"len gardener" wrote in message
g'day fran,

Howdy doody Len. Still dry up there?

i just about had the group buried thought maybe pc had gone out of
fashion, i've been checking every day for months and months looking
for words from any of the older hands or even newer hands. this is the
first new pc message i have seen even when i was with my old isp.

I have been a bit busy of late doing lots of things that aren't necessarily
garden related. I haven't been reading or even checking here much because
I've had such little time to get to the computer. I'm involved in a group
that has a major conference coming up locally and work related to that and
my office bearing postions and representative work with that organisation
has kept me very busy. Add to that renovations, my wee job, volunteer work
for the local Show society, my hobbies and the stinking drought and life has
been a bit hectic.

Of the last 8 years we have had 6 years of much less than average rain. In
fact the bloody drought is so bad here that I have had big trees dying in
the garden. Just to add to our woes we now have grasshoppers (locusts) in
plague proportions - not as bad as out West, but still bad enough to
defoliate 2 of my younger trees (a fig and a D'Agen plum). I'm now just
trying to keep the water up to the trees and hoping that Autumn will arrive
fast so that the trees will go into an early shut down and thus might manage
to survive through to next Spring.

so it is great to hear and see you all again, now where is that vege
post.

It's part of the "Breedersons Revisited" thread. Go to some of the earlier
posts.

we've just finished planting our broccoli, cabbages & cualiflower as
well as some of the seed potatoes, been going great guns here the best
wet seasson to date we had 1040mm of rain last year the best to date
and now we already have 7/10's of last years rainfall so far and more
coming, never seen so much grass.

Send some of that rain down here at once you greedy boy! :-))

Perhaps not - you might need to send food parcels South soon if we don't get
some decent rain soon. My garden is simply limping along. Nothing could be
said to be thriving even though I do have soem tomatoes and zucchini and the
odd perrennial veg, they are all doing it tough. The spuds have nearly all
decided it si too much effort and only the Mustard greens look rampant -
although I do have simply wonderful raspberries at the moment.

don't know if anyone remembers how we did contour ripping to get water
underground well it worked a treat reckon it's the best and lowest
impact way of starting good management and restoration to damaged
soil. we have grasses hear that are nigh on 2 meters tall the average
is just over a meter,

Very impressive. There was a demo of a Yeomans plow near here during the
week but I couldn't get htere as I had a prior commitment - most irritating.


oh ted & sheena are doing great guns he has had slightly better rain
and is now enjoying the sight and his cattle the pleasures of good
pastures, they will be visiting us on monday should be a good day.

Say Hi from me and tell him taht a report on progress would be good.