Everything is growing in October!

Howdy! I've spent the last couple of months living in the city with the harshest lockdown laws in the world. And do you know what? It's totally been ok! It really has. At the start of our lockdown we were getting over 700 cases per day just here in the city of Melbourne. And today it was announced that we had 1 case. 

One. 

And they aren't quite sure it really is a case as apparently the person had covid a few months ago and may have tested positive as they shed dead virus cells or something something medical etc.

I don't know about you but I think that's freaking fantastic. More than 700 per day down to 1.

So to all those dickheads overseas protesting because their governments are thinking of closing the pub at 10pm because you have thousands of cases a day I say shut the truck up you silly twat. 

8Track continues to dominate the house. 

His favourite day is bag day. AKA Shopping day. 

He likes to sit in front of the screen when I'm watching my current favourite garden show Gardeners World from the UK. There's something about Monty wielding his secateurs! He really is the gardening womans sex symbol...

And he has the smoothest, most honeyed voice. Seriously, this guy needs to do readings for Kindle!

Watching an hour of GW inspires me to run out and work in my garden. Because I've had to work from home I can go outside and potter around in my lunch breaks and immediately after i finish work. It's so therapeutic don't you think?

Even the pets benefit from it. They all munch on a basket of cat grass I have growing in the pergola...

Have you ever had someone take a photo of you when you were partway through a mouthful of food? It always looks hideous! So I took a photo of Chuck Norris while he was eating cat grass...

I grew these purple runner beans from seed. Now they are a good foot taller than they were in this photo.

Bijoux managed to escape before I could take her photo of eating cat grass, but deigned to let me photograph her stretched out on the warm concrete.

This rather weedy, unattractive mass is one single borage plant that's gone rogue. I have let it continue to grow for now because it is always covered in bees.

I have never had so many bees in the garden before. If I have to let the borage stay to support the bees, then I am happy to sacrifice the space!

Not having access to a garden centre has meant that for a couple of months i was receiving regular packages of bulbs and seeds. I even had some live plants delivered in the form of 2 Clematis. Despite the delays of a lot of mail, the live plants arrived within 2 days and were really well packaged.

There has been some crochet. I also finally finished my granny square vest which I'll post about later. 

Some of my plants are absolutely covered in flowers because they have had a regular and thorough deadheading. When we are all recalled back into the office, I will strenuously argue against going back in because I will fall behind on my deadheading.

This is Hymenosporum flavum or the Native Frangipani. It grows into a super tall tree and the flowers smell like frangipanis. It's delicious!

I cleared an overgrown and unproductive fuscia out of this front garden. I cut it back and potted it elsewhere but have planted in a mixture of foxgloves, cosmos and hollyhocks as well as a hydrangea. I hope they look massive and blousey when they grow up!

This next bit is super exciting for me. Peonies. They tend to prefer cold winters. And Melbourne doesn't really have cold winters, This winter was actually quite sunny and warm. I have never been able to get any to flower. I usually kill them with too much love. But I have persevered. Apparently the old saying is: 1 year they sleep, 2nd year they creep, 3rd year they leap.
So these are my 3 peonies. The one on the left is 1 year old, the middle one is 3 years old and the blue potted one on the right is 2 years old.

And now the 3 year old peony has given me a batch of these!

Tomato and Forget me not seedlings that have been potted up.

I took the garden arch that supported last years tomatoes in the Lemon garden, and moved it to the vegie garden for a grand entrance. On one side is a blackberry plant, and a passionfruit vine on the other. We are also trialling growing potatoes in those black bins. We cut the bottoms out and planted Kennebec potatoes.

Sonofagun No.2 finally returned to school a couple of weeks ago after 106 days of 'remote learning' at home. 106 days! And that doesn't include the time spent at home for the 1st lockdown. One of the last art projects he had to do before going back was to create a piece of street art that incorporates something about Covid. We put our heads together and he came up with Surgical Mask Stuart  who lived in front of our house for a few weeks until it rained and his eyes fell off.

 So mask up, wash your hands, stay at home and stay safe and healthy!

Louise

Red Haired Amazona