Last weekend, we finally had some real rain here in Melbourne.   Some parts of the city had tennis ball sized hailstones, and many cars were damaged beyond repair.   Luckily, my suburb just had very heavy rain, with thunder and lightening. Afterwards you could almost see the plants smiling happily as they soaked up the water.   [...]

Although I keep saying that I won’t add any more plants to my garden until Autumn, when they’ll at least have a chance of some rain, I still add them!   Guess I just love new plants. This time, I just added a few small annuals, snapdragons, pansies, and lobelia.   The poor lobelia certainly doesn’t seem [...]

Although we’ve had some rain in the last couple of months, we’ve also had some very hot weather, and while wandering around the garden, I discovered some very stressed plants. There is a very new acacia, which has lost about 50% of its leaves to sunburn, and now looks a little tattered.     Just about all [...]

Although it’s only Spring, the weather is mid-Summer, with almost every day for the past week over 30C, and not much relief in sight, let alone any rain. Even some of the hardiest plants, such as roses, are beginning to show signs of suffering, and we can’t give them enough water.   Not that we are [...]

September was the first month of Spring, and for the first time in years, the spring rains happened! At least for the first month. We’re hoping for a lot more in the next two months, before summer arrives. The weather bureau isn’t being very hopeful, however. Our total for the month was 95.25 mls, a [...]

Over the past ten to twelve years, the climate in Melbourne, where I live, has been slowly changing. During this time, it has become drier and we are considered to be in a drought. It is much hotter in Summer, our Winters are sometimes milder, but we don’t actually get much rainfall, especially in Spring, [...]

Yesterday, while browsing around the hardware store plant section, we came across an Acmena smithii, otherwise known as a lillipilli. This is an Australian native plant, with edible berries. This is a plant we’ve been looking for over the past couple of months, so we picked out a good strong looking young one, and took [...]