Pam's plants

For those of you new to this blog, a little bit of recent history to start with. Late last year I stupidly broke my foot and in the process damaged a bunch of tendons and ligaments in my ankle, and so I was sidelined from gardening for months.

With my leg in a cast and reduced to camping out on our living room sofa for weeks on end, my intrepid wife Pammy took over garden maintenance duties with a dedication and competence that, quite frankly, surprised and delighted me at the same time. She's a real gardener, and a good one!

Pam has always been deeply involved in our garden, but for the first 30 years here it was largely a "hands off" role. I was the one covered in dirt, pulling the weeds and spreading the fertiliser. She was the one who spotted pests and other problems, suggested new plantings, came up with the idea for the complete re-design of the garden about 15 years ago, and turned so many details of our garden into beautiful paintings.

Until Covid struck, our garden had been the venue for many of Pam's art classes, and even after covid limited the numbers of students who could attend, the garden still provided a really lovely venue for small watercolour art classes.

So, that's the background to who this "Pam" of today's topic, "Pam's plants", is. Ever since we moved here Pam has taken a special interest in certain plants. Sometimes she has straight-out suggested we buy something. Other times she just comes home with a plant in a pot and says "I have an idea where this might go". 

And even if I bought a certain plant, planted it and cared for it, at some time in its life it became one of Pam's plants. 

So, on with some examples of all these stories of "Pam's plants".

Thank goodness this person started flowering just this morning, right on time for this blog posting. This is Convolvulus cneorum, and around the middle of last year, Pam came to me with a newspaper advertisement from Flower Power nursery, with the photo of Convolvulus cneorum circled, and asked "can we buy this?". 

Given it was in the middle of a not very strict set of covid restrictions on shopping etc, I knew this wasn't an ordinary request. Bought it home, planted it in a sunny spot, and it then proceeded to flower its head off with these charmingly simple white disc flowers with a yellow splash in the centre. 

Then it did the unexpected and faded, wilted, looked a bit sick, sickened a bit more, wilted a touch more ... and the conversation had to be had. Do you think it will survive? Let's give it another week or two. It was never going to be my decision to give up on it. It was one of Pam's plants ...

Thank goodness we gave it a reprieve, as it bounced back in autumn, kept on growing a bit in winter in a weird, leggy kind of way, and now in early spring it's flowering. Yay! 

Pam recently brought this dazzler home from a local florist's shop, saying that our main frangipani tree, bare of foliage and flowers in mid-winter, was a good spot for a hanging basket of flowering Kalanchoe. It's the first thing you see when you enter the garden.

Pam has always loved nasturtiums and I've largely resisted growing them, because they spread and, well ... basically they are pleasant looking weeds. But as her reward for being such a great gardener during my long convalescence, I bought her a packet of nasturtium seeds, and said "you can plant these and let's see what happens". Well, nasturtiums happened, that's what! They do look nice with raindrops on them in the morning.

And the flowers produced by our little seed packets come in quite a variety, and they are a favourite subject for Pam's watercolour art students too. They love wandering out into the garden, picking a flower, then doing a painting of it. Good for the soul, painting.

Ever since Pam and I visited the United States in 2011, she has been in love with Spanish moss. All through the Deep South you'd see masses of this ghostly grey "air plant" draped over the branches of giant live oak trees. The streets of Savannah, Georgia, are one of the most unforgettable things I have ever seen on my travels. We came home in love with a plant, and it's been in our garden ever since.

The flowers of Spanish moss are so tiny, about a quarter of an inch across (that's about 5mm) and so Pam's gorgeously detailed painting of a Spanish moss bloom celebrates our garden's tiniest flower by allowing you a glimpse into its small but perfectly formed beauty. Time for a shameless plug, but if you want to see more of Pam's work, pop over to Instagram where she is at @pamelahorsnellartist

Bending the rules slightly here, as our main frangipani tree has no leaves, no flowers and is still asleep. But it's the biggest of Pam's plants in our garden. She loves this frangipani ...

... and she also adores this colourful frangi (also bare in winter) that she brought home from the nearby art studio, called the Bakehouse Studio, where she teaches painting. The parent of this tree is in the backyard at the Bakehouse Studio, so when they trimmed it back one year they turned them into lovely big cuttings which they sold to raise funds for a local school. Pam had always had her eye on this frangipani tree, so she brought it home. 

Like the frangipani trees, our New South Wales Christmas bush is not in flower, but it is definitely one of Pam's plants. This poor thing has been having a great time in its pot for the last few years, but it took ages to find a spot where it was truly happy, and every time it was unhappy, where pests attacked it, or the tree itself just looked sick, Pam was onto me. "It's not happy, what's wrong? Let's move it somewhere else? Is that pot big enough? She's taken a special interest in its welfare, and it's rewarding her with better and better colour shows each year.

Finally, one of the most recent additions to the roster of Pam's plants is this gorgeous, fragrant jungle of lemon grass. When we planted it, it wasn't an official "Pam plant". It just grew like mad and every now and then we'd cut a stalk when the Asian recipe we were cooking called for lemon grass stalks, chopped. 

Then, late last year, when my leg was in a cast, I was sidelined and Pam was looking after the garden, the lemon grass needed cutting back. It looked wonderful though, sending up super tall grassy flower spikes high into the air. But to keep the lemon grass clump down to a manageable size and keep it producing those juicy stalks, it needed cutting back. "I guess we could get someone in to do it" I foolishly suggested. "Nonsense, what do you have to do?"  

And that's when the lemon grass became Pam's plant. After describing what was involved in cutting back the big, tall, unruly clump of tropical grass, I thought I had put Pam off the idea of doing it herself. Then one morning I could hear telltale sounds coming from the garden. Clip, snip, clip clip. Foliage rustling. More clipping ... she was in there! The clump was a decent size, made up of three plants. It'd be no surprise if a tiger sprang out of the foliage in a surprise manoeuvre.

But in no time at all Pam had conquered the lemon grass clump, reducing the jungle from six feet tall down to a clump of obedient 12-inch stumps.

That photo of the lemon grass flower heads was taken this morning. I'm almost of a mind to ask Pam if, come October, when it's time to cut it back again, would Pam like to do the honours?

I'm afraid those days are over. She has proven that there's no job she can't tackle in the garden. It's just that with a willing fool standing next to her who's keen as mustard to get stuck into all the gardening jobs, why would she?

No, we're back to our happy zone. Me covered in dirt, her keeping an eye on things.

(Not) doing the rounds

Well, I was going to write this blog posting two days ago, while the rain was still falling. And I was going to start it with something like "it's been 900 days since the rain began falling, or at least it feels that long ..." but things got away from me. 

And now today the sun is out, the sky is blue and Huey the Rain God is having a good old chuckle at my expense. Very funny Huey. Love your work.

But truly rooly, the non-stop month of rain that was March 2017 was getting to me, as a gardener. There wasn't much to do, I found that I was getting out of the habit of doing my normal "morning rounds". It was so wet outside that I stayed inside and just looked out, most mornings.

All that is over now. It seems to be turning into a more normal April. Our local newspaper informed me that Sydney has already had half its 12-month average of rainfall in the first three months of the year. So a not-so-wet April and May would be a welcome gift to autumn.

As you can see from the panorama shot above, it's not as if the garden is suffering from all the rain. If you look closely it's not thriving especially well, either. That only happens when there is plenty of sunshine, as well as lots of rain.

Our newest jewel, the baby frangipani, is doing what all good Sydney frangipanis do: it's coping well with whatever Sydney's weather gods dish out.

Various flowers have taken a beating in the constant rain, but all foliage is thriving. A long time ago in this blog I spent about 20 photos and even more words documenting the various different shades of green and greeny-blue/bluey-green we have growing here, and this one photo is a summary of that notion. A beautiful colour, green.

The lemon grass loved the rain, but it would rather be somewhere warmer, like South-East Asia. This lovely plant has become on of my favourites in the garden, once it has grown its summer crown of fragrant, willowy straps.

Every year in autumn the grapevine growing on top of the pergola belonging to our neighbours, Michael and Soula, finally scrambles its way onto our olive and murraya trees, but this year is its best effort ever. The vines have made it over the top of the olive tree and are now cascading down the other side. In late autumn Michael always cuts the vines back, and I get out my extension loppers and trim off the remnants dangling over my side, so order will be restored in winter.

And so the seasons roll on, but I would like it known that the first month of autumn 2017 has been a soggy one. I'm looking forward to getting back into the routine of doing the morning rounds. First item on the agenda is pulling weeds. Lots of weeds.

Lemon grass

"Hey, you can really see that it is a grass now," Pammy said as we both stood out in the garden this morning, admiring the lemon grass clump. It's quite beautiful right now, tall and lush, its longest pointed stems arching over, graceful and green. Get very close to it, ruffle its feathers a little, and it smells both lemony and lightly spicy. 

By rights the clump should be starting to die back a little now that it's autumn in Sydney, but Sydney is still enjoying a record-setting stretch for the warmest ever month of May, including the longest 'heatwave' (of successive days of above-average temperatures), and so our lemon grass is thriving in this most memorable Indian summer of a late autumn in living memory. Climate change, anyone?

The clump itself is about 1.2m (4 feet) tall at
the point where the taller leaves arch over,
and the tallest flower spike is now 2m high. This
was planted as a relatively puny seedling back in
September last year, in a less than ideal
spot which gets half-day sun at best, and yet
it has grown beautifully since December.

Its botanical name is Cymbopogon citratus, and
it is a member of the grass family of plants. It
slowly but very steadily forms a dense clump at
the base, and this has always been my problem
with growing lemon grass in pots. It does really
well for a while, then its clumpy-ness becomes
its own worst enemy as it fills the pot with roots
and stems. It can become pot-bound in no time,
no amount of water ever seems to be enough
for it, once it reaches that jungleiferous stage.
So this time I just planted it into the ground and
it is so, so much happier, and infinitely more
lovely to behold as well. Lemon grass is so
elegant I don't know why it isn't used more often
as a multi-use landscaping plant that adds
architectural form, movement, colour and shape
and can be harvested for the kitchen, too. 

The stems are lightly hairy, red-tinged at the
joints, and the sound it makes in the wind is
the rustling that is such a lovely part of
being near grasses. 

There's so much to say about lemon grass, but
I will leave "what happens next" to later on, as
at this stage I don't know what will happen next.
Yes, this tip looks like it will flower for sure, but
after that, with winter coming on, I don't know.
It's a tropical plant so it's a long way south of
home. It should die back a bit, maybe a lot.
I'll let you know when I find out. I suspect with
our changing, warming climate, it might just
shrug off our winters and keep on growing.

In the meantime there's dozens of uses for this
lemony grass. Here's just one stem, cut off at
the base, laid out on our long outdoor table.
It's the lowest portions of the stem, coloured white
or pale lemony yellow, which are used. I won't
go into all the culinary uses here, other than to
mention words like curries, stir-fries, sauces,
dressings and marinades. But to finish off this
homage to lemon grass, let's savour the flavour
with a refreshing cup of lemon grass tea. 

For the tea, finely chop some lower stem.

I then add the lemon grass to flavour green tea. I find many
herb teas on their own a bit insipid and uninspiring, so my way
is to use the herbs to flavour green tea. Here's the simple recipe...

Jamie’s lemongrass tea

1 teaspoon green tea leaves (or 1 green tea bag)

1 teaspoon finely chopped lemongrass stem

small teapot (for one or two people)

Cut an inch-long section off the bottom white portion of a lemongrass stem then chop it finely with a sharp vegie knife.

Bring some water to the boil, add the green tea and lemongrass, pour over the water and let it sit for 5 minutes.

Pour (using a strainer if your teapot doesn’t have a diffuser).

The flavour is light and delicate, very refreshing.

Tips: this makes a light, mild green tea. You can experiment with a bit more of either the tea or the lemongrass, but we prefer the lighter flavour, as it grows on you while you drink it.