We who choose to live in cold climates sometimes despair and wonder if its worth the trouble – keeping our houses, loved ones and selves warm as the temperatures drop, protecting the plants that we *needed* to buy but don’t really appreciate the chill, trying to get out of bed on a morning where your breath solidifies in the air, etc. Then there are times where it all becomes clear and we wouldn’t change it for the world.

It is mid-Autumn here in Canberra and the landscape is turning golds, oranges, pinks and reds before my eyes. My flowering crabapples in the front garden are turning yellow from the inside out and it catches in the afternoon sun.

My favourite Autumn show generally comes from the Chinese Tallow Tree (Sapium sebiferum) which turns every warm colour of the rainbow before the leaves fall.



My neighbours have the most glorious Claret Ash that is just starting to colour up and over the next few weeks will shed their entire load all over my driveway. I’m not unhappy about this as I have a mostly-empty leaf bin in the back garden ready and waiting for them – add a little fertiliser and this will be a wonderful addition to my garden beds in Spring!
The last of my Autumn roses now rain down on my daisy, who also revel in the last of the warmth before winter sets in.



Most of my cuttings are coming along nicely – the Climbing Gold Bunny Rose has taken off particularly well – but they would have benefited from my using real propagation mix as opposed to the potting mix I used in some in my laziness. My semi-hardwood cuttings from class had developed so many roots that I need to trim them in order to pot them on and I think this is largely to do with the air-rich propagating mix we used (plus the cosy and humid location in the greenhouse). I hope I may say the same for my roses come spring. Oh well, I’ll just try again next year, perhaps a few weeks earlier. I am quite determined to master this!

My project from last weekend is a coldframe to protect my little ones from the frost and allow me to get off to a flying start come Spring. After the marvellous find of an unwanted kids sandpit, I got to work attaching part of it to the front of my vegie patches and recycled an old window for the lid. Ok, it may not the finest piece of workmanship the world has ever seen but it should do the job nicely. The rest of the sandpit has been moved into an unused back corner to become my potato patch come spring. I have had so many recommendations to grow potatoes that I feel I must try it out this year and the sandpit frame will be lift enough to lift off when it comes to harvest time for easy digging.

Now its time to have a cup of tea and enjoy the show from indoors!

A nice chap from the marketing team for Fiskars looked me up not long ago and asked me to write a review of their new range of garden blades. Having always thought Fiskars were quite good but not really having much on which to base that assumption, I accepted with two provisos. The first was that I’d say exactly what I thought, however harsh that might be. The second was that I’d put them through some testing and compare them head to head with my tools, specifically what I consider to be the finest bladed tools on the market – Felcos.

The products in question are from the new Fiskars Powergear range, and no, they don’t have cruise control, automatic windows or free air-con. They are however designed for ease of use and have been certified by Arthritis Australia. This is because they have a gear mechanism that levers the blades open and closed rather than relying on the strength of the user. The line up consists of a pair of secateurs, hedging shears and loppers.

As for the tests, I’m going to test and rate our tools against the four criteria as follows:
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Its Autumn in Canberra, just starting to cool down but still warm during the days. Its a very pleasant time of year and we have a second flush of roses in bloom at the moment. My ‘Mr Lincoln’ roses were passed down from cuttings from my grandmother and this year I am decided on the matter – I must have more of them! While I’m at it, I will propagate some of my other favourites.

I’ve had some success with rose cuttings in the past, but I generally over-attend to them. They either drown or I let them dry out too much after thinking I’ve drowned them or I get too excited and plant them out too early. My strategy this year? Sheer weight of numbers. Continue reading »

In one of the most remarkable demonstrations of foresight ever to be shown by the Australian government, we here in Canberra are lucky enough to be home to what will one day be an international tourist attraction – the new Australia National Arboretum. They held a ‘Festival of the Forest’ open day on 14th March to show us how progress is coming and what we can look forward to when the trees have grown.

In January 2003, Canberra was ravaged by one of the worst firestorms to hit a city in our nation’s history. A fire that started from lightening strikes deep in Namadgi National park (far east of Canberra) joined with powerful winds that sent it over the nearby Brindabellas and plunged into the heart of the city, where over 500 homes were destroyed and 4 lives were lost. It was called a ‘firestorm’ as the heat was so intense that it created its own winds, becoming self-propelling, and fire ‘rained’ down on the Canberra suburbs in the form of burning leaves and debris, starting more spot fires.

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I’ve heard people raving about bokashi for some time and after reading Flo’s Garden Diary post and seeing how cheap and easy it could be, I decided to give it a red-hot go.
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