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.

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.

Morning bloomshine

I wandered outside this morning, camera in hand, planning to get some more photos of the flowers on my succulents for an upcoming post on them. But I was so distracted, captivated is more like it, by some of the other flowers in bloom now that here I am blogging about them instead.

The star turn right now is Pam's dark-leafed pelargonium. You can barely see the leaves not only because they're so dark but also because of the covering of dazzling pinky-salmon blooms. "It needs repotting" says she who owns the plant, to he who has to keep it happy. Not until if finishes flowering, Pammy, and that won't be for a while.

I blog on so often about the poppy patch that I feel like I must be boring everyone silly, but it's such a source of pleasure here. They've been blooming for months now, and they won't stop for at least another month at least. Here's one that's only minutes from popping, next to a self-sown 'wild' one (these always show up during the last month or so of each poppy season).

Deep inside each poppy bloom is a lolly shop for bees. While bees usually just dab their paws to get some pollen from other blooms, I often see bees actually rolling around in the wide dishes of poppy pollen and covering their whole bodies in fluffy yellow dust. They look like they're in a delirium of pleasure.

Looking into the wild poppy reveals complexity and mystery aplenty.

If it's possible for the sage flowers to look better than they did two days ago, when I last blogged about them, then they do.

Twin throats of sage are ready for insecty visits.

While I'm admiring purpley-blue blooms, I might as well toss in yet another flower of our newish Tibouchina 'Groovy Baby', which started blooming in late autumn and is still at it in early spring. This is a new dwarf tibouchina which grows only 60cm tall, and so far it has been utterly prolific with the flowers, and it has also managed to grow a bit too.

Well, sometime soon I'll finish the photos I need for that succulent flower posting, but as for what to blog about next, I voted with my camera lens. I blame Pam's pelargonium for starting it. It really is dazzling right now. It's a plant she brought back from the Florafest Festival in 2009, and while it looked quite nice back then it has really come into its own this year. That happens with some plants. They take a year or two in their new home before they announce to the world "hey, I like it here."

A bouquet of flowers

Some collective nouns do their job quite well, such as a gaggle of geese, but the idea of a 'bunch' of flowers has never sounded right to me. Far too plain a word for such a lovely thing. However, a 'bouquet' of flowers is a lovely word, and so here's a little photographic bouquet of flowers in bloom this afternoon in our early-spring garden here in Sydney.

Geranium 'Philippe Vapelle', the only survivor from a group of six or so geraniums I bought at a flower show five years ago. I was told they like a colder climate than Sydney's and whoever told me so was right, but at least Monsieur Vapelle is flying the flag for true Geraniums here in Sin City.

Good old alyssum, just scatter a packet of seeds in a long, low planter and it looks after itself. Of course you have to put up with it self-seeding into cracks in the paving and all sorts of other spots, but I don't mind. And it does smell nice when you're weeding in its vicinity.

The calendulas are doing a lovely job making the spinach patch brighter, and as I've grown these from seed I'm just that little bit more pleased about them.

One of the bonuses you get with seed-grown plants is that they occasionally toss up weirdos, such as the very pale lemon double calendula. Yes, it's a confused mess of a thing but it's my seed-grown confused mess, and it's welcome here next to the spinach patch.

This is another of that category of plants which I frequently refer to in this blog as 'Pam's plants'. It's a dark-leafed pelargonium which sends up almost pink flowers which in certain lights look almost salmon-pink. However, Pam likes it for its dark leaves, and I'm growing it in one corner of 'Succulent City' where it adds some welcome contrast and colour in amongst the succulents.

Also in amongst the succulents, and completely uninvited, are the primulas, which I foolishly bought many years ago, and which self-seed prolifically and come up everywhere each spring. A pretty weed at best which I try to keep down to a few splotches of pink here and there.

And finally, my sage bush is in bloom. Though this is my culinary herb bush, not a flowering type, someone forgot to tell my sage that it doesn't have to flower prolifically, because it's a herb, and yet it does. (Probably thinks "Everything else is flowering, well so will I.") As soon as it finishes flowering, which will be in a few weeks' time, I'll get out the secateurs and cut the whole thing back by about one-third. This brings on lots of new leafy growth and it always looks just yummy by late summer and autumn.

Up close, each little blue sage flower is reminiscent of an orchid bloom, with its spotty tongue leading down to a cavernous throat, with wings on each side looking as if they are ready to paddle foolish insects inside.

Viewed side-on the sage bloom is not quite so pretty but is beautifully complex nevertheless. (Reminds me of that Rolling Stones tongue logo). At the end of flowering all that's left are the muddy-red cups which held the blooms, and at this stage the plant truly looks exhausted, clapped-out and half-way to carking it. That's when the magic of the secateurs is needed. This renews its mission to be a fragrant, beautiful and useful member of the garden, which it is. Even though it's a humble herb, it's actually one of the stars here in Amateur Land.

Finally, if any readers of this blog are in the Sydney, Central Coast or Hunter regions, the annual Florafest flower and garden show is on again at Kariong near Gosford, and I'll be manning the Burke's Backyard stand next Saturday, so drop by and say hello if you are planning on checking out the show. Every time I go to Florafest I tell myself that "this year I'm definitely not buying anything because there's no room to put it". Last year I only bought three clivias and three ornamental gingers, so that was fairly restrained. Who knows what I'll bring home this time (or, for that matter, what Pam will bring home, too!)

Some like it hot

There's one sure-fire way to turn me into a lazy lay-about on the weekend, and that's heat, and today there's just the right dose of it – 30°C (86°F). I managed to score one garden brownie point this morning before I wilted - I trimmed the hedge which screens the composting area. But then my inbuilt, generations-old Celtic heat sensors went off and said "it's a wee bit tae hot for thee laddie" and so I have downed tools until late afternoon at the earliest, maybe for the day. And with a cup of tea to cool me, the fan on and a bit of blogging to catch up with, I thought I'd admire some of the plants which, unlike me, actually enjoy the heat on a day like today.

In the background is the crisply trimmed hedge with which I earned my brownie point this morning, and in the foreground is our frangipani, which can take any dose of heat Sydney cares to throw at it. Sydney has the ideal climate for frangis, they're everywhere in this town, and the ones doing best are usually the most neglected. I try my best to neglect mine at all times, so the regime here is simple: no fertiliser, no water except rain. Nothing. It's working so far.

I only planted this zucchini seedling two weeks ago and this morning it's having its first babies. Outrageous behaviour! Zucchinis love sun, but not the humidity that comes later on in January and February, so I am going to let this crop like mad from now until New Year then call it quits. Besides, we're 'zucchinied-out' by then.

My Beaver Lodge Slicer tomatoes are belting along in the heat. These are meant to be rapid-cropping 'cool climate' tomatoes suited to Canada (the seedlings were planted on October 3, six weeks ago). I thought I'd try them as a fast-cropper before all the summer bugs arrive to chomp our tomato crops. So far so good, but I was in roughly the same position last year with other varieties, just weeks before most of my crop succumbed to a mystery disease. Boo hoo! Glutton for both punishment and home-grown tomatoes, I am.

My wife Pammy asked me to repot into a much bigger pot this, her favourite pelargonium with the dark leaves and the salmon-pink flowers, as it is rapidly getting bigger in all the heat and sunshine. The trouble is that I repotted it only a month ago, and that was about a week after she first brought it home. This plant really loves the sun, but something tells me I had better keep this plant happy and healthy at all times, as it is her favourite child.

Our New South Wales Christmas Bush is in full sun-loving 'bloom' right now. In the same way that a bougainvillea's colourful 'flowers' aren't really flowers and are in fact coloured bracts, so too the NSW Christmas Bush. Its flowers are white and small, but the bracts are a ruddy pink, lovely and plentiful. It's a bit early for Christmas, but it always colours up at this time of year for us.

If I'm celebrating sun-lovers I have to slip in at least one succulent photo. Needless to say all my potted succulents are thriving in the sunshine.

Finally, I thought I'd finish off with high hopes for my favourite sun-loving flowers, blue salvias. I've just planted a batch of seedlings a few weeks ago and they're all still small but are growing well, loving the heat and sunshine, as salvias do. As this sparse patch of mulch dotted with tiny seedlings is hardly the prettiest way to end a celebration of sun-lovers, I thought I'd dip into the archives and drag out a couple of shots from last year of what I am hoping for again from my beautiful, sunny salvias.

Essentially this: pleasing light green foliage and spires galore of cool blue flowers.

But get up really close and a salvia blue is as cool and refreshing as an ice-cube.

Speaking of ice-cubes, I think I'll tinkle up something cooler to drink now and sit back in my cane armchair in the shade with a book and do very little for the next few hours, apart from looking up occasionally and watching my garden soak up the sunshine. As far as I am concerned, a garden isn't quite complete without a comfy chair.