Good cheer

Of all the silly things a usually sensible person could do, I updated our accounts on Saturday, and delving into inconvenient financial facts always has a slightly depressing effect, doesn't it? And so yesterday, Sunday, was a low point for me, a cheerless day in the garden where all I did was pull out weeds and cut back a rampant ground cover in the front garden that likes to accost pedestrians in the street.

Not the greatest weekend, but it did end well with the first good downpour of rain in ages, and then this morning, Monday, wandering out into the garden had an amazingly uplifting effect on me. Everywhere I looked I saw positive signs, pretty colours, sweet scents – it was full of good cheer. 

And so, dear readers, I present a simple posting designed partly to cheer myself up but also to celebrate the benefits of slowing down and taking stock not only of the pennies in the jar but also the beautiful, natural riches around you.

This is what started it all off this morning. While gathering yet
another colander full of cherry tomatoes, the air was wafting along
on sweet tropical frangipani scents. I stood up, looked at their
lovely simplicity, inhaled another breath and my mood changed.

 

For the record, this is my favourite typo, cheery tomatoes.

Just as I stepped away from cheery frangipani
land I smiled at a conversation I had with an
expert gardener about how impossible it is to
grow Acacia cognata in Sydney. 

The rain brings out the scents and the colours;
this pot of mint was spicy with its tangy scent.

The mint is in flower now, a happy plant in semi-shade provided
it's given outrageous amounts of water and fertiliser.

Next door to the mint, the French tarragon is a contented low
forest of foliage. Medium water, slow-release fertiliser is all
it needs, plus one hell of a cutback in early spring.

My first go at growing Florence fennel is doing
OK. I have a whole packet of seeds here, but
only planted a few in late spring, as I had
missed the boat for the earlier spring sowing
it prefers. This autumn, I'm sowing lots more.

The strawberries just keep on coming. We started
harvesting breakfast bowls full of these back in
early October and they aren't close to finishing
yet. And to think I didn't even plant anything
there! They came up out of the compost, just
like monsters come up out of black lagoons.

And while I'm counting my blessings and
spreading the good cheer, let me recommend
radishes to you. These are French Breakfast
long cylindrical radishes, and I sowed the
seeds for these on Thursday. I'll probably
be eating some of these by early February.
And I've learned to like their flavour, too.
Super-finely sliced, not too much either, added
to a green garden salad, they are pure zing.

The Thai makrut lime fruit is ready for grating
into dressings, salads and sauces, but the only
hard thing is removing them from the tree,
simply because they look so good there, all
knobbly, deep green and just a bit weird.

There's a party going on in the succulent patch.

The Tiger Grass which is meant to become a
tropical look screen to hide the boring metal
fence is finally growing fast, now that the
heat of summer is here. That's what it loves,
apparently, heat and water, just as if it was
growing in the jungles of Thailand. One of
these days a tiger will jump out of that foliage!

If you're still with me after this marathon 'cheer up' to myself, thanks. There really is nothing quite like a spin around the garden on a cool morning after overnight rain. Quite magical, its effect.

Soggy = Lazy

I suppose I should try to feign disappointment, even though I'm pleased that it's raining. "Oh darn and drat, it's raining today and so I'll have to put off doing all those boring garden jobs I had on my list for today - like trimming the hedges."

Reeks with insincerity, doesn't it? Yes I am pleased. And it's great to have the garden naturally watered by Hughie the Rain God. There really is something extra in rainwater than tap water doesn't offer. Plants just launch ahead in growth after a rainy day.

And so I have limited myself to soggy day pottering, pulling weeds foolish enough to show themselves, taking photos of raindrops on foliage... you know, soggy day lazy stuff.   

Raindrops on my Tiger Grass. Click on this photo to make it
come up bigger on screen and you can see its fine green riblets. 

This is the hedge I'm avoiding today. Lush green unruly
assaulter of passers-by, Sydney's favourite hedge plant,
Murraya paniculata, also called orange jessamine.
Soon, soon, I'll trim you soon. When the sun comes out! 

Water turns to gel once it hits this soft-fleshed succulent. 

Lovely big fig leaves, and fruit forming too.

Lettuce always looks lovely in the rain.

Here's a job lazy bones could do: thin out the lamb's lettuce
(ie corn salad, mâche) seedlings to give the remaining ones
room to spread. This wide shallow pot should only have
4-6 plants here, and at the moment it looks like 46.

So glad to see the Thai lime happy. Nothing
to do here, just move right along, folks...

Tomato Numero Uno is coming into full colour now, all that
is wrong is its shape. It's meant to be an egg-shaped Roma
tomato, and it looks more like an oversized cherry. Most of
the others are egg-shaped. The first few aren't.

The NSW Christmas bush is starting to lay on the festive
colour a month ahead of schedule, as it does every year.

And popping up over the fence is my
neighbour Nick's Justicia Carnea, doing what
it does so well this time every year. This is
the ideal lazy gardener's flower, as I don't
plant it, water it, worry about or prune it.
But I do get to enjoy it all the same. Thanks Nick!

So, when the sun comes out so might I, but right now I have books to read, cups of tea to drink and a bit of feet-up rest to enjoy. Can't work in the garden all the time. As far as I am concerned, just sitting out there, doing nothing but enjoying the garden on a rainy day is still gardening! In fact it's one of the best bits.

Sunday and all the rest

The traditional, indeed biblical idea of Sunday being a day of rest has quite an appealing sound to it. Day of rest... as in, 'doing nothing'. Must try it sometime, but I wonder if I'd get bored in half an hour? Probably.

Anyway there was no danger of doing nothing this morning, and nothing much happening here at Amateur Land. It is spring after all, there's a ripper of a mild sunny day on offer, and a garden barely half-way through the planned renovations.

I think there was a meeting in the shed last night,
where my pot of assorted salad seeds were slowly
winding their way towards germinating. The meeting
went something like this: "OK, it's agreed that we all
pop up, in unison, early Sunday morning. Jamie's
been checking on us daily, been nice with the water
spray, and he's getting a bit impatient (which isn't
the first time). So, when he opens the shed door on
Sunday morning we all yell out "Surprise!" in unison.
And that's exactly what happened, sort of.

Next stop, Marrickville Markets, to pick
up the Tiger Grass plants I ordered two
weeks ago from the nice guy there at
Swane's (yep, he's part of the well-known
gardening family). The terrible winds
of the last week had blown these plants
about a bit, but the soil surface has
plenty of new shoots popping up, and
they should get growing well in spring's
warm weather.

I like the Tiger Grass label. As the label says, it's an
alternative to bamboo, without the bad manners. 

This uninspiring shot represents the next hour or two's
work this Sunday, thoroughly digging over yet another
bed prior to planting being the main job. At the back,
centre, is Tibouchina 'Jules' which should grow to
1m high and wide. Near the front are two little mauve
lavenders, which will reach 60cm high and wide.
And dotted in between them are seedlings of a little
low-growing chrysanthemum with white flowers
which will fill the large gaps while the main players
reach their full size over spring, summer and autumn
(aren't I the optimistic one?). Fingers crossed yet again.

Impatience has few rewards, and so while the potted
Roma tomato is covered in flowers, that's all that is
happening there. Just flowers, but if I was a bee I
would definitely be visiting this guy. 

And while all the gardening was going on within view of her studio which overlooks the garden, Pammy was having her own version of a Sunday without rest. Head down, she's hard at work, doing even more paintings for her second solo art exhibition, which is at the Eden Gardens Garden Centre in October (where she staged her first solo show last year, in September).

In the meantime, Pammy is also part of another art exhibition which is currently showing here in Sydney, at Gallery Red in Glebe. This exhibition is called '31 Days' and it is a group show by several artists, all of whom did 31 paintings in the 31 days of July, to the very broad theme of 'The Space Between'. 

Pam based her 31 pieces on our road trip across the United States in September and October last year, which regular readers of this blog will probably remember. If you're in Sydney and want to check out this great little show, it's on until September 25, and is open Monday to Saturday (check the Gallery Red website for times). I'm floating somewhere between proud and thrilled about Pam doing these exhibitions, hence the shameless promotion on my little blog! Here are three of her pieces from the 31 Days show.

We have a plan!

Well, it's not an especially cunning plan (and it certainly doesn't involve turnips either), but Pammy and I have finally come up with a plan for remodelling our little backyard garden. Pictured below is how it's going to be laid out. 

Now, first of all I owe Pam and apology for pinching and using her old watercolour plan of our garden, which she did several years ago. I've fiddled with it and changed it a lot in Photoshop to suit the revamp, so all the bits which look a bit rough are undoubtedly all mine (especially the ugly big numbers).

Just follow the numbers below
for your indispensible guide to
what we have in mind.

Just to orient yourself, the bottom of the plan is the back of the house, and the outlook from there is to north-north east, so it's nice and sunny garden most of the time. Morning sun comes up on the right, goes down on the left and the sun just beams on in at midday.

1. That's an existing olive tree, and it stays.
2. That's an existing murraya hedge which hides the compost bins and barbecue, and it stays too.
3. A few things stay here, such as the small frangipani tree and a clump of scadoxus. All other plants are going, replaced by several more clivias, winter flowerers with a variety of flower colours hopefully.
4. The large, unruly clump of cardamom and ginger goes, replaced by a tidier clump of tiger grass, a bamboo-like lush green screen that will hide the metal Colorbond fence but won't get out of control.
5. My herb garden is shrinking down to a series of large pots not only here, but elsewhere. In the ground they were too happy and too big! I am hoping they will be happy and potted, but smaller (still growing sage, parsley, rosemary, thyme, coriander, chives, mints, chervil).
6. The espaliered lime tree stays (of course!).
7. My vegie beds are smaller, but in the sunniest part of the garden. A constantly changing feast as the seasons change in these three little beds.
8. The Grevillea 'Peaches and Cream' stays, but will be subject to even more pruning discipline to keep its spreading tendencies under control, and to allow lots of sun into the next-door vegie bed.
9. An existing large, clipped murraya next to the outdoor entertaining area stays.
10. The existing second olive tree stays, too.
11. A new 'purple' flower bed with a centrepiece of a Plectranthus 'Mona Lavender' will be surrounded by purple annuals, replaced each season. I'll probably start off with gomphrenas.
12. Another new purple and yellow bed with a centrepiece of a Tibouchina 'Jules' (1m high and wide purple-flowered shrub) plus a Tibouchina 'Groovy Baby' (60cm) and some Italian lavender, plus yellow annuals.
13. A major change here: a row of Gardenia magnifica 'Golden Magic' as an informal (ie, unclipped) hedge naturally about 1.5m high. It has lots and lots of white flowers which quickly age to gold and stay on the bush. As they can be a bit bare-legged, I'm planting low-growing Gardenia radicans (white flowers) at the base of each 'Golden Magic' to fill in the lower level. (A big 'thank you' to our magazine's resident gardening expert Elizabeth Swane for that great idea, plus several other really good suggestions, like the Tiger grass.)
14. Another major change: the formerly potted succulents are going into the ground. I'm planning to add a lot of sand to these beds to make it even more free-draining (it's pretty good already but Sydney can get soggy). I have such a big variety of succulents here it should be fun planting them out. After planting I'll be spreading around an off-white 10mm gravel mulch between all the succulents.
15. Another good tip from Elizabeth, this is another small row of low-growing Gardenia radicans. This is a truly rotten spot in the garden. It gets no sun in winter, and blazing hot late afternoon sun all summer long. Tough old G. radicans can handle it, and it provides a lush green backdrop to the succulents when viewed from the house.
16. The existing lemon tree, plus the underplantings of hellebores there, remain.

Elsewhere, close to the entertaining area near the house, all the other existing potted plants, such as the Turkish Brown fig, the Thai lime, the many orchids and bromeliads remain as they are.

There are lots of casualties of this garden revamp, some of them familiar and quite nice plants which I have blogged about many times before. All the in-ground herbs (such as the huge expanse of thyme and sage) have been uprooted (and cuttings taken from them, which have struck well and are growing on happily). The big potted curry tree also goes (it's as sick as can be right now and so I think its innings is over). However, losing it undid what was stalling the redesign. All of sudden a row of flowering gardenias in its place felt like a great idea, and that provided a relatively easy-care backdrop the succulent patch.

I've started pulling plants out already, I'm off to the landscape supplies place on Saturday to bring home lots of bags of sand, pebbles and other soil improvers. No planting this weekend, it's time for digging, cutting back and getting the soil right, but after so many months of midwinter indolence, I think we're back in action. More reports, more frequently, is what to expect!