It's war!

Well while I have been doing research and consulting my conscience on how much I want to defend my garden it seems the possum has already declared full on war. Monday night it ran across Vinnies roof, screamed loudly from a few metres away, climbed the tree and dropped things on the roof and stole two pieces of mouldy bread next to Vinnies door that were destined for the worm bin despite me shining a spot light on it. Tuesday night after it climbed over the roof for the third time at 2am and woke me up I shook it off (pop roof is spring mounted), then thought well that will teach it! Less than an hour later it came back - climbing a different tree. It has now devastated parts of the garden. This is a photo of what were five capsicum plants just starting to flower - you may have trouble making them out since not one has a single whole leaf left! The healthy looking plant is a self seeded basil - thankfully it doesn't seem to like that yet. It also likes tomato, peas and carrot leaves. I wouldn't mind if it just ate the fruit (since I could probably bag some for me) but if it keeps chomping all the leaves off I'll never get any fruit.

Ah hah now I know the culprit

This is a photo of the last 6-8 of my corn cob husks discarded underneath a fence post - so the culprit must be a possum. Putting up a strand of barb wire hasn't slowed it down at all. I did some research and possum are pretty hard to deter from your garden. One possibility is to put a floppy extension on the fence - the possum can climb up easily but with its weight the top of the fence flops down and the possum falls off. I can also put tin sheets around the trees its using.

Camp oven

I bought a camp oven since I want to be able to roast chicken and maybe make damper.

Surveyors

The surveyors finally turned up last Monday - said should have map by Friday but not yet. They spent most of the day tramping around the top corner taking measurements, then tried to decide exactly where the stream, which is really a complex of different channels and waterholes, actually is since I have to keep wastewater disposal 100m away which could be tricky to achieve.

Who's been eating in my garden?

All that was left of my two rockmelons. Not sure if a kangaroo hopped over the fence, seems likely since the tops of tomato, carrots and peas were also chomped off. Might be a bandicoot which will be harder to keep out.

Rosella jam

I had a try at making rosella syrup - cooked it a bit long so ended up with jam. Rosella fruit consists of a round green seed pod surrounded by five dark red fleshy
calyxes.

Tree mounds

I bought some trees including 3 avocados but when I read up how to plant them discovered they hate wet feet and after heavy rain the water just lies on top of the clay soil here. So I've built mounds in the hope of improving the drainage. I've dug two only 4 more to go!

Passionfruit has started flowering and setting fruit. Solar system not keeping up with fridge now its autumn so I bought another panel.

Good morning roos

Bad mobile phone photo sorry but these two wallabies were the first thing I saw when I sat up, and with daylight saving over its nice and light at 7am. I have bought mobile broadband (Optus 1G/month for a year $199 including modem) so will be able to update more often. Hope you are all enjoying your Easter break.

Happy Easter

This is the rosella flower.
I'm doing a chainsaw course with the SES - should come in handy for clearing trees and chopping up fallen trees.