The past two weeks have been incredibly busy.. it was school holidays! Now they are back at school my eardrums are finally getting a well deserved rest. We spent a lot of time traveling to Adelaide and to Victor Harbor where my beautiful sister lives. She also visited here with my niece and they gave me these beautiful lilies. They were sitting on the kitchen bench and our cat Rory tried to chew them up as soon as I took them down to photograph! She is a scamp who loves messing with my plants..

Delta beaconsfield pansy

Mini snapdragons

A helpful hoverfly

Azalea - Mrs Kint

Chinese lantern - Bella red

Chinese lantern - orange

Cape daisy - copper purple

Well.. at last I've snapped a pic of the copper purple thing! It is looking quite nice today. The colours look more washed out in the sun but I haven't touched them up much in this photo. Not too bad.. but a little purple-er would be nice!

Loving the new heater!

Wow time gets away from one when one is trying to keep a blog! I thought I'd posted only a few days ago but we've had this heater for 2 weeks now. This is my precious... the Nectre mk2. And right in front of it is where I'm staying today!

I like plenty of rain but this getting ridiculous. I had to dig another rose out this morning and put it into a pot. I thought I had built up the bed enough but apparently not! We are going to have to put in quite a lot of drainage. We have a newly built house so our block has been cut out right into the lovely clay soil which acts like a bowl and all the water just sits on it. We have begun ammending the soil with loads of gypsum and we have a bit of top soil but it is going to take a long time to improve. G cannot even get a shovel into the clay we have to use a pickaxe and crowbar. The only comfort was seeing that the rose had actually been growing some nice roots. Above the soil it looks like a miserable single thorny stick while the rest of the roses all have these little pink nodes sprouting out all over assuring me that they are alive and well. I hope it doesn't mind being moved coz it is one of my favourites.. Crown Princess Margareta.

I am on the lookout for geranium 'Rozanne' or similar to plant under the white roses (Summer Memories) out the front. These geraniums are not common in Australian nurseries. We seem to only have pelargoniums which are called geraniums. The nice lady at my favourite nursery said she would try and find some for me if she can. In the meantime we have planted the purple daisies there. There is a quite a bit of space in the front. I do have some 'baby blue eyes' seed which I can try there I suppose. The front looks so much nicer now it has been mulched.

A few more plants recently aquired plants:

Chinese Lanterns - orange & pink, and a dwarf Bella red one.
A few dwarf snapdragons
A couple of pincushion flowers
An osteospermum daisy.. I *think* is yellow.
Convolvulus sabatius
Camellia japonica - Hawaii, Carter's sunburst, C.M. Hovey, & Guilio Nuccio
Mexican orange blossom
And a bunch more purple pansies & some black ones which are very cool.

I keep picking up plants with my spending money instead of going out for coffee and lunches. I think that's fair enough don't you? I'd rather have plants and toast and tea than fancy lunches.