The family of magpies living up in our trees are getting more and more friendly... they are now brave enough to come right up to us whilst we are sitting around. Of course, they might be trying to take a little nibble of my breakfast... but they haven't tried that bit yet. Instead, they are just perched close by and warbling away instead.. maybe they will try their luck in the future... but at the moment, it is quite nice!

Meanwhile, in the evenings, our area is completely rife with Christmas beetles (scarab beetles?) in the evenings... they are coming around in large numbers and are crazily attracted to the lights of our carport, and also of the house... you can hear them pitter-patter away at the windows in the dusk!

... but for some reason, they are hugely attracted to the petrol station down the road!

We have had some heavy rains in the past weeks, coupled with sunny days... and it has led to some seriously fast growing weather... unfortunately, we also had this sewer pipe start to overflow in the last heavy rain, in the far corner of our block near the road (and thankfully, not near the house!)... probably some blockage somewhere further down the line... and when I called it in, it had already been reported in a few times.

... but it did end up with large puddles of interesting smelling water in that area... I suspect that this area will be growing REALLY well in the next few weeks!

... and the fast growing season is especially true for the weeds and grass... ARRRGH, all this stuff needs to be weeded and hacked back again. My wife is still humming and hawing about what she wants to put down as ground cover... and that means that I end up weeding and de-grassing over and over again... I think we should just put some stuff down instead of trying to clean the slate, and then start trying to tip the balance for the things that we want growing there by pulling out the other stuff until it gets established and dominant.

... and our first crop failure... the rocket that we planted only proved to be a tasty treat for some caterpillers... they completely stripped it, and I ended up just pulling it all out and killing them all. For some reason, they had no desire to eat anything else though!

... bah... the growing season meant that all the weeds are growing in the stacked blocks as well! And these especially spiky ones as well!

We have picked up a good deal of cardboard boxes from the festive season orders, and that is just in time for a good deal of mulching that I need to do. First things first, remove all the sticky plastic that won't be degraded over time...

... and this is the section that needs to be mulched more immediately... it is an area that sees a decent amount of sun now that the wattles were cut down... and that means that the grass is growing fast in the area... so, digging out the grass, putting on the cardboard and then mulching with the woodchips to keep it all down and suppressed!

Lots of little summer chores to do around the garden, and only a couple of hours in the morning to do them in... before it gets stupid hot!

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