Well many of the old faces reappear! Hello to all of you. I see Len
and Chookie occasionally in aus.gardne ng.

It's Fran here using a new sig block.

So what is everyone up to permie wise?

I'm doing sod all in the garden these days but watering and a bit of
tidying stuff. We came out of the drought with a great spring but
then the grasshoppers and locusts arrived. They ate and ate and ate.
They stripped roses and 2 apple trees bare and lots of other things as
well which they killed by denuding them. My lemon had no leaves and
they even tried to eat the stems. I nearly lost it and only now is it
producing new leaves and precious few of them. With winter about to
start, I'll have to protect it from the frosts and hope it makes it
thorugh to next spring.

When the hoppers finally began to eat down into the crowns of my
rhubarb plants, I finally bought some huge plastic pots and
transplanted a few things into them - just a few picking greens and
herbs and my favourite rhubarb plant. These plants have all survived
well but as the pots live on the verandah and we still have
grasshoppers, I'm refusing to do anything till next spring when
hopefully the sods will have disappearred. I'll spread soem amnure on
the veg beds but I thinkt hat is about all I'll do between now and the
next planting season (but I couldn't resist ordering some prune trees
and some roses to fill a few drought induced gaps).