Inside The Backyard

Now, “helping Nan weed” when you’re three is perhaps a fairly loose description of what was actually going on. There was plenty of investigating, chatting, digging and generally enjoying discovering the gardens' hidden treasures. And then she found a frog. A real, live little frog tucked away in the garden — which, as you would imagine, was suddenly far more interesting than pulling weeds.

“Why won’t anything grow in my garden, I’ve tried everything.” “I fertilise, water all the time, I even talk nicely to them. But every time I plant new plants a few weeks later, they start to look sick, go limp and die. What am I doing wrong?!😩”Sound familiar? Please don’t give yourself a hard time, it’s not your fault. Most of us have been taught to garden from the top down. But Mother Nature works from the ground up . The world’s best gardeners don’t actually grow plants…

Cold, wet winter months, walk outside, and guaranteed somewhere in your garden you’ll find sour sobs! As little kids, my brother and I would wander around the yard picking sour sobs, a few to give to mum to put in a vase, and a few for us snack on, we’d chew on the crunchy, sour stems. I can still hear Mum’s voice calling out from the back door, “Don’t eat those! They’re sour because the dogs pee on them!”

There are some things in life we can replace. A dead lawn, a failed crop, a broken fence, a struggling garden. But water? Clean, ancient underground water systems that have taken thousands upon thousands of years to form beneath our feet? Once they're damaged, contaminated, or depleted… there’s no quick fix for that. This is why so many people across the Limestone Coast are deeply concerned right now about the proposed lifting of the fracking moratorium in our region.