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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