The bare and the beautiful

 

There is no time of day to compare to the mornings in our garden. As you stand at the back door and look out, the low morning sun appears in the far right corner of the north-facing property and steadily lights up every plant as it rises.

However, as an early riser who's often out there before the sunbeams appear, the truly best time to view it all is that gentle brief time between dawn and the moment the sun starts casting shadows. 

That soft, low morning light allows the many different greens and the subtle greys to do their version of glowing, before old shiny guts appears over the fence and starts bleaching the light for the rest of the day.

So, early this morning was the ideal time to attempt my next video of the garden, and my focus this time was on the bare beauty of our two frangipani trees. They're all just branches right now. It'll be another couple of weeks, early October, before the leaves appear, followed by the fragrant flowers in November.

So for this next attempt at a low budget, iPhone video production, I've learned my lesson and will only post a link to the YouTube video, all 1 minute 19 seconds of it.

Here's where you click and watch the show: https://youtu.be/L0MDdvFZGAE

Meanwhile, here's a few photos of what to expect later this spring, plus as a special bonus for language lovers, one of my favourite pieces of wordy trivia.

The 'big' tree grown from a cutting is the classic Sydney frangipani, the white one with the yellow centre. I love it.

The smaller tree, also grown from a cutting supplied by a local art studio where Pam teaches, is a much more tropical looking, colourful piece of confectionery. I've called it Frangipani 'Serendipity' because it has been such a happy discovery.

And now for my favourite piece of English language trivia. 'Serendipity' is an invented word, and we can almost trace it back to a specific day and date: January 28, 1754, in a letter written by Horace Walpole to a friend. Pictured above is the page from The Oxford English Dictionary's definition of Serendipity.

The word Serendip is the ancient Persian word for the beautiful island we know of today as Sri Lanka, and as Walpole explains in his letter, in the fairy tale 'The Three Princes of Serendip' the heroes were always making discoveries by accident, of things they were not in quest of. Happy accidental discoveries, if you will. And to describe that fortunate phenomenon, he invented the word 'serendipity'. 

What all this has to do with gardening is precisely nothing, other than for the fact that whenever I go out into the garden I don't always think about gardening.

Take yesterday morning as an example. There I was pulling out all the weeds growing around the base of my little tropical frangipani, and instead of contemplating the exacting business of pulling out weeds, I was thinking of dictionaries, writers, Sri Lanka and invented words. 

And before I knew it the drudgery of weeding was over and it was time for a cup of tea.

Frangipani dreaming

Well, it only took two months to get our latest frangipani planted. I thought it would take longer, being a pessimist about my workrate during summer, but the last two cooler mornings have seen the whole job done.

Regular readers might remember this blog posting from December, when Pammy came across this very nice little baby frangipani tree at a local ceramics gallery, where she conducts painting classes. Home it came to our place, I blogged about how wonderful it was, then followed the hottest, most humid and nasty summer for many years. In the last two days the weather looked a lot better, so I got to work.

First of all I had to remove the sprawling and very dead Grevillea which occupied this spot. That looked like a really daunting challenge in this weather, but I was wrong: it was so rotten and dodgy that it took about half an hour to cut off all its limbs and dig out the stump. And so this morning the task of planting the frangipani was all done by 7.30am. 
(I like to do my summer gardening very early each day ...)

As the frangipani isn't in full flower at the moment, here's a reminder of its many-coloured, pinky-yellow themed blooms. It's going to be a lovely complement to the white and yellow frangipani that shares our backyard.

If you haven't planted out a baby tree from its pot, the basics are simple. 

Water the pot first and let it soak for a while, to loosen the root ball, while you dig the hole. The hole itself should be no deeper than the pot itself, but twice as wide. Don't add any fertiliser to the hole. 

Take the plant from its pot, very gently! Sit it in the hole and do a few checks. 

Make sure it is facing the way you want it to face. 

Next, make sure the soil surface of the pot's soil is at least level with the surrounding soil. (Lay down a straight stick/rod to check your levels are OK.) Lower than the surrounding soil is bad, slightly higher is OK, level is fine too. Then fill in around the hole with the surrounding soil. Lightly tamp it down, but don't pack it down. And never cover the pot's soil with garden soil.

Did I say don't add fertiliser? Well, don't. Then water it generously from a watering can, to which you have added some seaweed solution (here is Australia it'd most likely be either eco-seaweed, or Seasol). That's it.

Now, finally, a photo to finish of the dead grevillea, and its empire of Spanish moss, because we've come up with a wonderful idea for where to put the Spanish moss (if it works). AND, I've also started up a bonsai growing project that has been on the back burner for quite a while. So expect a few more February postings from this little amateur gardener.

Farewell old Grevillea 'Peaches & Cream'. Sad ending, but you were a wonderful native garden shrub, stunningly colourful, a mecca for squabbling honeyeaters, and in your demise, a hauntingly memorable display stand for our beloved Spanish moss. You will be missed!