My favourite pastime is being in my garden and trying to make it colourful and low maintenance. After our old Box Elder tree was cut down in autumn this year, we had to make a new garden in the spot where it stood. It has opened up the garden more, not that it’s a big yard but I have managed to plant a Blushing Pierre de Ronsard’s to climb up the wooden arch. One was already in the ground and the other one was originally in a big pot and was not doing well in the pot, so it was planted in the ground over winter and suddenly it’s taken off with the first flush of flowers for the season. I am over the moon seeing this rose doing so well, as both are a few years old and now that both are in the ground either side of the arch, it’s really beautiful. We had cut back my carpet roses and a rose bush so that the machinery could be brought in to cut down the old tree, so after the hard pruning my roses have suddenly had a massive growth spurt and now in full bloom and the garden looks so lovely and romantic with so many roses in the first flush of the seasons flowers. All the rain we have had did wonders for the garden, but now the heat has started and I just have to make sure to keep everything maintained and manageable.
Gone are the days of making an English country garden, it’s way too difficult in Canberra and the heat is too much for that sort of garden really. So I have improvised with roses, daisies and other seasonal flowers that grow from seed like Love-in-a-mist, Cosmos, Blue Cornflowers and Scabiosa at the rear of the garden. Roses and Agapanthus in the rest of the garden in groups. So now as I am getting older I can enjoy taking it easy. I just want to be able to sit and enjoy the simple things in life listening to the birds and watching them among the flowers. I still have Mr Bunny rabbit visiting the garden too, thankfully he hasn’t brought a little girlfriend with him or we would have babies everywhere.
