Garden Roundup

It has been a quiet couple of weeks in the garden. First, we had the hot weather. Too hot to do much work in the garden when it's still 30 C in the late afternoon! It's a matter of keeping plants alive -- and I lost most of my seedlings, though my recent purchases of native plants survived.

Now we have rain. We have had nearly 80mm since Tuesday; half of it fell yesterday. Again, it's too wet to do much gardening, though we need the rain... but like most of Sydney, I'd send it to Victoria if I could. Today, the number of confirmed deaths from the terrible bushfires is 181, but that number is expected to rise. 1800 homes have been lost, and that number is also expected to rise. Overseas readers may wish to view the photos at the ABC website for a better understanding. It may help to know that our previous worst fire event, the Ash Wednesday fires of 1983, took fewer than 80 lives across a much larger area.

This afternoon the rain let up enough for me to replace some of the old rusty chook-wire on the chook dome with nice new chook-wire, and position the dome in my vegetable garden. At dusk, we caught the girls and popped them onto their perch. Penny has never been keen to share her sleeping quarters; she's never really been convinced that Annie and Clarabel are part of her flock. It was entertaining to hear the three of them complaining together about the indignity of being caught and carried, then arguing about who got which bit of the perch! There's plenty of room; the issue is precedence. I wonder how they'll get on tomorrow?