Welcome Rory

This week has seen some glorious gardening days. Soft ground has made many of the jobs easy and the rain has given the garden a luscious ting of green, if only it could last through summer.

Jobs on the list this week were to bring some order to the cottage garden (tick) and build a new garden bed for the cottage garden (double tick). This part of the garden now has twee memorabillia and a trellis for a rampant passionfruit that has invaded our garden from next door.

The biggest job this week was to create an island for Amy Pond, aptly named Rory Island. From the start we wanted an island in the pond and explored several ways of achieving this. It suddenly hit me to use reo with pots to create the base of the island, securing it to crates to raise the reo to just below water level. ( Like a horizontal vertical garden!) Rory grew from this.

We had a memorable trip to Bunnings, putting together the structure, to the amusement of the staff member measuring its height for us.

Putting the pots in the reo and attaching them to our huge base pots was fine. Then we actually had to get into the water to build Rory. Tassie early spring is not particularly warm! Plants in, rocks on reo, job done. It looks great. Amy and Rory back together again - the girl who waited withthe boy who lived.

One reason for Rory was to create a safe place for our one surviving lily. We bought 6, were given 3 and the fish ate them all but one. It's surviving so far but we are also making sure the fish are well fed.

The birds are getting more active and much more vocal. As I lay in bed this morning I counted at least 6 different songs until the wattles killed the serenity with their shrill cries. The frogs are constantly croaking now and there are pockets of frog spawn in the pond. The ducks are here every day. The skinks are more active, darting in and out of cracks in the deck.

The rain has put in an appearance again - good for the garden, not so good for gardening. Misty, drizzly, cloudy, brilliant sunshine - they're all magic.