Making a bee-line for salvias

Bees can "photobomb" my flower photos any time they like. There I was quietly trying to capture what it is I like about my lovely blue salvia flowers, when the Pollen Collector flew into the shot. Pure luck on my part, of course. All the various times I intentionally try to photograph a bee, I mostly manage to capture a blurry bee's bum zotting off to its next bloom.

However, photobombers aside, all I wanted to post about is that on this sunny Saturday, after two weeks of constant showers, I think our salvias are at their deepest bluey purple right now, which is why I grow them every year ... just to see that colour again.

I do plant annual blue salvias every year. They're so reliable, and I love their shade of blue. And when you look at their blooms close up, they're complex things, with a furry blue bee-anointer atop each bloom.

There's so much to like about blue salvias. They're trouble-free in Sydney; they flower for months and months; once the baby seedlings are established I don't bother to water them at all, as Sydney's rain is enough for their needs. They stand up about 60-70cm tall, rising above the herbs and vegies growing around them. And bees love them.

This is a more typical photo that I manage to take of a bee at work in the flower patch. There's lots of them about this sunny day, and I always like the way they tolerate me.

Little do they know or care that I'm the dude that planted the salvias for them. I'm just that pest with a shiny photo-taking thing who they wish would go away. And so I did, leaving them to enjoy their sweet work.

So much happening

I am in awe of those garden bloggers who keep on slogging away, doing a posting every day. Me, I'm down to one posting a week at best, but at least I never seem to run out of things to write about and photograph. (I'd quickly run out of things to post about if I had to do one a day!)

However, right now, I could do a blog posting every hour, because there is simply so much happening in the garden right now. And don't be surprised if, over the next few weeks, I do individual blog postings on each of the plants I'm about to show you.

Just to make things easier for me to wrap my little head around the topic, I've divided this "so much happening" post into little categories.

First up, the NEW ARRIVALS

Not one but two new curry trees. I bought one
pot and realised it had two plants in it.
Fortunately their roots weren't entangled so
potting them up was easy. Expect a curry
tree blog posting soon, folks.

Our good friend Jolanda has a superb little
patch of mint bush by her front steps, and we
loved its purple spring flower show, so we have
planted three of these behind our geraniums. 

Pammy brought home a Pieris japonica in
flower a few weeks ago. We left it in its pot while
it was bloom, and now it's in a bigger pot and,
judging by the new growth, is happy enough.

Hardly the most exciting purchase, two punnets of blue flowered
salvias, but about two months from now they will start to flower
and they won't stop till autumn is almost over.

next, the FOOD GARDEN GETS GROWING

Lebanese zucchini, the light green, chubby smaller ones. So far
so good, with the first flower buds (boys only) showing.

A miracle! Our unproductive passionfruit vine, now into
its third summer, has for some reason decided to produce
quite a few flowers lately. Could this be our first decent crop?

Here's last season's crop in action. Yes, folks,
one flower and one - just one - fruit. This has
been my biggest dud of a food growing story
in 25 years, but I am determined to see this
thing finally produce a decent crop.

Just had to include this fragrant, lovely thing.
The more I water my potted rosemary bush,
the happier it seems to be. While in the ground
it's a classic "waterwise" plant that can survive
on rainfall alone, in a pot it's a thirsty sook.

Another miracle! Our Serrano chilli bush has
somehow survived winter. I gave it the mother
of all cutbacks five weeks ago and for a while
it didn't look like it was going to bounce back,
but now it's producing foliage and flowers,
and so I think it's a red hot goer for this summer.

And the first strawberries of the season are starting to appear
and colour up. As is a tradition in our garden, our strawberry
plants come up as "volunteers" out of our homemade compost.

Finally, FOLIAGE AND FLOWERS

The Louisiana iris is slowing down, but there
are still new blooms to enjoy every morning.

One of the greatest concentrations of onion weed and oxalis
in the Southern Hemisphere – our succulent patch – has been
cleared (temporarily I am sure) of the weeds and a new (and
prettily ineffectual) layer of pebble mulch has been spread.
At least it will look very nice for at least the next month!

Just like our sooky, thirsty, rosemary plants, our supposedly
waterwise trailing pelargoniums absolutely love a drink.
It's an Australian thing, I guess, once someone arrives in
Australia they just seem to start drinking more ...

Be careful if you are buying pots of Lamb's Ears (Stachys).
This is what one 3-inch pot planted in Spring 2014 has
turned into, without any encouragement from me. This lovely
grey beauty looks like it's about to flower, and from previous
experience seeing it in flower in other gardens, bees love this
plant's flowers in a big way, so I am hoping it will attract a
zillion bees that will then fertilise all my passionfruit flowers.

And last but definitely not least, what I like to
think of as "Pammy's office garden" has survived
the winter and is now ready to enjoy the summer.
Why "Pammy's office garden"? Well, all the
plants here have done too well inside the house in
Pammy's studio/office, getting too big for their
pots, and so when that happens they are retired
out here, where they are then cared for by me.

As I mentioned long, long ago at the beginning of this posting, don't be surprised if you find yourself reading another posting on these individual plants over the coming weeks.

I never go out into the garden thinking "gee, what am I going to blog about next?". I never know in advance. Something just catches my eye, or happens, or doesn't happen and most of my blog postings just write themselves, and are mostly already written in my head before I ever head back inside. But this morning it was a simple case of "so much is happening" that I realised I had a good dozen or more blog posting ideas all at the same time.

Spring is like that ... so much happening in the garden. It's wonderful.

Last day of summer? Not here it isn't!

February 28 is, for people who put their faith in calendars, the last day of summer here in Sydney. Tomorrow, March 1, is when autumn begins. Well, I don't subscribe to that faith at all.

I prefer the way that summers end at different times each year, the way the season flickers out like a candle with a few late, warm days popping up to surprise you. And then one day you feel that special chill that says "it's autumn now and winter's not far away" and you realise summer ended a while ago, on no particular day.

So, at this stage of the year our garden is of the opinion that summer has several weeks to go before the party's over. It's a time when herbs like to flower, crops turn to gluts and there's plenty of colour wherever you look. I always like the simple little herb flowers in particular.  

Wild rocket flowers at the tips of its thin, gangly stems.

Broccolini is meant to be harvested before it flowers, but this
one beat me to it. I only planted the seedlings three weeks ago!

Basil mint is a tussie mussie of tiny blooms.

Eggplants show off their potato family heritage in a pretty hue.

And they're cropping now in purpley-white abundance.

Every day I pick a handful of red Serrano chillies that I swear
were deep green only the day before.

As well as all the edibles producing their little spots of colour, many ornamentals are a pleasure to be around at the moment.

New Guinea impatiens, which we've mass-planted under the
grevillea in the hope they suppress weeds better than the thick
mulch has abysmally failed to do. So far so good ....

Frangipani

Grevillea 'Peaches & Cream'

Ivy geranium

More ivy geraniums!

Blue salvia

Sage advice

Good old gardening hunches. There I was several months ago with a gap to fill in the garden, standing in a garden centre looking at a bunch of herbs and other potted lovelies for sale. Which one to choose? That's where the hunch came in handy. 

The spot to be filled was small yet sunny, and it wasn't that far from the place where a culinary sage bush had thrived gorgeously for several years. And there I was staring at a potted seedling of purple sage in the garden centre. Thank goodness I followed my hunch because the purple sage is also thriving now, and this week it has burst into full colour with its combination of blue blooms and purpley-green foliage. A very nice show indeed.

Here it is in close up...

… and standing a few feet further back. So far
it is staying as a smallish thing, no more than
two feet high and wide at the most. Hopefully
it won't get any bigger.

My 'other' sage plant is now limited to a pot,
as it always grew too big and sprawly for the
spot it called home. It was a constant workload
cutting it back to size, and eventually I just
decided to dig it all up, retain one section of
stems with roots and planted that in the pot.
It has been happy there ever since.

The leaves of the common, culinary sage,
(Salvia officinalis) are longer, narrower and
decidedly greener than the purple plant's
foliage. They also seem a bit more fragrant.

The purple one's leaves are shorter and
wider. They have been even more purpley in
colour through their first winter, and they
seem to be greening up as the weather
warms and the flowers appear. I suspect that
is what will happen: it'll green up for summer
then purple-up again in autumn or winter.
It'd be nice if that happened, but I will just
have to wait out my first year with it to
find out.

Anyway, the moral of this blog posting is that if you are looking for a small (well under 1m high and wide) shrub with very nice foliage interest year-round, and a pleasing spring show that has been happening for a couple of weeks already and doesn't look like slowing down any time soon, have a look at purple sage. 

As far as growing tips go, it needs sunshine, soil that drains well and that's about it. Haven't fed it, clipped it, or bothered too much with watering it. It has just looked after itself, but maybe that's just my good luck that sage likes it here.