She is lucky to have neighbors like you to inspire her

It is raining outside right now. We sure have been getting a lot of rain. Yesterday I canned 7 quarts and 3 pints of pasta sauce and 11 pints of salsa. After that I went out and picked a whole bunch more tomatoes. These will be pureed and chopped and put in quart jars. I am also going to can some pints of whole tomatoes. I will be most happy when I am done canning. I am running out of room to store my filled jars.

Yesterday I also walked around my flower beds and found a few more places where wasps have taken up residence. I will deal with them today.

My DH and I just came in from checking our 2 rain gauges in different parts of the yard. His was full and was well above 5 inches but the gauge only went as high as 5". Mine said exactly 7 inches. I have never seen them that full before. Unbelievable especially when they said the first round of storms would only produce about .1" of rain. Guess I should have listened to what the second round was going to drop.....LOL

Guess I won't plan on pulling any weeds until tomorrow since I would bring up too much dirt if I pulled them today. I will wait until it dries up a little then I am going to pick green beans and peppers.

Have a wonderful Wednesday.

Uh-oh! Looks like the river's gonna rise down here!

I am working like a bee getting the garden all ready for spring in a few weeks time. Weeding done, fertilising done, clipping done, repotting nearly done, anti-cockatoo fencing done, tomato cages done, mulching done, daylily rust done, lily borer spraying done, alfalfa done, gladi bulbs in.

The papaya are already drooping low, full, ripe.



Now for the parade of intense flowering for several months.
Lift off.

@Gleni Love your papaya and your flower. Very beautiful and unusual.

Yesterday DH and I over turned some border brick around one of our birdhouse flower beds. I know that wasps were going in them and a week or so ago I sprayed in some cracks and killed a bunch of wasps that came out as I was spraying. WELL, here is what we found under 6 of the top bricks. I counted the wasps and there were 330. There was larva in the holes still alive and moving and in some of the holes were bees ready to hatch. We burned all the nests to make sure nothing would hatch. Then DH decided to mow at the Morton Building and came back and got me cause wasps were thick up under the window frames of two windows so we sprayed them too but some of them got away. DH is very allergic to their sting.

The red flower is Grevillea banksii, Jeanne.

Thanks for letting me know its name. That is a beautiful tree. I have never seen one before.

Glen you sound like me a few months ago...all except the cockatoo fencing...that I got to skip!
Your photos are great, I hope you will post as all your beautiful things come into bloom.


Jeanne..those wasps are scary. Just one will kill my husband... No kidding...well...except for epipen intervention and a bunch of prayers that it works.

Nothing going on in the gardens except picking veggies. It's been raining everyday for several days and we're soaked. Plants are happy though.

Jeanne,

Sounds like you have a real problem! I guess I'd better quit whining about my mosquitoes. Is this normal for you to have so many wasps, or just weather related? We're not allergic but still don't like them! If it helps, menards has their wasp spray on sale...

Sorry to hear about your hubby's allergic reaction to wasps. Thank God for epipen and prayers. I will keep looking for their nests to try to eliminate as many of them as I can. I will be plugging holes in decorative bird houses this winter.

Here are some pictures of Zinnias that I took recently. These were winter sown in milk jugs and planted in my raised bed garden. First picture is the beginning of the 2-rail fence that will go around my 8 raised bed flower garden.




4' X 8' raised bed with winter sown flowers


Dahlia

This area behind the tree, between the new 2-rail fence and the garden shed, is a work in progress. I am going to put down grass seed in the playground area. I wanted to put in a pergola or something similar between the playground and the garden shed.


This is my 10 raised bed veggie garden on the left side of the garden shed. I plan to plant more flowers and less veggies next year....We will see....

You can see in the first picture on the right is an asparagus patch and in the last picture on the left is our huge asparagus patch. I can not wait until this whole north side veggie area, garden shed area, playground area, and flower bed area are finished and only require planting and weeding. It could take a couple more years to get it where I want it, but it will be well worth it.

Beautiful and so green! Love the zinnia

That is some pretty scenery , eye candy .!!!

We really love and appreciate where we are. We really do know how lucky we are to be in wide open spaces.

Yesterday I pulled up some Liatris that were over taking my flagpole flower bed. I just got done potting up about half of them. I am on my way out to pot up the rest. I hope they start growing in the pots and will survive our winter. I will set them up close to the house before the snow flies. I have more that need to be pulled up but I will do that in the spring when they start growing.

I think I nearly have the garden in order. I have made the mistake of starting in spring over the last 10 years. Last year it dawned on me that one should have the garden all prepared for spring. But every year the grass gets harder to pull. The vegetation must get tougher if you try to keep it under control. Surely it cannot be because I am older.

I got four plants at the annual Redland City Council's "Swap Weeds For Native Plants" last week.My big weed bags were of lantana, Whisky Grass, Singapore Daisy and Asparagus Fern. Alas, these were of little impact on the daisy and the fern. Large areas of the island have been taken over by them.

So yesterday I planted the plants the Council gave me off the back of their truck. I was surprised how many people turned up. They had to go back to the nursery and get more seedlings.

Leptospermum polygalifolium Wild May
Hakea actites Fine-leaved Hakea
Austromyrtis dulcis Mydyin Berry
Banksia aemula Wallum Banksia

An inch of rain fell last night. Everything looks splendid from above. I am off to run barefooted through the garden.

I am jealous!

Its a cooler day. It was a cold night ( lo 50's ) I filled pots for coleus cuttings and walked to the garden where I planted new Poppy plants last season. They are still alive after our horribly dry summer, some parts of the state are still in severe drought,we are still in drought but have some relief. Hooray I saw two winter crownes,hope the third poppy comes thru.

Cleaned front porch and back deck, weeded and watered. Am growing some short rudbeckia that I picked up at garden center with a gift certificate, they weren't labeled so I don't know what kind. They are small enough to fit in whiskey barrel planter and flowering like crazy. All my rudbeckia is dry and done flowering. So I was happy to find this little plant for container, Ivd never grown rudbeckia in container before.