NOVEMBER     WHERE THE HELL IS 24?

Friend M was anxious to see the new home, so came to visit early in the month. I was hoping we might be able to convince her of the benefits of tree changing, and persuade her to move up here too. We had not seen much of her this year, until a few weeks before our move. After some short domestic trips, she’d gone travelling in Mongolia, China and Hong Kong with a friend, then embarked solo on a 21 day trip on the Trans Siberian Railway, from Vladivostock to Moscow. From there she travelled to Italy and eventually finished up with a cruise around the Mediterranean.  Her emails and photos had kept me engrossed through our boring winter.

M’s photo of the Trans-Siberian train

With her first visit here scheduled, we were expecting M to arrive in time for lunch. Phone rang, caller ID showed it was M. “Where the bloody hell is 24 xyz Road” her voice demanded. I replied “Don’t know, but we are at Number xx”! 24 was our old Melbourne street number.

A few minutes later she arrived, suitably flustered. Seemed she had been cruising around our suburb for ages, looking for 24, which we now realized, did not actually exist. Her GPS had taken her to the local school, so she was convinced we had to be near there.  The lady in the Post Office had not been able to help. Being a relatively new development, the streets in the area twist and wind about, so she’d found herself going round in circles. Due to a couple of child care centres, there are also some one way streets and No Entry zones, just to confuse matters. She’d decided to drive the less manoeuvrable Troopy up here, to give it a run, rather than her little runabout, so that had made her forays into assorted Courts, Drives and dead ends more difficult. Cup of tea definitely needed – too early for anything stronger!

Along with M came the first of what would be my new additions to the garden. Near our old home had been the brilliant Kuranga Native Nursery. I hadn’t yet been here long enough to know where to find a good assortment of native plant stock, so had sent M a wish list. Like me, she needed no urging to visit Kuranga, so the Troopy contained my order of ti-trees, correas and callistemons. Not the best time of year for plantings, but I just couldn’t wait until autumn to start the process. M had enjoyed hunting down my plants for me.

One of the plants I’d loved in my Melbourne garden was a ti-tree with bronze coloured leaves. I was determined to have at least one of those here, so M.s load included one of those.

My favourite red-leafed ti-tree

Now, attention turned to the back garden. M and I wandered about, talking about what plants would be good where, and working out exactly what we already had. There were six small callistemons scattered about. A battling little something – maybe a ti-tree? A row of somewhat scraggly wattles down a side fence. A row of yuccas across the back fence. A couple of not-too-tall eucalypt trees. And fruit trees – a peach and an apricot tree, and five of what the previous owner had said were crab apples. My immediate instinct was to remove these… I mean, why have them? Suppose the blossom could be pretty, but very short lived. John pointed out that anything providing shade was probably worth keeping, with the summer heat coming on. Temporary reprieve for the crab apples. I resolved to add to the two ti-trees that were already planted in front of them, and remove the exotics later, when better replacement plants had grown up.

There was also a lot of quite high grass – with nasty spear-like seeds on. Clearly, the prior people had thought that signing the sale contract back in July absolved them of any further need to keep the garden in order. M and I set about removing said grass – which was very easy to pull up, we discovered. This was because the scattered mulch of the back and side garden sat on top of weed mat – as did most of the roots of the existing plants. Shock. Horror. M and I conferred. The weed mat would have to go. In these parts, all moisture needed to be able to get into the soil easily. Plant roots needed to be encouraged to grow deep. Decent mulching should deter weeds, without needing plastic matting to do so.

M set to, with great determination, pulling up great sheets of the horrible plastic stuff and by the time her short visit ended, had made considerable progress.

Another benefit of M’s visit was to remove our heaps of moving cartons and bubble wrap. A friend was soon to also move house, so M took the lot for her. It was a good thing she’d brought the Troopy!