Been busy the past couple of days with assorted "clean up" jobs. Pruning, some with secateurs, some with a saw. I've got some fruit trees that haven't been pruned for too long, and they've grown so tall that the cockies and the possums are the only ones to benefit from most of the fruit. Am working on bringing them back down low enough to both cover and to reach the fruit.

A big old buddleia had collapsed over a side fence, ages ago. Being an old fashioned post and wire fence (farm fence style) with scrap corrugated iron additions to the lower part and scrap steel plus wire netting oddment additions to the upper half, the buddleia had bent over the top half. So that's now been cut down to a stump, and the wire has been pulled back into shape, with some "rustic" extra supports made from some of the fruit tree branches.

I chopped up the little twiggy bits, and along with some weeds I pulled out, I put them along part of the pathway that I'm progressively covering with mulch. Then I've topped up over that stuff with tree shreddings from a local arborist. I'm making little pockets of soil in the sides of the path as I go for planting little groundcovers (mentioned previously). So the latest one to go in is a Labradorica violet, which has tiny puple-green leaves and little mauve flowers. Generally, it doesn't grow any taller than maybe 5-7 cms, so it'll be a good "spillover" groundcover.

I'm edging the path with second hand bricks that are part of our building materials stash. With our renovations "indefinitely delayed", I figure that if I put them to good use in a place where they can be easily retrieved when needed, I solve both my "unsightly storage" and my "need edging materials" problems at the same time. (Alternate edgers will be easy enough once everthing's had time to settle into place.)

And I've abandoned plans to make a PET bottle greenhouse... I've got a homemade polycarb sheet one now, and a glass one coming from my parents' house at some point. So a stash of bottles I'd been saving for that purpose have gone into the recycling bin. They were stored up in a disused animal pen under our big gum tree, and I need to clear out that area for further aborist work, namely taking out some of the lower branches of said tree. I've also got flowerpots stored in that area, and more building materials, and most of my potted plants, so I've got a lot of clearing out to do. Need to get it done ASAP so that the tree pruning is finished before the local birds start investigating nesting sites. Last year we had two magpie chicks raised in that gum tree, don't want to spoil their fun this year. 🙂

Viola labradoricaInspiration pic for groundcover paths.