Heart at Home

Spring Gardening

It's the last month of winter in my part of the world. We're still getting cool nights, enough to make us want to wear a coat, but frost is very uncommon on the coast here. Last week there were a few snow flakes about 3 - 4 hours from here, causing a rush on the tourist accommodation in that town, but our winters are very mild.

The kids and I have been building a frog pond. That is to say, we dug a hole in the back yard, lined it and filled it with water. There are grand schemes for garden beds, and I need to obtain more mulch and a few big rocks to add as features, but the water has children and pets fascinated. Because we're trying to encourage indigenous wildlife in our little yard, I made sure to get indigenous water plants. Last night I noticed mosquitoes hanging around the water, so today I went off to the local garden shop and bought 6 little native fish (guaranteed to eat mosquito larvae, not tadpoles, and to reproduce by summer).

You can just make out a few fish in the above photo. When they first went into the water they huddled in one spot, then they did a sedate tour of their new domain. Now they are shooting around in rapid figure 8s. Josh reckons it's because they came out of a tiny tank, and they're excited to have space to play.

Other pretties around our yard include self seeded marigolds in our somewhat unkempt lawn.

And a lot of cheerful little daisies. It's been a damp sort of a winter, so we're soaking up every moment of glorious sunshine.