It's happening, just slowly

Winter gardens seem to be on Valium at times. Everything happens slowly. It's all quite calm, there's not the frenetic buzz of insects and birds like you get in spring and summer. It's all a bit slow. Suddenly my action-packed inner-city garden feels like it's a country town set to 'snooze' mode. But there are signs that things are finally happening, just slowly.

The Iceland cometh. Poppy, that is. There's a couple of dozen of these people lifting their heads at the moment, the start of another winter flowering season that I hope lasts for months.

These parsnips live life at a leisurely pace. It takes anywhere between three and four weeks for the seed to germinate, and now they are plodding along nicely, but harvest time is months away. The good thing is at least they don't need much care.

Next door the English spinach is stirring into action, after a slow start from seed. Crops will be a few more weeks away, but pickings of baby leaves for salads are getting close.

Next door to the English spinach a row of recently thinned-out carrot seedlings is finally getting down to business, but these too are several weeks away from harvest.

Last year I planted brodiaea bulbs at the recommended spacing of 10cm and the effect was hopeless. Easily the biggest disappointment in the garden last year. These flowering bulbs from South Africa were meant to produce pretty blue-star flowers, and they did, but each small bloom was so far apart from its neighbour that you barely noticed them. Nevertheless I saved the bulbs and this year I have jammed them into a pot like commuters on a Tokyo subway train. My only problem with this experiment is that I might be overseas when they bloom! Rats!

I reckon it's only a few more sleeps before these cinerarias begin their lurid winter colour show. These are growing in almost full shade, but they're one of those "will flower in shade in winter" kind of annuals, with the proviso that the colours aren't necessarily in the best taste. I don't mind, I just want some action here in Quiet Town!

Speaking of action, here some real excitement. When I went outdoors with my camera this afternoon I had already made up my mind that I was going to do a blog about how nothing is happening yet, and yet here's the first of the Iceland poppies cheekily saying "nyah nyah" to my theme while flashing a pure white smile.

OK, poppy, I stand corrected. There is stuff happening here. Just not much. Not yet. Patience is a virtue, but waiting is still a bore.

Before the deluge

I'm addicted to the weather bureau's online weather radar, and today the forecast is basically "deluge headed your way". It's one of those big big ones, with about half the continent covered in swirling grey clouds. While this is great news in the long run for our dry rivers and farms, over the next 48 hours it's bad news for delicate flowers, spindly seedlings and people planning outdoor weddings. And so I thought I'd pop out this morning to capture the scene here in Amateur Land, before the deluge.

Yet another of my Photoshopped panoramas, if you click on the photo it should come up much bigger on your screen. While it isn't exactly a carnival of colour, there are lots of things in flower now. I've been a bit distracted with work and other projects these last few weeks, and the garden has largely been looking after itself quite nicely. A few close-up details are in order.

Oh goody, another excuse to show you my Louisiana iris again. Each flower lasts only four or so days at best, but as it fades another bud rises, opens and takes its predecessor's place. I found the plant label in the shed, and this is Lousiana iris 'Gulf Shores'.

Just behind the Louisiana iris, the Grevillea 'Peaches and Cream' is coming back into flower, after a major cut-back two months ago. It's lovely the way the flowers change colour from one end to the other.

All the brodiaea bulbs are flowering now, and while they're too sparse to be spectacular the colour is complex and their sheer unusualness will do me.

When viewed from above you can see the brodiaea's star shape most clearly. If I grow them again next year I'll plant them twice as densely as the bulb packet said to plant them.

Growing close to the brodiaeas, the love-in-a-mist is almost there. All this flower bud has to do is survive the forecast strong wind and rain over the next couple of days. The 'mist' part of its name is of course the fine green 'hairs' which surround each bloom like a veil.

Needless to say the poppies are still popping up daily, now past their fourth month of doing so. The pinky-purple coloured ones on the left are self-seeded 'wild' poppies that always make a welcome appearance in the second half of the poppy 'season'.

We have two wonderful pelargonium plants here, both of which are actually grown for their foliage, but right now they're enjoying a little burst of spring flowering. This pale-leafed pelargonium is a shocking garden bully, muscling in on everything else in the local area. Perversely, it loves being cut back and grows back vigorously every time. It's one of those 'beat me, whip me' kinds of plants.

On the other side of the garden, the lemon-scented pelargoniums are putting on a very good effort at flowering. You can smell the foliage of the plants from a few feet away, and brushing against it while you're weeding or working on a neighbouring plant is like stepping into a perfume shop. But right now it's sending up little clusters of pink blooms which dot the plant, rather than cover it. A major wind-and-rain storm last spring belted the daylights out of this long-stemmed plant, but true to the indestructible ethos of the pelargonium genus, it bounced back, as it will this time if the winds knock it around.

And as combatants in any contest in the modern media like to say, "bring it on" (the wind and rain, I mean). I do enjoy a good storm and lashing rain, and even if the garden gets knocked around, watching nature grow back after a battering is almost as fascinating as watching it basking beautifully in the sun.

Little blue people

"Come outside now," my beloved girl said with eagerness in her eyes. I knew that something cool was happening in the garden, and knowing Pam it could be anything – a completely new type of bird visiting, weird caterpillars or fungi in action – anything. This time it was something even better – our first Louisiana iris was coming out – we have blue people visiting!

We bought this Louisiana iris plant in November last year, as a little baby bulb (well, a rhizome, to be correct). It has grown more than steadily since then – it has multiplied into several plants, and now it's sending up flowers. It must like us!

This is where it lives. In a pot in the middle of a potted goldfish pond. Each Vee-shaped eruption of leaves represents a new branch of the rhizome forming under the soil surface, and each new branch is sending up flower stalks.

While some of the flowers seem to be popping out half-way up a stalk, others are the king of the hill, flowering at the very top of the stem. Any place they like to flower will do me. Several months ago I had plans of a symphony of blue flowers hopefully happening together, and some other plants in that vision splendid are chiming in nicely now.

The brodiaeas started flowering this week. These are South African bulbs planted here last autumn. They sent up very scrawny, unpromising little stalks a month or so ago, and in the last two weeks the top of each stalk then sent out several little arms, each arm bearing a blue star-shaped flower (or at least a flower bud, so far). Once they're all up (there are only half a dozen blooms in the patch so far, hence the close-up shot) it should look good.

These Ajuga reptans (commonly known as bugle) weren't actually part of my symphony in blue, but their little blue flower spikes are very welcome nevertheless. The third part of my little blue plan – some love-in-a-mist (Nigella) grown from seed are lagging slightly behind. There's still some hope that they'll come good, as they've been growing rapidly lately and might even catch up with the others. Even if I just managed a couple of weeks where all the little blue people were out together would be a stack of fun to see. Because that's why I'm doing it – just for fun.

And now for something completely different, to celebrate our Louisiana visitors. I have only recently figured out how those clever bloggers manage to embed You Tube videos in their blogs. As I am a major fan of Cajun music from Louisiana, and as I am spending a fair bit of my spare time researching all the different places and things I might see in the USA next year, I thought I'd roadtest my YouTubing skills with one of Louisiana's finest Cajun Bands, Balfa Toujours, in concert. They're someone I have seen before, when they visited Sydney, and who I'd very much like to see again.

A break in the rain

As it turns out the break in the rain only lasted till early afternoon, but at least the sun came out on a Saturday morning, so it was agreed by all that we were all enjoying some quality time with the Sun God.

Sydneysiders will know what I'm talking about. Gosh it's been wet lately! While I can't quite come at trainspotting as a hobby, I have been a sucker for rain gauges for some years now. According to my records, since May 18, when the heavens opened and haven't stopped, we've copped 262.5mm of rain, or 10.3 inches in the old money. So, in just 17 days we've received a bit more than one-fifth of our total annual average rainfall. Can't complain, especially after these years of drought.

Anyway, with the break in the rain the sun came out and I quickly realised that some of my plants are simply loving it! Here's a quick lap of the highs and lows of life here in Soggy Bottoms.

Orchids aplenty. Dozens of spikes are up, out and flowering. What a show!

The brodiaeas (spring bulbs with blue flowers) are all up in unison.

Lettuce seeds have turned into lettuce seedlings.

Mrs Lithops is almost there with Daisy. This is turning out to be a difficult delivery, isn't it?

The thyme is outrageously happy, fragrant and healthy.

At the other end of the scale, the Scadoxus has definitely died down for the winter. It should be back in bloom in spring, if last year's effort is repeated.

And finally, even the doormat in front of Pam's studio at the bottom of the garden is sprouting plants! She's delighted, and not at all deterred by my comment that they're probably just weeds. "They might not be" she said with motherly optimism. We'll see. I'm not allowed to touch them.

As I mentioned at the start of this little blog, the sunshine lasted till early afternoon. It's sprinkling again, more rain is forecast, and this wet patch definitely isn't over yet. It's good fun for the rain gauge people, though. We email each other with readings! It's bearable excitement, but I think the dry, drought-hit soil is very happy - it's still saying 'more drinks please'. Chin chin!

Moving Heaven & some earth

It was nice to pretend that I was operating the weather levers while Huey had the weekend off. In control over the weather dial, I seemed to be. Some rain on Sunday, not too much, about 9mm did the job nicely, weakening the weeds' grip on the soil while readying everything else for planting the next day.

And then I set the weather dial to very fine and very mild on digging and planting day, Monday (Aussies got a long weekend too, in honour of all those who served in wars for us – Anzac Day). Warm but not hot 22°C, no clouds, blue skies, perfect gardening weather. Hmmmm, autumn in Sydney...

The colour of our sky was the first thing I noticed when I returned from living in Europe for a year, quite a few years ago. Since then, I don't take our wonderful blue sky for granted anymore.

When I started digging I came across lots and lots of my best farm workers, like this person, who was not at all thrilled to meet me. While I mulch most of my garden pretty well most of the time, there were a few patches which I had deliberately decided not to mulch over the last few months, and in those spots worm numbers were well down, compared to the mulched areas. If you want worms, mulch!

After all the weeding, which doesn't warrant a photo, and turning of the clods of soil with a fork, which I forgot to take a photo of, the next step was much more fun – turning the clods and clumps of soil into a fine tilth ready for planting. For this task I always rely on my trusty Japanese Niwashi, which I have blogged about before here. It's my favourite job too, because I get to sit down on the ground and contentedly plug away at the soil until it's right. Deep down, I love my drudgery. It's good quality thinking time.

Rake level, ready for planting. Doesn't that sound easy? Perhaps I should add that all the weeding, digging, tilling and raking took up the first three or so hours of that glorious, sunny but mild Monday.

My excellent gardening adviser Geoffrey told me to not plant my brodiaeas too early – wait until Anzac Day – and so they have been chilling out in the crisper section of my fridge for the last two months. Monday was planting day for these blue-flowered spring bulbs.

For the last two years I've grown poppies for Pammy, who just loves these blooms. The first year I grew them from seed, and the results were pretty good. In the second year I used seedlings, and the results were much better, with more stout stems. So it was seedlings for sure this year.

Instead of doing my usual 'grow from seed' method with shallots, I bought a punnet of seedlings, to save time, which is what punnets are very good for. However, I sowed seeds galore in several other spots, so I'm really looking forward to seeing what comes up.

This is a photo I pinched from Google Images of one of the seeds I sowed. Nigella, or love-in-a-mist. I grew this flower many years ago and really liked its old-fashioned charm, and so I thought I'd sow a packet of seeds this year. As well as the Nigella I sowed some seeds of mesclun mixed lettuce, coriander, spinach, calendulas, baby beetroot, curly parsley, Chinese buck choy and another Asian green called celery leaf plant, which is a celery relative with all that celery flavour, except that it's very leafy, and the stems are thin. Should be useful in cooking, and yes, it was an impulse buy at a seed stand.

A while back I had made a careful garden plan, and then on planting day I didn't follow it. I did what I usually do: I laid out all the punnets and seed packets where I planned to plant them, and then had a think. My other great garden adviser, Don, calls this method 'put and look'. As a garden design tool, it works. Once consultations with Pammy were done and we both agreed that this is what we wanted (after adjustments), away I went with the fun bit, planting.

Poppy seedlings in, 20cm apart. The black strip on the right is my special 50:50 mix of potting mix and home-made compost, into which I sow seeds. That strip is a parsley border in the making. I love parsley borders. The rear strip running at right angles is mesclun lettuce. The seemingly bare, unmulched bed behind is where the brodiaeas went in. The rest of the planting was not all that photogenic, just seed sowing direct to the ground, but it was good fun nevertheless and the next few weeks promise to be enthralling (if you're weird like me and love watching seeds come up).

And that was about it for the weekend. There are a few parts of the garden that remain happily productive. Another batch of lettuce is at picking size, the sage behind is having such a good autumn that it still thinks it's summer, and an early pot of coriander raised from seed saved from last year's crop is nicely leafy, ready to add its flavour to both cooked dishes and salads.

The real highlight of the day for me was the sheer luxury of spending a whole day in the garden again. I've been so busy with work lately that I haven't had much time for gardening (apart from watering) or blogging. And so thank you Huey up there in heaven for laying on such a wonderful day to be outside just moving some earth and planting seeds and seedlings.

Now, if I could have that weather dial back for a moment, could I set it to steady 22s for the next few weeks, with goodly, soaking showers on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays? There's a good chap, Huey. Thanks so much.

Making plans

The rain is doing its best imitation of Madam Lash at the moment, telling Sydney "take that, Sin City" with successive whippings of rain. And so poor innocent gardeners, who've done nothing to deserve this punishment (apart from praying for rain) are sitting with their wet, squishy noses pressed against the window pane, looking out at a super-soggy garden, doing the only thing they can do right now – dreaming up what to do next.

This is definitely one of those "click on the photo to make it readable" photos. This is how the garden looks today, after 78mm rain (three inches) yesterday, and 50mm (one inch) spread over the two days beforehand. That's enough, Madam Lash, I can't take any more! Anyway, what follows are my plans for autumn plantings – probably beginning in March at the earliest. Let's start with the foreground, left – "brodiaeas in here".

Until last Sunday night I'd never heard of brodiaeas, but now I own 50 of them. Aren't catalogues wonderful? After a recent posting here, blasting away at how much I dislike spring bulbs, I've gone ahead and ordered some spring bulbs. I just figured that I wanted to see something different next spring, and as soon as they finish flowering, I'm pulling them all up and, shock-horror, tossing them all away. Total cost is $12.50, roughly the price of an indifferent bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. But it wasn't me who picked the brodiaeas.

That was Pammy's job. Pammy is a wonderful shopper, and also a magician with restaurant menus, able to find something amazing on a menu which everyone else misses. I suspect this is because she reads menus from cover to cover, same too with catalogues. Anyway, I tossed her this catalogue with her brief to choose something interesting, and the next morning it was on the kitchen table, with helpful pink sticky note thingys indicating the brodiaeas. Blue flowers. I love blue flowers!

By the following Friday, the postman dropped off the package. Parcels in the mail, one of life's simple pleasures!

Little buttons they are. Currently they're staying in the crisper bin of my fridge until planting time, which won't be until April. I asked my resident horticultural expert, Geoffrey, for some tips, and as well as telling me to wait until Anzac Day (April 25) before planting he helpfully added that the growers incorrectly list brodiaeas as being from South Africa when in fact they actually come from Northern California. So thanks once again to Geoffrey for his growing tips and advice, which is invariably spot-on.

Once Pam had set me off with a blue theme, I wondered what else might I grow that's blue-flowered, down the other end of the garden. It has been about 15 years since I last grew the old-fashioned cottage plant, love-in-a-mist, so I ticked the box for one packet of love-in-a-mist seeds while browsing the online catalogue of another major seed supplier, Digger's. (This photo is pinched from Google Images, by the way).

In the spot where currently I have an Asian eggplant producing a crop, I've decided to grow a dwarf Tibouchina 'Groovy Baby' which is only 60cm tall and 80cm wide. I'll plant this dwarf shrub in April, once the eggplant has finished. This is more of a summer and autumn flowerer, so it'll keep my favourite blue-flowered thing going a couple of months after all the spring blues have gone up to heaven. If all goes well, this will become a permanent planting here, a summer patch of blue in a lovely, sunny spot.

Across the path from the love-in-a-mist, I'm going to grow another crop of broad beans, my favourite home-grown vegetable to eat. This is a photo of the previous crop, which was a tall-growing variety tied to a nice bamboo frame. This time round I've picked a dwarf plant which only grows 1m tall, but as I still have the bamboo poles in the shed, I'll make up some kind of support for the floppy old broad bean plants with them.

This is just the tiny photo pinched from the Diggers catalogue. It's what they solemnly promise their red spring onions will look like, and I liked that look so much I ticked the box for a packet of seeds of these, and they'll form a border around the broad beans.

Of course I am going to grow poppies again for Pammy, in the same spot where I grew them last year, and I hope they'll be every bit as lovely this time round, too.

I've run out of photos for the rest of my autumn planting plans. But on the left side, near the house, I am going to replace my rather dreary big potted bay tree with a far more exciting and interesting potted 'Black Genoa' fig. I'm really looking forward to having a fig in the garden again. When we moved here an old in-ground fig tree struggled along for the first 15 or so years, producing bumper crops every summer, then it just fell over in a storm one day, its branches full of rot. And so 'Son of Fig II – the Black Genoa' will be starring at this blog fairly soon.

And that lovely big grevillea on the left needs pruning soon. Big tip for anyone growing grevilleas: prune them often, do it twice a year, after each flush of flowers. Take off up to a third each time if you like, but that's not compulsory, although some kind of pruning is. Roses and grevilleas have a lot in common - pruning makes both of them flower much better. But grevilleas hardly need feeding. Just pruning.

On the right side of the pathway, I am going to grow a leafy patch of flavours, combining flat-leaf parsley, coriander (cilantro) and some celery leaf plants, which produce lots of celery-flavoured leaves for cooking. Celery is a notoriously tricky vegie to grow, but I do like the flavour of the leaves, etc in making all sorts of sauces, so I'll give the seeds of these leafy relatives of celery (which I bought recently in an Asian food store in Darwin) a try this autumn.

Finally, on the centre, right side of the pathway, yet another crop of mixed 'mesclun' salad greens, a crop which, along with herbs, is probably the most useful, practical crop I grow here.

One thing I can say in favour of extremely wet days is that they slow you down enough to help you do some planning. So Madam Lash's ministrations aren't all bad, but she can stop now.