Lemon: I love a good prune

Hard prune tonight. Love it. Should be fine this time next year.

Can't help but cook for them

As the kids get older and it becomes clearer and clearer that they want (aye need) me to butt out I've found plenty of other things to occupy me. That means I do a lot less cooking, especially given the way menu choices have 8ncreased tge degree of difficulty.

But the combination of a friend giving me a (fmaily sized) fish and some lamb, a message I saw about "Nutella rollups" and a lazy night at home meant that I did a little more cooking tonight.

Grafting to self seeded peaches - nice

When you see what you think is a peach tree spring up in your driveway, you're probably right. But you'd be wrong if you think it'll give you nice peaches. Stonefruit tend not to work that way - it's a team effort between the rootstock and the scion wood.

The good news is that if youve got a strong sapling then you have the first part. Then to just graft to the top.

Ive got one in the driveway where I've budded about five donut peaches and espaliered them, as well as putting a heritage "Giuseppe Masciantonio" on the upright. Both should give me fruit this year - I think I did them three years ago. Also a little one in the garden has only had one summer as the three year ago attempt failed. But I should get fruit on that too.

The experiment continues.

Probably not the cleverest thing I've done

Sure, the glypho will kill the weed. But the overspray has hurt the lawn. So, wipe on really is a good idea.

I think I killed that Lilly Pilly

I think a dry spring caught me. I went away for a weekend training camp and this lovely six year old Lilly Pilly was all fresh and flush with new season's growth.

When I returned it was BupBowww. I knew that my decision to allocate more brain tine to skydiving was going to have its casualties. Apparently this nice little plant is one of them.

We'll see. Sometimes there's a Lazarus.

And sometimes there's a Lazarus

And this Hardenbergia "Happy Wanderer" I put in a few months ago. Died off when I pruned something else giving this too much sun, unexpectedly. But it's back. That's nice.

Stuff dies, life goes on

Gardening helps me see this clearly. I heard it once about farming "if you've got livestock,  you also get deadstock" and it happens in the garden too.

I've had a bougainvillea in for a few years now in a pot. It works fine in Singapore - they just water them every day and it's all fine. Last year I lost one about this time, and this year I'm seeing the leaves wilt on the remaining one. I'm pretty sure the roots get a fungus in the cold and that's it.

And when I've had these self seeded passionfruit marigold (tagetes lemonii) they get to a foot tall in a pot and then just die. Second time now. Rootbound perhaps.

Things die, life goes on.