Going bananas...

Firstly, I have to say woo hoo! My sourdough starter seems to be coming good again after I refreshed it and fed it yesterday. I fed it again today and it is bubbling along nicely once more :-)


Secondly, my banana tree arrived yesterday! Yay :-) Here it is having a refreshing soak in some diluted seaweed solution after unpacking:

Looks like a big stick, doesn't it?! And the end where they sliced the leaves off for transport looks a bit manky...

But he assures me that it will burst into life again after planting. I've seen plenty of near-dead looking things come back to life, including six month old frangipani branches, so who am I to argue?

So off I went, and ripped out a bunch of canna lillies (alas poor cannas, I knew you well...):

And planted the tree in the gap I made in the garden:

Although I'm looking at that now and wondering if I shouldn't have planted it deeper - level with the pink/green line on the trunk?? Anyone have any banana growing experience? Anyway, it started raining (again) just after I took the photo of it, so I took myself inside to have a cuppa a read the latest issue of Warm Earth magazine... and wouldn't you know it, there is an article on bananas in the backyard this month! How's that for serendipity?

I also took this pic quickly this morning; it' s the ornamental Murraya hedge along my back fence. It is now destined to become a dwarf coffee bush hedge!

I had orginally planned to espalier my apple trees along here, but I don't think they are going to get enough hours of sunlight, so new plan is to plant coffee bushes. They have quite lovely glossy leaves and apparently their flowers are very attractive and fragrant - got to be happy with that. So I planted the first bush out this morning, one of two I purchased from Daley's a couple of months ago. I've just received two more vouchers from them, so next pay day I will be buying some more and will plant out the whole area - yum, our own coffee :-)