"len gardener" wrote in message

i've been working real hard on a personal problem i had this was
impacting heavily on our relationship, so now that things are looking
much much better the property is off the market.

Glad to hear that things are on the improve Len. I do recall you mentioning
this in the past. My regards to Bev.

we are both doing
MYOB courses ...bev when she finishes hopes to get a job in
town,

Good luck with the paid work and improving the financial situation. It isn't
ever going to be easy trying to get things done on the land if money is
tight but I gather from what you've said in the past, you are a pretty handy
sort of bloke who is not only good at recycling but can work quietly on
towards a goal.

It all takes time Len and it is best to just quietly enjoy the journey and
try not to worry too much or let things get to you. So long as you are both
good to, and for, each other then I think that is the most important thing -
all the rest will come in time. Remember just how much you have managed to
do in the short time you've been there. I've always been impressed with
your progress, so don't beat up on yourself if things aren't proceeding as
quick as you would like.

we've been doing heaps around here, if you check the property pics
page on our site then check our tree plantings we've planted around
160 euc's mainly nad a few casuarinas in the past few months, as money
is tight all these where freebies ie.,. seedlings dug up from places
where they would be in the road later and transplanted to were they
are needed most.

Have you done any seed harvesting at all from any of the local trees? I
have a friend who is constantly doing this and he manages to propogate a lot
of natives from harvesting pods.

I think I will try it this year with some acacias we planted int he wind
break round the veg garden last year. Some have grown like stink and are
now 10 ft tall despite the lousy droughty conditions. We bucketed water to
them for ages till I had a really good find at the tip one day - metres and
metres of half inch PVC tubing complete with drippers already attached.
Himself, who absolutely HATES my tip scavenging habits, quickly got over his
prejudices and snaffled it all for HIS windbreak (not "our" of course
despite the fact that I was the slave of all work in the planting of the
windbreak). Of course my objections that I had dragged the sodding stuff
home for MY purposes and the watering of the fruit trees to stop hose
dragging was dismissed as totally unimportant.

Anyway the upshot is that I notice that the accacias all have lots of seed
pods ont ehm so I think I'll try a bit of germinating this year when the
pods mature. I also have callistamon which gives heaps of seeds so if you
want some pods from it let me know and I can send you some.

BTW, how did all the other stuff I sent go over the long term?

been doing salshing to get mulch so bulk mulching has ben going on

Don't you find this is a problem for spreading weeds about? or do dyou
slash before the seed heads get a chance to form?

still got more to do but now that sanke season has started got to bwe
careful, saw our first for the season the other day and it had to be a
bady our first sighting in 3 years, and eastern brown.

Yuck! I loath all snakes but Eastern Browns have got to be right up there
with the nastiest. Too edgy for my liking. I always feel very nervous for a
few days after I see a Joe Blake but then I also know that it is the ones I
don't see that will be a real problem.

Speaking of snakes: I had to put my poor little JRs into the dog run the
other day (rotten little toads have taken to gettting onto the road and one
has nearly been dognapped but rescued by Himelf from the nappers front
passenger seat just in the nick of time) and I had already put them in the
run and was just dumping some feed into their bowl. I looked up into the
half water tank that serves as a shelter and there, in the back of it, was a
tiger snake. I don't know what made me look as I never bother to check out
the pen, but thankfully I did.

I promptly grabbed the boys and headed backwards and as I did so the snake
slid towards me and under the raised bed that the boys use! I still haven't
been back to check if it is living under the bed but I will be off to buy
some rat shot for the gun. I may be a lousy shot but I figure I can get him
with rat shot at that sort of distance.

been doing summer plantings since second week in september so got the
pumpkins, cuces, melons & tom's etc.,. all growing well decided to
just plant all tom' seeds we had in stock in a mass planting and yes
you guessed it they all germinated, try planting and orderly amount
none come up lol. so at presente have planted out 146 tom' plants,
sounds more like a farm hey.

:-)) Now ain't that the truth! What sort of rockies do you plant? I'd like
to have a go at them this year but I will have to search hard round here to
find some seedlings - not a very usual thing here.

the contour ripping we did they act like temp' swales but are still
working 2 years later, worked very well it has enabled us to get more
wet into the sub layers of soil, so keeps our block looking that much
greener that much longer.

Sounds like it works well then.

ted & sheena are doing well up

Please give my regards to them when you next see them and tell Ted that I
bought myself 2 compost tumblers. They sure take the back break out of
turning compost.

haven't seen tara around for a while but then a lot of the oldies seem
to be away or very quiet for the past period, a very quiet group is
this one at present.

'Cos google was so frustrating to use I must admit that I didn't check the
group as often as I should have. I did notice that a lot of the oldies were
mising but then there have been a fair number of new names too. And lets
face it Len, this was never a big volume list anyway. It was a good list
for getting to know people and what they were up to (and who was sane and
who wasn't :-))

anyway i'm waffling on now chat again real soon, anytime i'm always
here and looking. good to see our mate pete back again.

Yeah it is. I wonder if he is using one of his old hand crank computer or if
he has moved into the steam age by now.

water is going to be a problem until we get some rain happening we
have done well with rain this year and so far this seasons rain has
surpassed last years, currently the annual total is running at just
over 800mm against an all up last year of 670mm so a few good falls
could easily take us to the 1mtr mark.

Well today I have wonderful news. Not only is it STILL raining, but up
until 9 am this morning we had had 59 mm of rain in this current cloud
burst. Of course, half of our driveway is now on its way down the inland
waterways heading for the mythical Inland Sea, but at least everything has
had the most deliciious watering. Things will go like stink now for a
while.

just that there is so much wind
in between showers reckon we would do ok if we only had sun and heat
to contend with, but the wind is the real killer.

Yes, I agree. I've never known such winds as we've had in the last few
years.

take care

Ditto to you mate, look after your good lady.