2015 - The Gardening Year in Review

As far as years go, I'd be the first to admit that 2015 has not been a "biggie" in the scheme of things. We didn't set any growth records, we didn't redesign the garden, storms didn't destroy it, bumper crops were not harvested ... in fact it proved to be a perfectly normal year all round. Phew!

Yes, there were successes and failures, lots of fun with plants and plenty of fascination with nature, plus a little sadness, and so there remains but one more thing to do before we pop the champagne and declare "Happy New Year" to friends and neighbours: and that's to hand out some awards to the deserving. Now, if Pammy could hand me the envelopes, let's begin the 2015 Garden Amateur Awards!

Plant of the Year/Blog of the Year

And the winner is a happily resettled refugee! Pam's former potted office plant, this delightfully spotty Begonia maculata, was forced to move from its original home simply because it had outgrown the space. It has now settled in superbly into its new outdoor home under the murraya bush (still within view of Pam's office), where it shares the moist shade with other former residents of Pammy's verdant office, some maidenhair ferns. The big suspense surrounded the begonia's chances of surviving its first winter outdoors ... and it not only romped it in — it kept on growing. 

Now, this begonia is a bit like those Hollywood blockbusters that take out all the prizes on Oscars night, because as well as winning POTY (Plant of the Year) it also took out the prestigious BOTY (Blog of the Year) award for the most-read blog posting here at Garden Amateur. It seems lots of people wanted to know about what does well in a shady spot.  

Wildlife of the Year

The winner of WOTY (Wildlife of the Year) is Mr and Mrs Native Paper Wasp, pictured here building their new creche just outside our kitchen window. Much maligned by the ill-informed anti-insect crowd (the Taliban of nature lovers), paper wasps are beneficial insects which are nowhere near as cranky as the Taliban says they are. 

Idea of the Year

Turning little punnets of supermarket sprouts into crops has proved to be a runaway success, and deserving winner of the IOTY (Idea of the Year) award. Pictured here is the chervil sprouts loving life as thriving crops, and elsewhere in the garden the same idea has produced great crops of both flat-leaf parsley and coriander. 

Crop of the Year 

Though they are small in size, the little Lebanese zucchini takes out the 2015 Crop of the Year (COTY) award through its production of healthy flavour in good, steady numbers. These tasty little fruits just keep on coming, despite the fact that their foliage growing overhead looks like a hospital ward of powdery mildew disasters. Doesn't bother the little workers down at ground level, they just keep on producing.

Surprise of the Year 

After more than 20 years of being quietly green and very fragrantly leafy, our false cardamom plant decided it was time to be flowery, which makes it the standout choice for SOTY (Surprise of the Year). However, big questions remain to be answered in 2016 (which might put it in line for Suspense of the Year): Will it flower just once every 20 years? Will it flower every year from now on? What in the hell prompted it to start flowering? Does it know something about climate change that we don't know? Stay tuned...

Fish of the Year 

This special one-off award has been inaugurated purely to honour the passing of our little goldfishy mate, Paul, who passed away late this year, just a few days short of his sixth birthday. Most little goldfish never achieve much in the way of internet fame, but at least Paul has been read about by hundreds of readers of this blog, and he also has been immortalised artistically in this lovely painting by his honorary mum, my slightly biased pick for Artist of the Year (AOTY), Pamela Horsnell. RIP Paul, you did great.



And so that's it for our 2015 Awards Show here at Garden Amateur. Pammy and I and all the regulars here at the Garden Amateur blog would like to say a big "thanks" to everyone who has visited our blog, left a comment or just accidentally found us while looking for something else. We'll be back in 2016 but in the meantime, have a happy and safe New Year and we look forward to continuing to share our love of gardening, nature and anything else that we fancy all through the coming year.

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!

Garden homemakers

Eagle-eyed Pam did it again this morning – spotted a wasp's nest being started on our succulent Kalanchoe 'Copper Spoons'. I already knew about another wasp nest underway outside our kitchen window, so I thought it'd be nice to share some images of both nests with you in yet another "ain't nature wonderful" posting. But what really amazed me was how my eagle-eyed camera managed to get inside one of the wasp nests to show what's happening there at the moment. They're making babies!

Look closely inside each little perfect "cell" of this paper wasp's nest and you can see one little golden egg in each. In fact, look closely at the bottom-most cell on the right, and you can see the fine, papery fibres with which the wasp constructs the nest. The scientific name of this paper wasp is Polistes, and yes, I think this is the native species (although there are Asian paper wasps and European paper wasps in Australia as well).

EDIT/UPDATE: see the bottom of this posting for a bit more info on this wasp. It IS a native paper wasp, and thanks to the Australian Museum for their help in identifying it for me.

Here's what Pammy spotted earlier on: another little wasp nest being started on the Kalanchoe 'Copper Spoons' in our succulent patch.

This is an ideal spot for a nest, as far as we are concerned, as I never get that close to the Copper Spoons plant and so I am very unlikely indeed to ever disturb the wasps, and they in turn will remain, as they usually are, peaceful yet busy beneficial insects in our garden.

The other wasp nest outside our kitchen window is also in an ideal spot, high up on the window frame, on the side of the house where it's hard for people to blunder into them. Our kitchen window is also a sliding type, which slides from the other side, so the chance of a wasp ever making into the house, past the curtains, is virtually nil.

So this time they've chosen the sites for their new nests quite well. 

Over the years we have accidentally destroyed too many paper wasp nests, because they made them in spots where blundering human gardeners (ie, me) sometimes stick their stupid arms and hands. In 24 years here in our garden, I have been stung twice by our wasps, and both times were on the same day, in the same place. I hadn't realised our wasps had built a nest in our Grevillea, and so while pruning said Grevillea it took not one sting to alert me to the presence of a nest, but two. Talk about a slow learner!

By now regular readers would have guessed we do like a "live and let live" approach to all creatures great and small who we share our garden with. Poor old insects and spiders get a rough time from some otherwise nature-loving folk, who get creeped out by them. Pammy and I like our insects and spiders as much as our worms, lizards and birds.

Sure, the wasps are a higher risk factor but that doesn't mean peace is not possible.

Paper wasps are not aggressive if you don't disturb them. They are very like bees in many ways. Bees can sting if badly annoyed or if they feel threatened. So can paper wasps. 

(Admittedly, disturbing a whole, large nest of paper wasps, as I did once while trimming a murraya hedge with a powered hedge trimmer, does make them rather upset, with a cloud of black and yellow defenders buzzily filling the air, and so a rapid retreat, then staying out of their way for the next hour or so is a really, really good idea. Abandoning the hedge trimming altogether, or at least for a while, is also a good idea...) 

Besides, paper wasps are beneficial garden insects. Ours will be filling up their nests with insects they have caught in the garden, to provide a food supply when their babies hatch out. Many of the insects paper wasps catch are garden pests who eat our crops, such as caterpillars.

So, over 24 years with a policy of tolerating paper wasp nests as far as practicable, I have been stung twice, and both times it was my fault. I'm prepared to live with that kind of track record.

EDIT/UPDATE: a big THANKYOU to the Australian Museum (and Yvette Simpson, the Interpretive Officer there) for their help in making a positive ID of this wasp. I sent the Museum two of my photos, and Yvette says yes, it's a native paper wasp. She also supplied this excellent other link, if you want to read more on paper wasps.

http://www.brisbaneinsects.com/brisbane_vespoidwasps/PaperWasps.htm