Morning Visitors

Maybe it's the same pair as previous years.
Plum Blossoms behind the shed.

Photos marijka

Annual General Meeting 2007

We managed to have quite a productive meeting yesterday and resolved to form a temporary committee to create a new set of rules for the gardens. In three months time we will gather again to discuss these rules and re-elect positions.

It was a lovely warm and sunny day, and we had a good attendance with all plot holders represented.

Addition to Sunday 19 8 07

Clematis microphylla on the back fence..doing its beautiful thing.
The reveg crew Chris, Rebecca and Ros doing their beautiful thing. Weeding , saving the previous year's local plants and adding some more..
Vince doing what Vince does best mending and wise cracking.

Photos marijka

Home made Beer and Wine festival and more planting

Here's the flyer for the festival, and it's a lot of fun with not only plenty of good and truly terrible wine, but Greek singers and dancers and apparently this year there'll be free food too! As a bonus you get to vote for your favourite wine too.

Yesterday turned out to be a lovely sunny afternoon and we managed to get another bunch of our indigenous plants into our revegetation area. Despite some losses through the drought, it is heartwarming to see how well that area is doing, and we are really contributing to the whole community's quality of life by maintaining it.

Vince has put in the first of this year's tomatoes under a clever plastic bottle contraption, so we'll wait with bated breath to see how they go!
(Don't forget AGM on next Sunday.)

Grant awarded

Marijka and Ros before the Ceremony

Greek ladies providing the entertainment for the evening...

Last night we were all invited to attend the ceremony to give out the Darebin Council Community Grants at the Shire Hall in Preston. It was a lovely reminder of how multicultural this country is and especially the Darebin area. We had Greek ladies dancing, African ladies handing out delicious nibbles, Anglo Australians advocating sustainable living and teenage girls of various backgrounds promoting their indoor soccer club. We were delighted to get our cheque and congratulate Marijka on her efforts in securing the grant.

Now we just need to get gardening...

Indigenous planting

Here's some photos of Vince's new plantings in his plot, Marijka shovelling some mulch around the new indigenous plants and Ros and Jedi admiring her beautiful crop of broccoli.

Yesterday we managed to put about 10 indigenous plants in outside the gardens along the path, near the rosemary bush. They included goundcovers such as Einadia nutens and Chrysopcephalum apicalatum (a daisy type flower). Small plants like the native blue-bell (Wahlenbergia), dianella and hardenbergia (mentioned in an earlier post) and Knobby club rush (Isolepis nodosa) in the sunken area where the big round mosaic was, because they don't mind being immersed partly in water. Also Correa glabra which has a sweet little bell shaped flower. All these plants are indigenous to our local area, and cross fingers they'll thrive and spread.

We also moved the tub from behind the shed to beside the herb garden with plans to fill it with soil and plant communal veges in there in Spring, perhaps pumpkins or something similar. Also, Vince repaired the gate at the bottom pond.

Our mulch pile is getting noticably smaller, perhaps due to others helping themselves, so we hoped that we could all do a wheelbarrow or two when we visit just to help use it up before it's all gone again.

How lovely is that rain??

More photos

Here are some more photos. Rebecca has unleashed a genii. These photos are from when the rains came in previous years.

Photos marijka

new plants

We now have a nice collection of local indigenous plants ready to go into the ground after our trip to VINC and SKINC (St Kilda Indigenous Nursery Coop) yesterday.

Marijka had listed what we wanted for our revegetation area, and despite not being able to get any grasses, we managed to pick up about 75 small plants that will need to be planted over the next couple of weeks.... so get your gardening gloves on.

Here is a photo of one of the plants we picked up -the Hardenbergia violacea (Purple Coral Pea)- like the one currently flowering next to the front gate.

Our blog and August working bee

Hello all and welcome to our new blog. Hopefully we will all be able to use it to share information and images, and strengthen our community of gardeners. Anyone can leave a comment on this blog by simply clicking on comment, and if you don't have a google account or blog you can easily leave an anonymous comment without any need to sign in.

Today was our August Working Bee, and Ros, Marijka, Chris, Rebecca and Kym (and Joshua) spent some time weeding out at the front of the Gardens and emptying out the sludge that used to be the water chestnut bath behind the shed. We also dismantled part of the berry enclosure behind the shed with hopeful expectations of needing that space for a water tank in the future.
Earlier in the week Malcolm had whipper-snipped around the area in front of the gardens which made it look a lot neater.
Over a cup of tea we discussed what indigenous plants we would like to buy with the grant Marijka managed to get for us, and tomorrow Ros, Marijka and Rebecca will try to order some of them from VINC.