October surprises

Some mornings, I know exactly how daisies feel. It's not enough for the sun's early appearance to turn night into day. What daisies need is to feel the sun's warm, direct rays beating down on their flowers, and then (and only then) will they open up and do their thing. 

Looking like a cluster of mini suns, the "surprise" part of this purple-leafed, yellow-flowered daisy bush is that it's a lettuce plant enjoying its floral fling before signing off on a life well lived, however briefly.

This handsome purple tower was once a low-growing, purple patch of "pick-and-come-again" loose-leaf lettuce, looking much like its green lettuce siblings growing at its feet. Then, two weeks ago, it made its break for adulthood and rose daily, inches at a time. I watered it and gave it a feed to encourage it, and in the last few days it has repaid the favour with its own flower show. Bravo!

In a recent posting on bees I showed you a photo of this shallot flower, but it's so delightful I want to show it again. And it's not alone in this world, either. While I have another mini patch of shallots growing well in another bed, I've very happily watched these shallots doing their flowery thing for the last few weeks. There used to be more of them in fact, but in the last few days both Pammy and I have harvested some from this patch for dinner, and they're still perfectly fine to cook with, but probably getting a bit too strong-flavoured for salads anymore. 

My final little October surprise is this perfectly predictable scene of our common sage bush in bloom. The "surprise" factor is simply that it is flowering so well this year. It was looking utterly rough, scrawny and bedraggled in the middle of winter, so I adopted the simple policy of "cut off all the ugly bits" (and there were a lot of them, too). It seems to have worked. All the healthy wood that was left has burst out in new growth and, in the last few days, created this explosion of mauve good health.

Sage has wonderfully complex flowers, too. With their mouths agape as if singing a long, high note to finish a song, sage flowers remind me of some orchids. 

I have no problems imagining that on other planets, alien life could easily be comprised of flowering plants that talk.

  

It is a far far better thing...

There I was this morning, deadheading the daisies, and all of a sudden I was thinking of my first romantic hero when I was a book-mad teenage boy: Sidney Carton from Charles Dickens' 'A Tale of Two Cities'. A grim connection indeed, when you think of poor Sidney's fate, climbing the steps to the guillotine in the Terror of the French Revolution, but I could see the connection. Sidney's final, noble words are the immortal quote: "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

He was my romantic ideal then, sacrificing his life by substituting himself for the man who was intended for the guillotine, so the woman Sidney loved could live her life with the man she loved, who was, alas, not Sidney. (I don't think I was doing all that well with the chicks when I was 14, so I must have looked upon myself as a punily similar tragic figure.)

Where was I? That's right, deadheading the daisies. (These tangents of thought do pop up rather often while pottering about the garden.) It is a far, far better thing that the daisy plants lose a few fading flowers, as that's the only way for the show to go on. *Sniff*

The party is over for this bedraggled former
beauty. As far as the daisy is concerned, it has
done its bit and formed seeds (flowering is just
a means to an end, but the real purpose of
flowering is, of course, to set seed). As a gardener
my task is to thwart that ambition, to deny it its
seed. The only option for the thwarted flowering
plant is to try and try again, by sending up more
flowers. And that's what deadheading is all about.

There's a mixture of flowers in bloom and faded ones here, so
the trick is to cut off the dead 'uns without hacking down the lot.

This is my 'Sidney Carton' moment where a few
perfectly upright, decent blooms still in flower
get caught up in the revolution. I do try to be
accurate and neat in my snipping, but there are
always some casualties. (That's where the 'far
far better thing' bit popped into my head.) 

I trimmed back this little daisy completely, about two or three
weeks ago, and look at it now. Flowers aplenty, more coming
through. Hopefully that'll be the case with the others.

Deadheading annual flowers is more of a time-consuming chore than the cheerful monthly gardening magazine 'to do' lists admit, but it's amazing how well it works. These annual plants truly do live hard and die young – just a few months from beginning to end sometimes – but if you don't deadhead them they die far too young. With some judicious deadheading you can get them to put out two or three full flushes in their short stay here on Earth. 

FInally, thinking about poor old Sidney Carton and that wonderful book by Dickens, I really ought to also mention the movies of 'A Tale of Two Cities'. I read the book first, and loved it, but then I discovered the 1935 version of the film starring Ronald Coleman, and watched it several times. If I was going to be a tragic, romantic hero back then, I was going to do it Ronald Coleman style. 

Fortunately for me, I never got the gig as tragic teenage hero, but I have lived long enough to also discover the 1958 Dirk Bogarde version of 'Tale of Two Cities', and I'm sorry, Dirk: while you're a fine actor with many great films to your credit, I'm afraid that your version is not a patch on Ronald Coleman's. 

I haven't thought of 'Tale of Two Cities' nor of Ronald Coleman for years, but thanks to my little patch of daisies I have mentally dusted off my Dickens shelf. Gardening's like that, you never know what it's going to make you think of next.

And now, only if you can bear to watch some romantic tragedy while garden blog browsing, is the final scene from Ronald Coleman's 'Tale of Two Cities'.

Nanna's garden

Last Sunday I went over to pick up my wife Pam's mum, Val, to take her to a birthday celebration for one of her grandchildren on the other side of town. Though it was a grey and overcast afternoon, there was just enough light to take a few snaps, and so I thought for a change of pace, instead of blogging about my little patch, I'd celebrate Nanna's garden, and a very good garden it is, too. It's mostly a front garden, one which all the passers-by in her area enjoy every day.

Val loves to bring garden blooms indoors to pop into vases. This is a doddle to do in the warmer months, as her garden flowers prolifically, but in winter it's not so easy. So here's three cheers for camellias – the mainstays of so many winter gardens here in Sydney and elsewhere.

Val's garden provides a lot of pleasure to passers-by, as the street where she lives always seems to have someone walking past – commuters heading for the bus stop, elderly Chinese couples from the nearby new townhouse development getting some exercise, plus mums and dads walking the dog. There are lots of friendly calls of 'hello', 'hi' and 'how are you doing' exchanged around here.

Around the western side of the house, in a spot which gets full sun, this bed has been self-seeding itself for many years. In summer it's filled with colourful daisies of various sorts, plus succulents, pelargoniums, gazanias, chrysanthemums and a few other interlopers who've made a home for themselves there.

I think these dramatic, spiky plants are yuccas, and they say a lot about Val's willingness to try new things and see how they go. They're going OK, too!

At the back of Val's house the zygocactus are in bloom. These hardy plants, which are almost invariably grown in hanging baskets, flower here in May and June, and their colours are almost fluoro in their intensity. Val's favourite colour is a slightly more subdued salmon, but alas my photo of that one is a blurry travesty taken in too-low light, and so the best I can manage is this dazzling pink person.

There isn't just one basket of zygos at Val's. There are several, and in combination the effect is tropical in its intensity, a welcome burst of warmth in late autumn and early winter.

Out near the letterbox the last of the autumn daisies are still catching the sun. With a light clipping back they'll return next season.

Many of the beds at Val's are very easy-care, as they are based on succulents, whose foliage colour provides a year-round blend of fresh green, earthy red and bluish-grey.

The elderly Chinese couples passing by approve greatly of Val's long line of 'money trees' (Crassulas) as they are said to bring prosperity to the house and its occupants.

Foliage plays an especially important role in winter, when the flowers are not so plentiful. This sight out near the letterbox greets the postman every day.

And of course there are gnomes in Nanna's garden!

The reason I took my camera to Val's was a request from Pam to take some photos of the Japonica (the flowering quince) in bloom. Unfortunately I was too early and this was the sole flower I could find. These plants flower on bare stems in winter and look quite impressive for several weeks. They're an old-fashioned plant found in many Nannas' gardens, and Pam wants one. I don't have space for this size of shrub in my own garden and wondered how I could fit one in. Then I read that japonicas can make an excellent bonsai specimen, so that is a little assignment for me to add to my list.

And so that's a quick lap of Nanna's garden. There are all sorts of tired old jokes about mothers-in-law, but the fact is that Val and I are very good mates. We share a love of gardening – a love of Pam! – and a love of food, wine, movies, politics and art – but, alas, not the same music! She's a jazz fan from way back, yet she doesn't just listen to the old stuff. Her CD collection is full of young jazz musicians' work, and she's always keen on seeing live music when the chance arises.

She's an amazing person who does a huge amount of community work, and she's a living legend in her local arts scene. She knows more mayors, MPs and politicians than any other little old white-haired Nanna I've ever met, that's for sure. She's always complaining about how terrible it is to be the mother of children aged in their mid 50s, but the best thing about Val is her amazing zest for living. It's there in her personality, and it's there for all the world to see in her garden, too.