the Blackall Range - it seems to rain all the time - great for the garden but we cannot plant or do any of the many jobs always waiting to be carried out!!  During the night a large branch from a eucalyptus tree at the entry to our drive crashed to the ground - last month a fully grown wattle tree just fell over - roots and all - we had received 24inches of rain in two weeks - add alittle wind and over it went.....the  Black Cockatoos will be very sad as they love to eat the borers that live in the trees - last summer five wattles crashed over making a huge mess in the garden -which still has not fully recovered.....only one left!!!!

Am very happy as yesterday apart from the first day of this blog.... I sold two books that I had made - and today a little book I put together with photographs taken of birds in our garden arrived from the USA - having been published there.....very exciting as I have never done anything like it before.  We have beautiful King Parrots, Rainbow Lorikeets, Pale Headed Rosellas, and many other birds that live in and around our garden.  Its such a joy when the Black Cockatoos bring their young into the trees near our house each year - I like to think its to show us their babies - but I guess its just showing them the trees in which they can feed off - there is a large row of pine trees along our southern boundry - and they love the pine cones.

                                            King Parrot feeding off our verandah

How scary is this.....my first blog.
I hope to write about my garden and everyday doings....was never diciplined enough for a diary so this will be most interesting.
This is the year I want to open our garden to the passing tourists - on their way to the village of Montville on the Blackall Range in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland - Queensland Australia.
Our garden has been an 8 year work in progress......and now its time to show some gardeners.... thats nearly as scary as starting a blog!!  I will charge $10 per person, and walk everyone around the garden as its pretty steep in some places and I would hate to loose my visitors.
I put a photograph of part of the garden on here  but am not sure where it is - all this will take me alittle time as I am not really very smart with computers - wrong age, too impatient.!!!
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