Bird stopped play

There is nothing more satisfying than to take a plot of land and create a garden.

The random in question this week is the cottage garden. Down one side of the property we inherited tall straggly gum trees. They constantly need cutting back because that is also the line of the electricity wires, but that's another story. Also included in the inheritance was a huge dead tree, an overgrown patch of lillies and a rabbit warren of Watership Down proportions.

This area is now part of the cottage garden. We started by removing the tree, filling up the burrows and severely curtailing the antics of the lillies. They are still in in the garden but starting to accept their place.

Each year I have planted cottagey plants and spent most of my time pulling out the weeds that threatened to choke them. Mr "do you want a watering system with that?" Ruprecht set automated sprinklers up (not that we've needed them this Spring) and we started with the TLC therapy.

Each year the cottage garden has thickened beautifully. It is now a riot of plants and colour and weeds don't get much of a look in. My random act of gardening is more pulling out baby lillies, persistent blackberries and native tree seedlings that can't accept we don't want bushland everywhere.

I was stopped in my tracks today while I was macheteing my way through a vigorous shrub I had grown from a cutting. I pulled back a branch to pull out the weeds struggling to grow underneath it and there was this perfectly formed nest. Sitting on the nest was a gorgeous female blackbird, frozen in time. You could almost hear her say, "I'm not here, I'm not here" hoping against hope I'd leave her alone.

She's hiding in here!

Needless to say, that patch wont get weeded anytime soon!

Cottage garden is now ticked off the list for a few weeks. Garden is looking good!