We have 7 acres, most of it in pasture but about 2 acres in bush. We are slowly returning it to its natural glory after years of neglect, so a lot of the work we are doing is controlling weeds amongst the bush or the plants we planted last autumn.

Some of the things we got up to in October are: Hand releasing our plantings, spraying out the wandering Jew (can’t see the effects yet), stump treating about 1 acre of ginger amongst our bush. (My mother helped me do it, I cut and she swabbed. It seems it has spread from the neighbours.) I have been hand cutting gorse and swabbing the stumps (it feels like it will never end). We have mowed down what we could and I am hand doing the rest (with a chainsaw mostly).

My neighbours have decided to give us their unwanted arum lilies, I am sure they thought they would compost in our paddocks and slopes, but instead they have spread even further. We cut and swabbed arum lilies amongst our plantings and in our paddocks.

I hate weeds and I love gardening, and I can’t wait to see our place in its natural splendor. Being rural we have had many people dump weeds on our roadside, and we are now cleaning that up. I still have one banana passionfruit to get rid of but I am too tired right now. I’ll take a few weekends off in November then get back into it.

I would love to win some gardening vouchers, I want to add more restoration plantings to our roadside and bush to recover the areas that were covered in weeds and prevent further infestation. I could also do with some more gardening gloves too, pulling weeds has destroyed my current pair!