Even though I'm back in Australia, I'm still not back in my garden. Given the unsettled circumstances of my return, 
As I'm not home, I thought I'd show you round my folks garden. Trust me, this place would be great for an open garden for visitors but they wont. It's on an acre and is all fully landscaped.
It's Winter, so things are a little sad, but they've just had the driveway re gravelled and the arborists in, so it's looking very neat. The arborists create beautiful 'habitat trees' out of the dead gums - there's about four of them on the property - so they're home for birds. I love their architectural shape.
Leucodendrons feature heavily in my parents garden. The yellow ones catch the moonlight (damn, I have forgotton how beautiful the stars are in Australia!) and the red ones catch your eye. They're pretty drought tolerant and flower all year.
There's quite a few citrus trees - a huge lemon, a lime, a blood orange and a few more. They all need a good feed of magnesium. I come out here daily with Dad and we share a blood orange. I'd really like to plant one when I get home.
The nandina, a type of bamboo I think, is a lovely feature plant - the orange and yellow leaves add colour to the garden all year round.
How cool is this mossy rock with the self seeded succulents?
Various succulents also look great in an Aussie garden.
There's a few decorative things in the garden too, artfully placed pots and so on, and bird baths. It's a real haven for birds here - we spotted a spinebill the other day which I haven't seen before. As I type this, I can hear a magpie singing and I'm wondering when he's going to stop - not that I want him to. He's pretty joyful. My favourite ornament is the Ganesha pond, of course.
I couldn't name all the lovely plants in my parents garden - here is a couple I like. It's predominately natives.
The banksia, however, is unmissable.
The vegetable garden has seen better days. Mum just doesn't have the time or inclination for it as she's busy looking after Dad. There's three compost bays over yonder, and some apple trees that need bringing back to life after we removed some water thieving yukkas.
Dad likes the yukkas, but we don't. There's two in the front garden he jokes we can get rid of when he's gone, but that upsets Mum.
I hope you've enjoyed this tour of my folks garden. It's a beautiful place for me to hang out for a few months. I've gotta go though now - Dad's given me the worst job today, which is pulling out the dead leaves of the New Zealand flax. Grrr. But I can't complain of course. There's only a few more jobs Dad can order me to do.
With Love,
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