28th October 2009

It was to a particularly long visit this week as it started with a trip to the Botanic Gardens to scavenge for some tulip bulbs which were no longer wanted. This was a very productive trip and we now have about 50 red flowering bulbs to go with the orange, yellow and white, and pink flowering tulips I collected there in the past 2 weeks. Thank you, City Council.

And at last the flowering cherry trees had been delivered to friends nearby - some bargain 'last year's trees' bought on the internet and when we went to collect them, we discovered they were much bigger than expected and covered in unripe cherries which the birds should enjoy.

And then a neighbour dropped in for lunch and seemed delighted with our apple cores.

We had also bought some lilac trees on our travels last weekend, so we had 6 new trees to plant - 4 for the shelter belt behind our future orchard ....


... and two flowering cherries to look at from our future living room.

The 93-for-the-price-of-none flaxes that we had planted a couple of weeks ago looked decidedly sad and would have been even more so when they discovered they were about to be moved again. We realised we had overlooked an important part of our permaculture veggie patch design and needed to move almost half and find a further 20 plants. The plants now form a circle with 6 subcircle bulges sticking out and will hopefully act as a windbreak and a barrier to the creeping grass outside.

But another afternoon with the mower provided sufficient mulch for all the new and moved plants which also received some much needed water. Lets hope for some warm weather so that they can grow big and strong.