Categories: uncategorized
Date: 24 January 2008 10:51:54
Our Banksia Serrata receive a well overdue pruning yesterday. I was at home with a headcold but did participate in pulling branches into a pile - couldn't sit and watch Mr Tasmania and the neighbours do it! Anyway, they've received a bit of a bashing, but will be much better for it. There are bare patches which I'm thinking of filling with tibouchina, or camellias, or other shrubby colourful flowering plants ... or maybe a jacaranda, it'd be protected from the frost amongst the bigger trees but they wouldn't overwhelm it with shadow ... should be fun! I've got a little cleaning up to do of random branches but otherwise it looks good and the neighbours are now no longer in permanent darkness and cool ... they may feel they're having a summer heatwave for the next couple of months but in Winter they're going to love it! hmmm ... maybe a frangipani? (that's plumeria for you northerners!)
Mr Tasmania went for it with the chainsaw like a madman ... and also managed to do a slow motion fall down the ladder as it folded in half, complete with flinging the chainsaw to the side so he didn't land on it ... quite spectacular, if slow, and knocked about 10 years off our neighbour's life I think! I wasn't bothered, somehow, guess I know he's safe and protected ... and it was such a slow motion fall that I could see that he'd managed to move the chainsaw clear, and that was the main thing - he landed on nice soft pea straw mulch, so was unharmed.
We are hopefully going to get a chipper and chip the lot into mulch, which will stay on his brother's block next door and be turned (occasionally) and then used as mulch on the garden once it's nice and dry and cured a bit ... might even throw a bit of blood and bone on it to speed things along. Don't really know about the mulching properties of banksia, but nothing seems bothered by growing next to it so I think we can safely assume it won't poison anything!