The ongoing saga of our back yard blitz.

Further to my previous post here about going shopping for plants last Sunday. The Better Half finally stirred himself into action and we set off just after midday, after I had explained where I wanted to go to buy some plants (Hurstbridge - about half an hour's drive north of us). But what does The Driver do? Points the nose of the car toward the city. "Where are you going?" I asked. "To Malvern," he replied. "MALVERN???" I screeched. Malvern is south of our place, nearly an hour's drive. "Well, I've seen this lovely purple shrub that I want to show you, and I haven't seen it anywhere else". What do you say to that....nothing. So we finally arrive at the place where he saw this plant, and it's a b..... SALVIA! Apologies to anybody who has a passion for those plants, but it ain't no native Australian plant! We then drove all the way back north again, and on passing through Warrandyte, decided to stop at the big nursery in that suburb. They had a huge array of plants, with lots of native ones, but very expensive. They also had one lonely Salvia in a pot, which they sold to Ken for $2 just to get rid of it, so that made him happy. (I made up my mind where it was going to go - not with the natives - lol!)

We finally reached my original intended destination at Hurstbridge, and spent a couple of hours and a hundred dollars there. They had a lovely selection of native and indigenous plants at reasonable prices, so we chose some of the bigger ones - three Grevilleas, one Snow Gum, the Golden Wattle (Australia's national floral emblem) and half a dozen smaller shrubs and ground covers. We didn't get home until 6 pm, and we were too tired to plant them, so I put them all on the patio and watered them. On Monday Ken said he was too tired when he came home from work, and on Tuesday he said the same thing. I knew this would happen every night, so on Tuesday, I took myself and my gardening tools out the back and planted everything. A couple of hours later, after dinner, Ken went outside to inspect everything and came back in to announce that it was all wrong - they were too close together, they needed bigger stakes, he didn't want his Salvia in that spot, blah blah blah...Short but loud argument followed, with himself vowing not to have anything to do with the back yard from now on, if I knew best, I could bloody well get on with it, etc.

Hey, everything will be fine. I'm heading off again tomorrow (actually today, now!) to Edendale Farm (our local council plant farm) to buy a heap of smaller plants and hopefully get them all in over the weekend. Ken made the point that in 25 years here, I have never done anything in the garden (GROSS exaggeration), so why am I starting now? Well, why not? I've never had the time (or the inclination) before, but now we are starting from scratch, I have come over all enthusiastic. Look, if it turns out THAT bad, we/he can always pull everything out and start over. Bit like a bad hairdo isn't it - if you don't like the haircut, don't worry - it will soon grow out again.