Ahhhh Dior

The little Dioressence rose has opened up and I have to say is absolutely gorgeous!

The colour has toned down a little and it's bloomed into a luscious mauve....much more like the photograph on the information tag

It really is lovely and will look great in the garden next year...I just have to choose a spot where it will be seen and appreciated.

Oh, and the perfume's pretty wonderful too!

A little colour in the garden

Let's get out of the chaos that is our bedroom renovation for a day, at least, and head into the garden.

I'm not sure why, but lately, I seem to be leaning away from my usual white on white on cream...towards a bit of blue, a smidge of lilac and a hint of mauve.


Dioressence

I bought some roses a few weeks ago and am really happy (so far) with the way they're going. This one was on sale and looking a bit sad, so it came home with me. I hope that dark pink colour fades a bit!


This is how it should look.

I also bought some bare rooted roses on-line and they were delivered in just a couple of weeks!

I've bought roses on-line before, but this time round I decided to try  Magic Garden Roses and I was not disappointed!  I placed my order and they called me a couple of days later just to let me know they still had the ones I wanted in stock and they would take a couple of weeks to get out to me as it was right at the end of the season. No Worries!

I got 2 Blue Moons and a Blue Bijou...unfortunately their little buds haven't broken through yet but they will soon be greeting the sun and will look lovely.

Hope the rest of your Wednesday is splendiferous!

Spring is in the air...and a milestone

I love this time of year....just before Spring hits us with a massive burst of new life.

There's still a lot happening in the garden though.


The magnolia's out, or at least one tree is...

The beautifully perfumed pom-pom bush is also budding. CORRECTION: This is not a pom-pom bush, although that's what I usually call it. It's a Viburnum, a Viburnum x burkwoodii and it's perfume is delicious.

...and the lilacs are starting to show new life.

This dark magnolia, right outside our bedroom window always takes a little longer to get the message that it's time to start breaking out.

You have to walk past this to get to the front door. Lovely.

More life in the lilac

...and the violets have gone crazy with all the water they've been getting. In fact they look like they're going to take over some parts of the garden...such a rich green colour

On another note, this is my 200th post....who would've thought I'd get this far in just over a year!?

And they said it wouldn't last...ha

In the Garden

The Daphne's out at Number 10...

... and it's making that little section of the garden smell heavenly!

I can't believe the perfume from these little guys.

Can't wait for the lilac and roses to start blooming now...won't be long before it's Spring and the entire garden will be in full bloom.

Truly heaven!

Send Her Down Huey ! !

Oh, you did.

I was working away at the computer yesterday, minding my own business, when everything went a little dim. The clouds had rolled in, bringing with them the thunder and the lightning and the wet stuff.

The dogs then joined me in the study, looking at me with questioning faces, not knowing what the noise was and what the stuff falling from the sky was. They have short memories.

Then, it came down in buckets. Our rain gauge showed 30ml of rain had fallen, or an inch in the old language, in just half an hour.

It came from the North and it hit hard. It was so hard that it came right onto the back deck where I have that old chest of drawers that I'm preparing to paint and restore.

Guess it'll have to wait a little while till it dries out.

We've had a very wet November here in Melbourne, which is such good news. I just hope we have a very wet and cool December too.

By the way, I'm going to have a great and very useful giveaway next week. I received an email from a company yesterday, offering one of my lovely Number 10 visitors a gift

Details next week...

Mums and Bubs

I love this time of year. It's a time when there's a lot of new life in the garden. Plants have well and truly "greened up" and there are lot's of new babies around.

We've had the sounds of magpies warbling and their babies making their funny calling sounds

We've also had baby doves being taught how to fly, some more successful than others....and then there are the wattle birds.

This baby was being tutored by it's Mum last night. She was coming and going, making sure she had plenty of food for him/her and making encouraging moves to get it to move out of it's safety zone in the fig tree and fly.

It must've worked because this baby was happily flitting from branch to branch, then was gone...off into the wild blue yonder.

A little spooky

I was checking out a new blog today...Little French Nest by Kelly and it really is lovely.

But as I was scrolling through I came across this....and it was a little spooky because this is the front gate at Number 10

...and the night time view

How uncanny.

This is the photo of the heart gate that Kelly took in France.

For the record, I got my idea for the heart gate and fence from a garden centre/nursery catalogue that was left in the letter box, oh, maybe 5 or 6 years ago. Yep, inspiration comes from many sources.

Hunter Gatherer

MONT has two loves....and fishing is numero uno!

Every year around this time, MONT heads off on a little four day pilgrimage, a sabbatical where he connects with nature, does without all the mod cons and just spends his time sitting in his boat, trying to catch that elusive trout

He and some of his mates head north, to Lake Dartmouth which is looking pretty good this year. It's been pretty low in recent years because of the drought

The "dart'" covers an area of around 6,400 hectares. There are only a couple of areas where people are allowed to camp and you have to get to them by boat. There's no running water, hot or cold, no toilets and no power. Whatever you want you have to take with you.

What amuses me each year though is, while he's only away for four days, the preparation, planning and sorting through all his lures and sinkers and other camping equipment takes ten times that...but I think that's the same with lots of things. The anticipation, planning, packing and thinking about what you're going to do while you're away is an integral part of the trip.

In fact it's half the fun

Purple and White

The Lilac's out at Number 10 ...

...and the perfume in the front garden is heavenly!

Water Recycling System

It's raining here in Melbourne which is terrific because it means the garden's getting a soaking

In fact it's been raining here quite a bit lately and it's been falling in the catchment areas that feed Melbourne. They're now just over 35 percent full, the highest they've been in well over a year.

Anyway, despite the past dry conditions and Stage 3-A water restrictions, our garden's not doing too badly because we have water tanks and this. It may look like a large bucket to you, to us here at Number 10, it's our water recycling system

The washing machine outlet pipe is connected to the pipe above the bucket and all the washing machine water empties into it

The bucket has a hose connection with two hoses attached and they are placed in the yard to empty out onto the grass or shrubs.

It's a pretty good system if you have an old house and you want a simple way of getting the washing machine water into the garden without having to syphon it out of the machine into buckets then carry them around the garden. Oh, it also means you have to be careful what washing powder you use too. I buy one that's made in New Zealand. It's by Eco-Store and I just get it at the supermarket. It's a plant and mineral based powder that has no phosphates, ammonia, nitrates, chlorine or perfumes. Perfect... and I haven't had a fatality in the garden yet!

Front Of House

Number 10 is one of those houses that, I think, will always be under construction in some way.


It's an old weatherboard that was originally very small when I purchased it in 1998. Just two bedrooms, a lounge, kitchen and bathroom, with a small lean-to at the rear that housed the laundry and toilet. Since then it's grown considerably....

It also had a very ugly green tin fence at the front...sort of roofing iron with a timber rail at the top. Not pretty. It also had an old cracked, concrete driveway, which was deteriorating each year, with tree roots lifting it and making it dangerous.

So, we decided to actually finish the front and a while back got a new fence, but we couldn't agree on what sort of driveway and path to put in. I was thinking of an asphalt drive with a second hand brick edge. MONT wasn't convinced, thinking it would be too dark. So he came up with this. Sandstone edging with a sandy coloured crushed rock in the centre. PERFECT!

It was a pretty messy job and took a few weeks to complete because we did some of the work ourselves on weekends...

We thought we'd lose a couple of our lovely Silver Birches at the front once the concrete was lifted and the new edging put down, but they're still with us, or at least four are. One has since died, but that wasn't caused by the work being done.

Finally, a front path from the gate to the front door.


...and I love it! with a capital LUV!!

Devastation

We have a half acre block at Kinglake, which was one of the small communities devastated by the February 7 bushfires in Victoria.

It only had a small shed on it and a lot of trees, so we didn't lose anything of any value. Not like many other families who lost everything.

MONT took these photographs on one of his many trips to Kinglake to see what needed to be cleared from the block. There were a lot of burnt and dangerous trees that needed to come down

This is the view from our block to the neighbours, whose home was destroyed. In fact all houses along our road were razed.

All of the large trees have now been cut down so they wouldn't cause any problems for the neighbours who are going to rebuild.

The job now is to cut them all up and clear the block so we can start again.

Total devastation.

Black, as far as the eye can see.