A quiet day today...

Today was a day for working in the garden. Tonight my shoulders and upper arms are aching after an hour or so of pruning shrubs but it was a job that had to be done. Tomorrow I plan to buy a pruning saw as it would make the rest of the pruning work so much easier. I used to have one but somehow, perhaps when I moved house, it got left behind. I used the long handled secateurs as well as the 'normal' size ones today but it was very hard work!

I did some more work in the veggie gardens, weeding, and watering  with the watering can to conserve the tank supplies. I also planted a 'Black Russian' variety of tomato in a large pot, hoping that will keep it relatively disease free. I noticed that there are already flower bracts (?) on the jacaranda tree. I suspect that it won't be long before the tree is covered in mauve flowers. There's a saying here that when the jacarandas flower it is exam time for university students. Sometimes the flowers are a bit early for that!

Tom busily getting rid of lawn weeds

Tom's lovely big backyard as seen from my place

The war on the weeds called bindis still continues. My elderly neighbour Tom, was out weeding his lawn last weekend too. I noticed that he sits on a little folding stool so instead of kneeling on my gardening mat, I have been using a little stool to continue working my way around the yard pulling out the weeds. Certainly it's more comfortable and I'm not getting the aching back like I was before. Bruce's brother noticed that I'd been pulling out bindis and offered to lend us his 'weedkiller unit'.

My BIL's weedkiller unit, powered by a car battery, just out of sight

We were a bit non- committal about borrowing it but when we went out on Thursday afternoon, my BIL came over and left the unit on the verandah. I didn't want to hurt his feelings but I've put so much effort into gardening organically and felt extremely uncomfortable and reluctant about using the poison. DH offered to spray just a small section on the other side of the house away from most of the garden. He suffers from asthma and I was concerned for his health. The weather was on our side...it was windy in gusts on the weekend so we ended up taking the unit back unused as BIL had said he needed it for Sunday. They were out so no explanation was necessary; we just left it out the back :-) .

The croton looking quite colourful a few weeks after the application of liquid potash

A cordyline that 'looks after itself' !