Around the garden

My garden's a disgrace - I admit it. Planted with high hopes around eleven years ago, I lost interest when the drought struck, and anyway I'm not physically able to do much these days. I rely on a local bloke to keep the grass cut, so it's not a fire hazard.
Amazingly, many of the shrubs have survived the Big Dry very well - so well that a working bee was needed to prune and tidy up a couple of weeks ago.

As the last trailer load left for the tip, my daughter cast her eye around and decided that the pile of old tyres I'd been saving for something or other, could be put to good use. This is the result - my new strawberry patch. Ugly, yes. But practical. My garden is built on clay and rock, with hardly any topsoil, so veggies are out of the question unless you use containers. There are six of these conveniently placed along the back verandah, and I look forward to feasting this summer.

Yesterday the Resident Grandson helped me to make made another kind of container garden. We used styrofoam boxes (with the bottoms cut out) filled with a mixture of soil, cow manure and compost. Again, they're ugly (but free) and hopefully the ugliness will soon be disguised by lush green leaves.
There's only six so far, and I've already planted rhubarb in two of them. I'm thinking silver beet and tomatoes for the others.

The seedling apple tree by the gate is just coming into bloom, and will soon be glorious - pity the fruit's not up to much.

The rosebuds are all covered with thrips as usual, but help is as hand; I seem to have hundreds of ladybirds this year, all hard at work.

There's also a pair of red wattlebirds which have taken up residence nearby, and they are doing their bit too. These birds are really honeyeaters, but they eat insects too.

I hope they don't eat the ladybirds too!