Garden Excitement

I am very excited to be telling you that I have had a fantastic morning going through the whole of our garden with a professional today. 

Olive trees should all reach over the fence this year - fingers crossed.

After 4.5 years, I now know all the species of tree and plants in the garden and how to help them have a happier and healthier life. This has been seriously overdue!

The Italian Courtyard is starting to come together

Surprisingly, we got a big thumbs up from Jeanette Scott, whose parents have owned orchards and land in the area for years and is the guru of all things plant, tree and garden. According to Jen, our trees are looking really healthy and with some serious pruning over the winter (with the assistance of my new found professional gardener) will be looking fabulous and have fruit we can actually reach next year.

Juicy juicy plums

I now have long list of jobs that include feeding, mulching, thinning, some chainsaw action (stand by Mr L'Orange) and then spraying and pruning in the winter. 

My hibiscus plants also need to be moved as they are trees rather than shrubs (bit of a misunderstanding on my part) and need more space and sunshine. Will be sad to move them but imagine them big and beautiful in another garden.

We also had a look at the Darling Cottage garden which whilst beautiful and established, requires quite a bit of maintenance to keep everything looking neat and maintained. So much for my idea that it would be totally low maintenance! 

I think I'll be spending the weekend spraying white oil, feeding all the azaleas and camelias, then trimming everything back before it grows even more out of control.

Lawn Update - Utterly tired of the useless effect of 'weed and feed' on our lawns we have now purchased some hard core weed killer from the Agricultural Store to try and get the many broadleaf weeds killed off. Will report on the results next week.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

Plum Time in Orange

We are feeling rather plumtastic at the moment as our plum tree creaks with the weight of hundreds of super juicy plums. This year sees a bumper crop and you really need to eat them outside as the juice squirts everywhere as soon as you take a bite.

The huge amount of rain we received over the weekend has caused some of the fruit to start to split so it is all hands on deck to pick as many plums as possible. As usual it is a battle with the birds who are having a field day in our garden this year.

We actually don't know what to do with all the plums and I am getting pretty fed up picking up the dropped fruit off the ground and composting it all. I could barely drag the compost bin out to the road for collection yesterday, it was so full.

Dog A L'Orange has a really penchant for ripe fruit and trots around the garden eating everything both on the ground and on the tree, frequently giving himself a severe upset stomach in the process. We then have the joys of dealing with his chronic diarrhoea through the night and half eaten plums scattered all over the garden!

There are only so many plums that you can eat and I seem to lack inspiration when it comes to dealing with this overwhelming amount of ripe fruit. I've resorted to driving around Orange dropping off bags of plums to anyone and everyone I know (plus random strangers) as getting anyone to come over and pick wasn't producing results.

I've also organised for a big bag to go to Orange Food Care for their weekly programme, better they go to someone than end up going to waste.

Hope you have all have a fabulous week.

Summer Garden in Orange

Happy New Year! It has been ages since the last garden update so thought you would enjoy a peak at the progress in the Life A L'Orange garden.

Front garden bed all grown from cuttings

It has been a really hot few months, so fed up with losing half my plants each summer, I've implemented a full on watering system to ensure nothing else is lost - so far, so good! All the trees, shrubs & flowers are thriving although the veggie patch seedlings got wiped out in a super hot spell.

Apricot jam and apricot chutney are fantastic.

The fruit tress have been laden to the brim with apricots, plums, nectarines and peaches. After several past jam disasters, we've realised our preserving skills are completely rubbish and best left to the experts.

Plenty of juicy plums for everyone!

The nectarines and peaches are still ripening up but are almost there, as usual it is a battle to beat the birds, however this is the most fruit we have ever had on the trees.

We have given away most of the fruit but luckily our friends are also exceptional cooks and in return drop in a jar of jam or chutney or something they have in excess in return.

Lemons growing on our little tree - should be ready in May

Over the last few months we have been very fortunate to receive lots of cuttings from friends and random gardeners that live near by. I'm really enjoying watching the little cuttings grow and spread as our garden beds slowly start to fill up and look attractive.

I planted a selection of herbs around the courtyard to fill in some small gaps with the hope that I will no longer have to repeatedly pull out weeds in the future. To compliment the 'Italian Courtyard' theme, I've planted oregano, lemon thyme and varigated thyme for some extra colour.

The herbs are growing nicely along the edge of the courtyard

New bench in the courtyard & lovely aggies!

The hibiscus is getting big - might be time to move one to a new spot

Wishing you all a wonderful week and promise to try and do more garden posts in future. 

Happy New Year from Orange

Wishing you all a healthy and happy 2013. We had a fantastic New Year's Eve party in the garden with around 30 Orange friends helping us to celebrate. A great night was had by all, except for Dog A L'Orange who went and hid in the bathroom as he was so frightened of the fireworks & then the party poppers!

Dog A L'Orange with his Christmas Pressie

We have had very little rain so our garden is looking fairly scorched and I am on an epic watering mission each night with my little watering can plus a couple of hoses just to keep things alive. The good news is that our fruit trees are looking fantastic and we got our first crop of apricots.

Delicious apricots

The apricot tree in our garden

They don't look amazing (due to the hail damage) but they taste delicious and that is all that counts really. Still need to work out what to do with them all, I'm thinking of stewed apricots as an easy breakfast option with some toasted muesli and yogurt. Any other ideas?

The plums are very close to being ready so we are going to pick them tonight and ripen them in the house so the birds don't get to them first. The tomatoes are coming on nicely and we should be able to pick some zucchinis very soon. 

Dog A L'Orange is getting big and also more and more into digging as the soil is so dry, so Mr L'Orange is hastily erecting more fencing all over the garden to protect our assets!

Opening his Christmas gifts

So cute with his reindeer toy from Granny

Hope you all have a great weekend.

Disaster Amongst The Fruit Trees

The last few weeks in Orange have been very hot - this week the thermometer has been hitting 30 degrees on a frighteningly regular basis.

All the warm weather leads to everything getting super dry (our grass is brown and yellow) and lots of major thunder storms.

On Wednesday this week, Orange was hit by a massive storm which had the usually heavy rain, accompanied by hail, strong winds, lightening and thunder. I was out for a walk with Dog A L'Orange at the time which was pretty horrendous especially for the little puppy who was terrified, we ended up talking shelter in some public ladies toilets for 20 minutes!

We arrived back at the house drenched and cold, we won't be going for walks with storms on the way again. Alas we didn't get any pictures, but just imagine myself and Bailey looking like we had just come out of the shower with clothes on.

The winds during the storm were strong enough to cause quite a bit of damage to our garden. Because our fruit trees are laden with fruit at the moment it means the branches are heavy and don't cope well in gale force wind.

Major damage - half the tree has gone!

We have lost a huge branch from the nectarine tree and a whole bucketful of plums and apricots from the other trees, so sad! 

Dog A L'Orange & Fallen Branch

The garden is now covered in leaves, dropped fruit and the many toys and chew things from Dog A L'Orange so basically it looks a mess.

Lost fruit

Fingers crossed we don't have too many more storms like the one this week or we won't have a single bit of fruit left to eat come January.