Limits

Now that we have been living here for getting on to our seventh year (well in September), I thought I'd reflect on the kinds of ecological limits that influence the growth of the plants here at Larnook.  One of the most critical is the frost that we experience during June and July. Last year's frost was the harshest we've experienced here, although still not as bad as the 'black frost' that hit the area in 2007, the year before we moved up here, which bit so savagely even into the well established mango trees which sit on the highest part of the property.  But they were still pretty harsh, though, remarkably, we didn't actually lose many plants, but many suffered from burn. I really hadn't expected that we would experience frost living in the sub-tropics, but of course, we do get cold temperatures for a couple of months just before dawn, due to our position 50 or 60 kms from the coast. (Note to self: work out exactly the straight line distance from our place to the coast).
The second limit is rainfall, believe it or not. Once again, a bit of a surprise, but we seem to have quite dry winters and springs.  The period between June and October can be very dry, and if we don't keep the water up to many of the shrubs and fruit trees we have planted, they become very stressed. Indeed, as Liam would not-so-happily confirm, most of our fruit trees are doing below-par because we really don't water them anywhere near as often as they need to be. So, as I see things, frost and rainfall deficits leading to very dry soils, are the two most important environmental factors limiting what we plant and what thrives here at Larnook.

Keeping us poor on the land

Back when I was looking at properties to buy when I first moved up here in 2008, I recall a woman who lived next door to a property we were really interested in, saying, in an off-hand way, 'we love it hear, but it keeps us poor'.  Now, we are far from being poor, but living on a property, where you buy in mulch in the truck-load, does bring with it additional expenses, which does have an impact on the bottom line of the household budget.
This year seems to be a bit of a doozie so far.
First, the hot tub motor started to sound rather sick and rattly, so we had to buy a new motor and Steve installed this (having Steve as part of the household team does, however, save on any number of expenses, so there is a big savings there :-).  Unfortunately, the ozonator has also had the richard, though we are still able to manage without it, though I think we will be buying another sooner rather than later. Ozonator, that is, not a new hot tub.
Then, our friendly pest exterminator had to rid our house of termites, so that was an extra cost that we hadn't accounted for in this year's budget.
And then to top it off, we discovered to our horror that our solar panels were not feeding in the power that they had collected into the grid. We had a guy come out this week to check the inverter and sure enough, it has packed it in.  A little online investigation found that many, many customers whose solar system had come with that particular inverter, had also experienced the same problem, though it seems we have been lucky with the length of time ours did actually work.
Anyway, this isn't meant to be a whinge, just a little observation on the costs of living at Larnook.