Blink and you might miss it

As we travelled the last few miles at the end of our recent 3500km driving holiday in southern Australia, Pammy said "I wonder what has changed in the two weeks since we left?" She was referring to anything and everything in our local area. "Look, that shop has closed down" ... "and finally they've taken down all the ugly hoarding around that construction site — that new apartment building is almost finished."

No matter how little time you spend away from your home base, in a fortnight something always changes.

And that proved to be true for our little garden. During our two weeks away, one of our garden's best flower shows reached its peak and then quietly faded (just like they do in the forest). New things burst into full bloom, and seeds sprouted. And we weren't here to see any of it. We blinked and missed it all.

Still, it's an interesting thing to do ... leave your garden to its own devices for a while. And so here's what we missed out on over the last couple of weeks.

In the foreground, our usually fabulous scadoxus looked like the stragglers on the morning after a very memorable party. Frazzled, tousled and tired, but they did have fun for a while. In the background, the yellow clivias were in a similar tatty condition.

Poor yellow clivias, they'll be back same time next year, and hopefully there'll be more of them next time (and there'll be an old blogger there to photograph them in all their glory and lavish them with praise).

The one very good thing about the scadoxus section of the garden is that all the baby plants are thriving. In recent years I have been painstakingly raising them from collected seed, and this spring they are growing stronger than ever. There's more than a dozen newbies here and there. I'm just hoping these are not plants that need 10-15 years in the ground before they do their first flowering. I'm not sure if I'll live that long to see all my work come into glorious bloom!

In other pleasing baby news, all the flat-leaf parsley seed which I scattered in a few spots a few weeks before we left have sprouted up through the sugar cane mulch and seem to be powering along. This year all I did was open the seed packet and shake it here and there in the mulched vegie area, then say "you're on your own, kids; good luck". I think this has been my most successful seed-sowing method yet for parsley.

Upon our return we were greeted by some new blooms, including these little mint bush beauties ...

... and all our hanging baskets of pelargoniums perked up in the spring sunshine. 

But the flower show which impressed us the most was this (next) unexpected one ...

Our broccoli patch was in its full glory as adult plants, and the loud humming of the bees all around the broccoli's yellow blooms was a clear signal from the bees to me to "leave our broccoli flowers alone". 

They're perfectly correct, of course. While we grow broccoli with the mindset of "food/vegetable" and tend to look upon these flowers as a signal to replace the crop, the bees adore this plant's flowers, and so until all the flowers fade our broccoli plants are staying right where they are, as a bee temple.

So that's my little report on how our little garden looks after a few weeks of slight neglect (although our wonderful neighbours Nick and Katerina did their usual great job watering the garden for us).

Oh, so how was the holiday? Great! 

I'm still sorting through the thousand or so photos that we took along the way, and once that's done I'll show you some of the highlights, especially the lovely gardens we visited and the new people we met (hi Kerryn in Kyneton!). 

Doing our bit to help the bees

While pottering around our inner-city garden, there's always some kind of background noise, whether it's merely traffic, neighbours talking, or local birds calling to one another. But the sound I enjoy the most is the hum of bees. 

A native blue-banded bee closes in on an eggplant flower.

Not only is it a happy sound but it's also a vital signal that our backyard garden is a safe place for bees and other insects to go about their work, and make a living. Doing the right thing by bees isn't rocket science. There's just two steps.
1. Plant bee-friendly flowering plants (and there are lots of them)
2. Stop using harmful insect sprays that kill bees and other beneficial insects.

Bees go mad when our lemon tree flowers, which it will do soon.

As spring is upon us here in Australia, and gardeners everywhere are thinking "what can I plant now", it's the perfect time to put in a plug for becoming a bit more bee-friendly, whether you're a balcony gardener, own a rambling country estate or, like Pam and me, have an ordinary suburban backyard.

Our poppies are blooming now, and bees almost bathe in the plentiful pollen.

Now, I've done numerous postings about bees over the years, and this latest one has been prompted by an email I received from Taronga Zoo (for out-of-towners, Taronga Zoo is Sydney's largest and oldest zoo, situated on the edge of Sydney Harbour — visiting Taronga is a part of most Sydney childhoods. It was certainly part of mine, with countless visits there). 

It might come as a surprise to some to know this, but Taronga Zoo cares for its bees in the same way it does for all its other creatures — with loving devotion. This Sydney winter has been very dry indeed — there's a drought on — and so flowers are fewer and life is tougher for Taronga's bee population (and all other bees in Sydney). One simple reason for looking after bees is that Taronga has its own vegie patch, to provide food for its animals, and as every vegie gardener knows, bees play a vital role in pollinating all sorts of crops.

Taronga's beekeeper inspects one of their hives.

What Taronga would like everyone in Sydney to do is simple: make your garden friendlier for bees. So here's some very basic tips on how to get started, but before I do that, I have to include this next photo, just to show you how popular beekeeping has become in Sydney. 

About 200m from my house, the roof of this corner shop in Marrickville is
very probably what my busy backyard bees called "Headquarters". And so
in doing my bit in the inner-city, I'm helping gourmets to be happy. 

Apart from following guideline number 2: "don't use harmful sprays", following guideline number 1: "plant bee-friendly plants" is very easy to do, because there are so many great plants to choose from. The basic rule is this: if it produces a flower, the bees will find it.

Flowering shrubs: lavender probably tops the list, but all daisies are fabulous, too. Shrubs such as abelia and buddleia are famous bee-attractors, but on a small scale little alyssum (sweet Alice) and nasturtiums do a great job, and so do my poppies. But all annual flowers are great for bees, and probably the perfect choice for smaller gardens and balconies. 

Natives: all the flowering native shrubs are brilliant bee magnets, but top choices would include hardenbergia, grevilleas (which come in all shapes and sizes), bottlebrush, westringia (coast rosemary, a very good hedging plant), and native daisies (Brachyscome). 

Herbs: most people think "foliage/leaves" when you say "herbs", but all herbs flower well and bees love them. Basil is terrific (and now is the time to plant some), but oregano, marjoram, sage, rosemary, mint, coriander and lemon balm all do a great job attracting bees. Borage is probably the star of the bee-friendly herb garden, as bees adore its plentiful blue flowers.

Flowering vegetable crops also attract (and need!) bees, especially tomatoes, eggplants, potatoes, zucchini, cucumber, pumpkins, watermelons and squash. So my tip is to plant some low-growing flowers next to your vegie patch, such as alyssum, petunias, low-growing daisies, etc. It's what "potager" gardens are all about: mixing flowers, herbs and vegies together so they attract bees. And besides, potagers just look better.

My citrus trees (lemon, Tahitian lime, Thai lime) all attract stacks of bees, and spring is a great time to plant one, and it's also the perfect time to fertilise them. All other fruit trees are magnets for bees when they are in flower, so if your garden design needs a small tree, think about a fruit tree next time round.

While the name of this thing is a "birdbath" nobody told the bees they can't
visit, so I always make sure there is a gently sloping rock in my birdbath so
bees and other flying little guys can take a drink, especially on a hot day.

So there you go, head off to the garden centre on a "bee-friendly" mission, and help maintain your local honey supply. 

Finally, you can also test out my favourite bee theory: no matter where you put a flowering plant, bees will find it. Go on, plant something in an out-of-the-way spot and keep an eye on it. Once it starts flowering, our little busy, buzzing hard-workers will soon be all over it. That's what I love about bees ... they are so good at their jobs!

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.

Making a beeline

If there is one thing I don't want in my garden, it's an automated watering system. Without the daily pleasure of getting out there and hand-watering the garden each morning, I don't think I would enjoy gardening one-tenth as much as I do right now. And I am sure I would miss out on seeing a lot, as well.

This morning was a classic example of what I mean. Forecast is a sunny day, max of 27°C. Doesn't get much better. But I have baby seedlings of lettuce, shallots and coriander to mollycoddle, and the newly planted New Guinea impatiens will love a good dose of tropical-style "hot and humid" — it will make them feel like they're back up in Port Moresby for a day.

And so I did a very enjoyable "lap" of the garden, watering the thirsty and stopping off to clean and refill our two birdbaths while I had the hose in my hand.

I wasn't the only person out there, of course. I had company. Dozens of bees humming their tunes were busily collecting pollen, sometimes buzzing close to my head as they scooted around their mysterious highways in the sky.

Grand Central Station for our garden's bees right now is our Tahitian lime tree, which is covered 50/50 in white flowers and green fruit buds that used to be flowers. The closer I got to the lime tree, the louder the hum became.

I love the thoroughness of bees. They don't miss a thing, they don't miss a single grain of pollen if they can help it. They dive deep into flowers and come out covered in their fluffy yellow harvests.

Of course bees' diligence is also beautifully fair. If you're a flower in this garden, expect a visit from the Bee Patrol. No exceptions made. They don't miss a thing. (Although, speaking of missing things, you'll have to believe me that there was a bee there just a moment before I clicked the digital camera button. They're a terribly difficult subject for an amateur photographer like me to capture every time.)

Just for fun, I like to let a few of our vegetables live out a complete life cycle (I think it's latent vegetable-harvesting guilt at work, a product of me thinking far too much). Here's a shallot (spring onion) flower dusted with water droplets. And yes, it's a waypoint for the loyal, hard-working members of the Pollen Gatherers Union.

In our world of endangered species, it's sometimes hard to wrap your brain around this concept when your own little sheltered existence is filled with these endangered creatures, the humble bee. I read the scientific stories and many newspaper reports and am filled with the same helpless sadness that I am sure so many of you share with me about the dwindling numbers of bees in so many countries. 

But that word "helpless" is misleading. There actually is a little bit I can do to help, and I do it in my garden. 

For starters, I use very few pesticides at all, and only organic ones occasionally, and none of them in the mornings or evenings, when the bees are about.

Next, I grow a good variety of flowers wherever I can. It doesn't matter which ones, as far as the bees are concerned. Even vegies well past their "harvest-by" dates can help. And if you can also manage it, try to populate your garden with plants so that you have something in flower every month. In Sydney's garden-friendly climate that's a lot easier to do than elsewhere.

That's the basics of being friendly to bees. It's only a small, very local gesture, but the more people thinking and acting locally, the better off are our bees.

Crop dusting

Anyone who grows their own vegetables soon learns that you can get a "glut" of produce from just one or two plants. In our case, that's especially true, as there are only two of us to feed and the plants are happy and well-fed. Like most vegie gardeners with a glut of goodies, we do the usual thing and give away our excess produce to family and friends.

Now, all that makes sense, so what I am doing trying to produce even bigger gluts by hand-pollinating the flowers on my eggplant and cucumber plants? Madness is the simple explanation, although gluttony might be more fitting — however "glutton for punishment" is bang on the mark.

We only have one eggplant plant and one cucumber plant here, and so I want each to be productive. But as far as the many bees in my garden are concerned, I am a deeply annoying, interfering busybody. My organic-gardening, bee-friendly heart might be in the right place, but my presence is simply not needed. My plants probably do not need to be hand-pollinated, the bees are doing that job well, and yet still I can't help myself.

This photo is a slight fudge, in that it was taken last year, but it shows what is happening right now in our garden. This native blue-banded bee is about one second away from landing on one of last year's eggplant flowers. I tried to get a shot of him in action this morning, but he moved too fast. As well as the native bees, we also have quite a few ordinary honeybees buzzing about.

So, why am I hand-pollinating my eggplant flowers? Well, last year I didn't think the conversion rate from flowers to fruit was all that crash hot. I know our garden has lots of other bee-attracting flowers, and maybe the short-lived eggplant blooms are low on the list of highly bee-attracting flowers? The bees just adore the salvias and frangipanis, and citrus and grevillea flowers always pull a crowd too ... but my totally unscientific observation is that our humble purple eggplant flowers don't seem so alluring. Last year's crop was not a glut!

And so I wandered into my garden shed, found a small hobby paintbrush, and wiggled it into each and every eggplant flower, hoping to pollinate every single one of them by transferring pollen from one flower to another. Time will tell if my gratuitous interference produces a better crop.

Of course the stupid thing is how can I tell if any eggplant baby is my handiwork or due to natural forces, such as the blue-banded bee? I can't!

The eggplant plant itself is happy and healthy, and so I just hope it has a good life here.

Most mornings we harvest a little bit of this and that. Here's our morning bowl-full of cucumber (1) Lebanese zucchini (4) and eggplant (1). Not exactly a glut, but you can't eat zucchini and eggplant every meal, and so they do build up, you eat out once or twice instead of cooking at home ... and before you know it you have three cucumbers, three eggplants, and a dozen or more zucchinis ...

Filled with enthusiasm, I got out another hobby brush and went all over our little cucumber plant. I am sure the ladybird cleaning up a spot of powdery mildew was wondering what I was up to. Interfering humans! Now, our cucumber bush is more than productive at the moment, so this "help" from me is utterly unnecessary. But did that stop me? Sadly, no. Just can't help interfering, especially when there is only one plant here.

Same deal here. Which of these baby cucumbers is my handiwork? I'll never know, and it doesn't matter, of course, as long as we get a good steady glut of too much produce!

Thirsty work

We all know that birds love a drink and a flap in a birdbath on a scorching hot day such as today, but some of our other garden workers need a drink, too. 

I spotted a group of our native paper wasps carefully clustering around the water-filled cup of a bromeliad. As I'd liberally watered the whole garden this morning due to the forecast of 38°C (100°F), which has been exceeded already, the bromeliad had little puddles of water here, there and everywhere, and every tier of its central cluster of leaves had a puddle attended by a thirsty wasp.

This photo is a slight fudge, as I remembered that I took it on another scorching hot day a few years ago. In our largest birdbath I always place a gently sloping, low rock into the water, so bees and wasps (and tiny birds) can carefully move down the slope and slurp up a drink. If the rock is too steep-sided they run the risk of falling in and drowning.

As for the human workers, Pammy and I are both inside the house, sipping some tea and mostly staying inside. Everyone needs a refreshing drink on a scorching hot day like today!

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.

Hope & faith

Before the fruit come the flowers, and so this image bears hope of delicious crops to come on our passionfruit vine. Of course bees need to do their thing, but they're busily about every day in our garden, so I'll just need to have faith in them that they'll include these huge "look at me, look at me" passionfruit blooms on their nectar-gathering, pollen-sharing rounds.

Such an extraordinary flower, the passionfruit,
the Baz Luhrmann of fruit blooms.

My friends the bees are in serious trouble, folks

It's such a gorgeous winter's day here in Sydney, sunny yet cool, the lavender is blooming and the bees are buzzing around every fragrant mauve bloom, collecting pollen. This is how it should be, and this is how it is going to be for as long as I can help matters. Yet there are forces at work well beyond both the bees' control and mine which are putting our little pollen-gathering friends in peril, not just one by one, but as a whole species here on the planet. New research just released paints one of those hopeless pictures, like when you hear a friend has been diagnosed with cancer. You know people can survive it and you hope your friend can especially, but you just feel helpless and sad, at least at first.

A useless bystander, all I can really do for the bees is hope and maybe at least practise what I preach about how gardeners, farmers and our society at large should work with nature, not poison and destroy it.

Here's the story which depressed me so much when I read it last night. 
http://qz.com/107970/scientists-discover-whats-killing-the-bees-and-its-worse-than-you-thought/

While I summarise what the article by Todd Woody at 'Quartz' says, I'll put my summary beneath some photos I've just taken of my little friends enjoying themselves here at my place. God I hope they never disappear.

It seems the phenomenon of Colony Collapse Disorder, where
whole colonies of bees die off suddenly, isn't due to one single
chemical cause, it's a combination of chemicals at work. The
article above calls it a 'witch's brew of pesticides and fungicides.'

And it's not always just the direct action of chemicals which
kills the bees; sometimes the chemicals reduce the bees' ability
to resist parasites, which then kill the bees. 

The surprise finding is that fungicides are playing a major role
in the decline of bee colonies. Up until now they weren't on all
that many scientists' lists of major suspects. Now they are.  

Bee pollen collected by researchers contained an
average of 9 different pesticides and fungicides.
Some samples contained as many as 21
different agricultural chemicals.

This is just my personal opinion, but the level of reform needed
in the use of chemical sprays in agriculture to reverse the
decline of bees is on a par with the task of convincing vested
interests to do something about climate change. And we all
know how slowly, and how badly, those efforts are proceeding.

So, please read the full article, as it's important to understand problems fully, no matter how powerless or depressed they make you feel.

At home, all we can do is encourage bees in our own environment. It's a genuinely good but puny start. No chemical sprays – definitely no fungicides! – plant lots of flowers and spread the word. 

By the way, if you're wondering what's the name of the lavender our bees are loving, it's a modern hybrid, two baby plants of which were given to Pam and I at a gardening event last year. It's called Lavandula x hybrid 'Little Posie Mauve'. Can't stand the corny name, but it's a nice little thing about 50cm high and wide that is currently flowering its head off in the cool winter sunshine, and it's as covered in bees as it is in flowers, which is how things should be.