Everyone in Melbourne is complaining about how they’re dying from the heat, and here’s us…enjoying the cool all the way up in the mountains. Not that it never gets warm here, it just never actually gets uncomfortably hot. Not by their standards, anyway. It got to fifteen the other day, and everyone was panicking a little bit, which is fair enough because fifteen is casual shirt weather. It’s still the summer, which means ski season is quite a ways off.
I like it up here in the mountains, except for the internet. And the fact that it’s really hard to grow a decent garden. It’s so hard that you wouldn’t even believe it. If I want to buy bare rooted roses, I have to go all the way down to Melbourne or order them online. And you’d think I’d choose the second option every time, but I’m so often in Melbourne for work that I often just swing by to collect some bulbs anyway. It’s not like I ever have much success planting them, or at least making them grow.
Anywhere else in Australia and I’d probably have some hardy daffodils that last through the heat, but up here all it takes is one frost and they just expire. Frustrating. I’m not growing anymore, not poking anything more than a little sprout above the soil. It’s like all flowering bulbs turn into teenagers, and trying to get them to grow is like getting a teen out of bed on a cold winter’s morning. It’s just not happening, and even if you did, they’re not getting anything productive done.
So that’s my eternal struggle, but the strange competitive side of me really wants to see if I can make it a garden work at this altitude, especially without the help of a special greenhouse like some other folks have. If I have to buy every single one of the entire catalogue of roses, I’ll find the one that thrives. That one special mixed daffodil concoction that loves the mountains. I could just ask a bulb expert for advice but that would be cheating.