You can never have too many plants!

 During winter we had one really heavy frost which damaged a lot of our bromeliads growing under the pecan nut tree. Unfortunately they had no protection as the leaves had all fallen off but normally we don't have any issues at all with frost. Seeing as the Bromeliad and Succulent Show was on at the weekend we headed there to buy some new broms to replace those we had lost although most of them will eventually recover by the looks of them. As I always seem to lose the labels on plants I will write the names down now for future reference when that happens. 

Lorena Lector

A batch of goat's milk soap

I haven't made goat's milk soap for quite a while so bought some milk at the supermarket a few weeks ago and then I had to do some research on past blog posts to remember how I made the soap. LOL! I used the room temperature method this time though and wasn't as meticulous as I was in the linked post As it is necessary to keep the milk cool so that it doesn't get too hot when the lye is added I froze it as cubes first.  

The Carnival has begun.

The Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers started yesterday and today our city was fairly buzzing. I thought I would head down to the Farmers' Market early to beat the crowds but at 7.30am or so it was already quite busy. As the market is just across the road from one of our premier parks, Queens Park,  I took the opportunity to zip over there and take some photos before the thousands of visitors arrived.

Getting ready for more dry weather

The weather forecast for our region is for more dry and warm weather for the next few months. It is weeks since we have had rain and the soil is as hard as a rock. I have been trying to keep some of the veggies alive as well as some plants I don't want to lose but have decided to do what we did during the last long drought and plant succulents which don't require a lot of water.

The end of another month

It is hard to believe that we are almost at the end of July. Only five months till Christmas. LOL! I am sure nobody needed to be reminded about that fact. We have had a number of really warm days and it was actually 25C a couple of days ago and almost too hot to be out in the garden.

Are you sure it is winter?

The weather has been so warm recently that I have had to keep reminding myself that it actually still is winter. We have just had the warmest July on record in our region and in other areas of Queensland as well. I am not sure what it has been like down south but considering it was snowing there a few days ago I don't think they are enjoying our balmy weather.

 

Sensational Succulents

Years ago when we were going through a very dry time prior to our 2011 floods, we had very strict water restrictions and were banned from using town water for our gardens for what I think were a couple of years. We had to pump or bucket water from tanks if we wanted to have a garden so we let most of our flowering plants die and concentrated on just using the water for our vegetables. The CEO replaced the plants with succulents which have proven to be very hardy in dry times and some of them produce beautiful flowers as well.