Garden things

 This is the beautiful view over the back from the neighbour's place. We have gone over to check on their horses while they are away - literally all you have to do is check they are still standing up, it's quite easy. They eat grass, not like cats. The clouds didn't come to any rain; it's a shame because we could do with some. It is forecast to be an exceptionally hot and dry summer, which I am not looking forward to at all.

But I planted out my blanket flowers (Gaillardia pulchella) anyway. These are the ones that I grew from seed in autumn and nurtured over winter - the only ones that survived my mistake in not putting the seed tray liners (with holes) in the big tray (with no holes). They didn't seem to mind the seed raising soup for three weeks. A few snow-in-summer also made it through so I've put them in there as well - this is the new bed in the western paddock that we made around some rocks. Despite the horse poo and compost the soil is still terrible, so we will see how they go. I have another dozen blanket flowers to plant somewhere else and we can see what lives.

I also started four trays of marigold seeds, to put under the roses. I know marigolds are bright and tasteless but if they live I'm all for them. We went to a friend's 60th just this side of Canberra last weekend, hosted by his brother who lives on 20 acres. We've been there before but we have a very specific interest now, and made them walk us around the shadehouse and the greenhouse and the vege beds and the orchard. They have a problem with kangaroos - which we don't, thank goodness, they eat everything. 

And in other irrelevancies, someone went into the shed where we (the quilt group) store our display poles for the show and cut half of them off at the base. I know timber's expensive but we feel this is a bit egregious! I put the photo on the local Facebook group(s) and got plenty of sympathy but no actual culprits. They were painted black so we're peering at everyone's formwork/garden edging/bracing/scaffolding to see who nicked them. Bastards.