Well here i go again, another dry end to the year, must be how things go out here. The dam is pretty much dry, and i'm having to water by can, buying another load of water next week. I hope we don't get our yearly quota of rain all in 3 days again like last Australia day weekend.

 The dam is being cleaned out tomorrow by excavator to increase the capacity and fix a leak, so i should have double the capacity and maybe there'll be enough water to last through the dry season.

 

it's so frustrating having to pick and choose what to water, and watch everything struggling and wilted. 

Two new chickens inherited from next door neighbour, she doesn't know what sort they are. I've called them P1 and P2. They are such greedy guts, the golden girl has adopted them but already they are bigger than her. So now Whitey is broody and i have to drag her out of the coup to get some food and fresh air, she's a bag of bones.

The label on this Azalea said it was a white one, oh well it's turned out pretty anyway

 New rose called Memoire. I got it on the cheap rack at Big W.

The Hippeastrums have lots of tiny green frogs on them!

tiny frog

tiny frog!

Portwine Magnolia is looking healthy this year

meet the new residents

these wonderful chillies never stop

this acalypha was a cutting that i thought had died over winter. It grew beautifully until we had all the rain on Australia day weekend. I dug it up and replanted it but it's not happy :-(

Here is my Tibouchina Jules before the rain.

Unfortunately the weight of the rain on all the buds made the bush split right down the middle and close to the ground.

  the bougainvillea spurted ahead with the rain and some dynamic lifter.

 Blue moon

                                                      
                                                                      Spathodea seedlings

Ex tropical cyclone Oswald thankyou for the rain!
Our tanks and dam are full after only 1day.

Now I can plan to plant my seedlings of schotia, castanospermum, caesalpinia, and caliandras that i have been holding off until the soil is moist again.
Today I've sown some seed of spathodea, paulownia, and toona sinensis into pots now that i will be able to plant out before autumn. Next on the list to sprout are Bolusanthus (because the last 2 that i sprouted died in the dry heat), also have cassia javonica seeds, hardenbergia (purple and white), and going to collect some Bauhinia seed from a clump of trees in town that have seed pods within reach.

I was out with the mattock digging up the poor little variegated pittosporum that died, and realised how much of the terrible grass( that i don't know what it's name is) has invaded. It completely chokes the ground and doesn't let the rain or air in. The roots are just so thick that a pick is needed to dig it up. So that's my next chore. Get rid of it. lol it's going to take an ongoing sustained attack.