I’m pretty sure I’ve said some other month, maybe October or November, was my favourite month before, but I was obviously lying, as clearly April is my fave! It contains my birth date (which can be scary, especially if the year ends in a 1 and is a decade year!) and if the weather Gods are smiling (as they are this year) the Autumn rains descend and the world becomes lush and green and produces a magnificent last blast before Winter.
And that’s exactly what’s happening as I write…the roses which looked good enough on the 11th for the Open Day are producing their sublime Autumn blooms all over the show and the late or non stop perennials are looking great too. The chrysanthemums are an Autumn glory and fill the gardens with colour at this time of year.
Other things are happening too, possibly not so picturesque, but even more exciting…the digger has arrived in the garden and yesterday we had a brief visit from “Mr Stump n Grind” which was a first for me. Currently the lawn outside my house is a ginormous mess with a very large pit surrounded by piles of chopped off plants, mountains of soil and a mammoth mountain of very odorous sawdust/wood from the Camphor Laurel stump.
This handsome tree was planted way too close to the house around 50 years ago and was one of the first to be cut down when we bought the property in 2013. I duly painted the enormous stump with straight Glyphosate and proceeded to make a garden with the stump as a central feature. Little did I know of the habits of a Camphor Laurel and why they are declared a noxious weed in Queensland… No sooner was my garden planted and looking wonderful, than the suckers started springing up all through the area. For 7 years I have fought the suckers, hours at a time on an almost daily basis. Many valuable plants have fallen foul to a drip of Glyphosate aimed at a camphorous sprout, it has been a long and tiring battle. At this stage I’m not saying I’ve won the war, as there were some inaccessible roots left in the ground, but I can smell victory! Well actually all anyone can smell is the camphor!