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The poor natives in the top corner have been a bit of a continual battle. Between frosts, weeds, snow, hares, rabbits and drought they’ve had a bit of a hard life. Every year about 25% kark it, while the rest soldier on for another year, awaiting their turn for a decent burial.

So a few weekends ago when we were trying to escape a bit of cabin fever we headed down with all the cash we could scrape up – $32 (and I was actually very surprised we could find that even that much hard currency around the house. Cash is pretty much MIA in this household now) – and headed to one of the local nurseries. Why cash? They take cheques (no cheque book here), and the hard stuff. Fair enough, but a bit limiting on occasion!

A good bit of jaw-jaw later (which was good, as the longer away from the cabin the better!) we returned home with a further selection of natives to try in the corner. A couple of days later in they went [camera reports picture taken on 11 July, so I’ll assume that’s right]. Hopefully with appropriate protection from wind and nasty critters. Although as the protection was recycled from previous failed installations I’m not going to bet the farm on them!

Let’s see how many of this lot make it through a year. Or hopefully much longer!

Well, it’s winter, so not much happening around the place. The only real news of the last month is that we finally depleted the remaining garlic stocks. So looks like we’ll have to double the crop in future to even attempt to make it through a year. Luckily the cloves we sacrificed eating to plant have started to pop their heads up, so in another four or five months we should have some replacement stocks. I’m pretty sure we planted more than last year, but just can’t remember how much more!

The netting’s been vital to stop the kitties deciding that patch was the best patch to spend a bit of time digging in…