grammyinthegarden: July Part One

At the start of July I planted some seedling Silverbeet ‘Rainbow Chard’. I thought it would look nice and colourful even if it didn’t do very well. I also put in seeds of ‘Sugar Snap’ climbing peas.

The sweet peas (planted 1^st June) are up in places, not a full row but I’ll remain patient and see what happens. The climbing peas are still thinking about popping their heads up but I had a little tickle about in the soil and they look like any day they’ll be up. My main problem with the silverbeet is guarding them from the blackbirds who love to scratch around in the mulch and have no regard for where the silverbeet goes. My next outside task is to make them little teepee shapes of bamboo sticks to hopefully protect them from the blackbirds.

I bought a cumquat tree and planted it in a very large terracotta pot near the back corner of the house. It should get lots of sun there, so it should be happy.

I have had some very welcome visitors to the garden – a family of blue wrens are once again nesting in the Hebe near the side fence. I often see the young males darting about and occasionally a female. The other day I heard them in the garden – got out my camera and instead of a blue wren photographed an ‘Eastern Spinebill’. I actually didn’t know what it was, looked through my ‘Tassie Birds’ book but couldn’t find it so I sent an e-mail to a man who has a site on the web called Tassie birds. I asked if he would identify it for me and back cam e the answer. The eastern spinebill was enjoying the birdbath until a female blue wren chased it away.

My ‘osmanthus’ is out in flower. It is very fragrant, and is doing well although I will need to give it a trim after it has finished flowering.