Sunday and all the rest

The traditional, indeed biblical idea of Sunday being a day of rest has quite an appealing sound to it. Day of rest... as in, 'doing nothing'. Must try it sometime, but I wonder if I'd get bored in half an hour? Probably.

Anyway there was no danger of doing nothing this morning, and nothing much happening here at Amateur Land. It is spring after all, there's a ripper of a mild sunny day on offer, and a garden barely half-way through the planned renovations.

I think there was a meeting in the shed last night,
where my pot of assorted salad seeds were slowly
winding their way towards germinating. The meeting
went something like this: "OK, it's agreed that we all
pop up, in unison, early Sunday morning. Jamie's
been checking on us daily, been nice with the water
spray, and he's getting a bit impatient (which isn't
the first time). So, when he opens the shed door on
Sunday morning we all yell out "Surprise!" in unison.
And that's exactly what happened, sort of.

Next stop, Marrickville Markets, to pick
up the Tiger Grass plants I ordered two
weeks ago from the nice guy there at
Swane's (yep, he's part of the well-known
gardening family). The terrible winds
of the last week had blown these plants
about a bit, but the soil surface has
plenty of new shoots popping up, and
they should get growing well in spring's
warm weather.

I like the Tiger Grass label. As the label says, it's an
alternative to bamboo, without the bad manners. 

This uninspiring shot represents the next hour or two's
work this Sunday, thoroughly digging over yet another
bed prior to planting being the main job. At the back,
centre, is Tibouchina 'Jules' which should grow to
1m high and wide. Near the front are two little mauve
lavenders, which will reach 60cm high and wide.
And dotted in between them are seedlings of a little
low-growing chrysanthemum with white flowers
which will fill the large gaps while the main players
reach their full size over spring, summer and autumn
(aren't I the optimistic one?). Fingers crossed yet again.

Impatience has few rewards, and so while the potted
Roma tomato is covered in flowers, that's all that is
happening there. Just flowers, but if I was a bee I
would definitely be visiting this guy. 

And while all the gardening was going on within view of her studio which overlooks the garden, Pammy was having her own version of a Sunday without rest. Head down, she's hard at work, doing even more paintings for her second solo art exhibition, which is at the Eden Gardens Garden Centre in October (where she staged her first solo show last year, in September).

In the meantime, Pammy is also part of another art exhibition which is currently showing here in Sydney, at Gallery Red in Glebe. This exhibition is called '31 Days' and it is a group show by several artists, all of whom did 31 paintings in the 31 days of July, to the very broad theme of 'The Space Between'. 

Pam based her 31 pieces on our road trip across the United States in September and October last year, which regular readers of this blog will probably remember. If you're in Sydney and want to check out this great little show, it's on until September 25, and is open Monday to Saturday (check the Gallery Red website for times). I'm floating somewhere between proud and thrilled about Pam doing these exhibitions, hence the shameless promotion on my little blog! Here are three of her pieces from the 31 Days show.

Waking from slumber

Yawn, stretch, roll over, back to sleep... who, what... what time is it? 
Oh, that's right, I'm a blogger, and I'm meant to do some blogging, at least occasionally. Been a while, hasn't it? Nuffink in July, and only one bread-baking post in June, and rainbow watching in May. Not much gardening at all. That's what life has been like for us, too. Not much gardening at all, despite life being busy.
Well, like my garden, which is slowly waking up now after a very quiet winter, I too am waking up from a long blogging snooze – and a long gardening snooze. So here's a little update on the astonishing lack of progress here in Amateur Land. 

Posting this photo almost feels like cheating, but
not quite. This is a freebie plant given to us recently
at a gardening function. It's from PGA and is called
'The Princess Lavender'. We brought it home already
in flower and since then it has started to bloom even
 more. While we can hardly take any credit for growing
it, at least we haven't killed it in the three weeks
it has been with us! That's a minor achievement.

You don't actually need to do any
 gardening to make a nasturtium flower.
The main job is regularly pulling out lots
of it to stop it taking over. Alas,
Pam likes nasturtiums, and every now
and then, in a moment of weakness,
so do I, but I am sure that's only because
I like Pam so much.

This is a bit more my pace at the moment: a
self-seeding, flowering weed. We only bought
one punnet of primulas, back in 1990 when we
started out gardening here. We were just foolish
kids, your honour – no-one told us not to do it! 
They've been weedily with us ever since. I stopped
trying to pull the seedlings out about 10 years ago
when I realised they had me beaten. And I don't
like pink, either. My little punishment, these guys.

Again, without any help from Mr Slacker, the
scadoxus bulbs are slowly coming up again.
Pictured below is what we're looking forward to
in late August or early September, which is
when this photo was taken two years ago.

A dazzling sight in bloom, these scadoxus flowers sit on
stalks about 18 inches (40cm) high and last for three
or four weeks. They look especially aflame in the late
afternoon light, they're the most radiant blooms I know.

But that's it for the flower show at the moment, not really all that much happening, apart from some tibouchinas which I am holding onto for a few photos later on.


The last time I did any 'real' garden blogging I was talking about garden makeovers and grand plans last autumn. Let's just say we're still in the planning stage... But last weekend I became fed-up with the relatively decrepit state of everything, especially the kitchen garden side of things, and so I actually made some progress there: ie, did some work

First of all I repotted our Thai makrut lime tree. It has
been in constant trouble all year, attacked by the dreaded
citrus leafminer insect, and so I've gone back to basics:
fresh potting mix, cut off the ugly bits, water and Seasol,
plus the magic ingredient – fingers crossed!

All my parsley had gone to seed and we barely had any, so buying a punnet of seedlings solved that shortage.

That same gardening function where they
handed out the lavender freebies also
yielded a Yates Roma tomato seedling,
so it is chilling out in midwinter in
the sunniest spot I can give it, waiting
for things to warm up in spring.
So far, so good, so here's hoping.

This strawberry patch is a self-seeded,
delicious event. It came up all by itself
from compost I had spread around this
area. We eat a lot of fresh strawberries
bought at the fruit shops, and so I can
only presume that one or two of the
hulled sections tossed into the compost
bin are responsible for this patch.
Like the tomatoes, so far so good. 

Self-sown herbs, too! This is a little patch
of chervil that has come up on its own.

The chervil is a potential weed, I suspect.
Pictured here it's at the base of one of
the birdbaths (guarded by Bartholemew,
our skateboarding gnome) and has been
in almost complete shade all winter.
Worst spot in the garden and it's happy.
Must be a weed!

The hellebores have all survived the disaster of the
total collapse of a wall-full of climbing fig on top of them 
(during a storm last February). I was unable to clear
the wreckage for about a week, and yet the tough
old hellebores survived this indignity. As for flowering
this winter, sorry, they're sulking, flowerless, once more.
Next to the hellebores a bird's nest fern seems to have
taken to its new spot, having been dug up and replanted
last autumn. I didn't expect it to live, but it's obviously
much tougher than I imagined.

However, the sad truth of our garden is that a lot of
it is still bare. This is the site of the future makeover,
and the only thing there at the moment is mulch, lots
of mulch. We still haven't really figured out what we
want to do with it, and so it's just $30 worth of mulch
keeping the weeds unhappy. The worms are loving it!

Meanwhile, across the path the succulents
are waiting for their assignments in this
much-promised, but not-happening, makeover.
They're all getting out of their pots and going
into the ground, one of these days. As soon
as we come up with a plan we both like.

There's all sorts of colourful foliage soaking up the sun.

Including these cute little munchkins.

A while ago Pam bought home a potted
Tibouchina 'Jules', and it has been flowering
its head off ever since. I think she has subtly
laid claim to having a good purple presence
in our made-over garden, as we already
have another, smaller-growing, Tibouchina
called 'Groovy Baby', coming into purple
flower as well. I can take a hint.

There are all sorts of reasons behind our lack of progress on the garden makeover, several out of our control, but one of them is very happily of our own doing. Pam is flat out painting right now. 


She has two exhibitions coming up in the second half of this year. In October she's repeating her successful solo art exhibition in the art gallery at the Eden Gardens complex in Sydney's North Ryde. She sold stacks of paintings first time round last year, and you can count on me to promote it here when we get closer to the date.


But before that she is taking part in a group exhibition at Gallery Red in Glebe. It's called '31 Days', and for this Pam and five other artists have each done 31 paintings in the 31 days of July. (And that's a lot of work!) The theme for the whole exhibition is 'The Space Between', which is broad, really broad, but who wants to hem in the creative spirit too tight? Not me. 


For 'the space between' theme Pam is using our travels across the United States last year, and so to sign off today I think a bit of shameless self-promotion is in order. So here's one of Pam's images from the 31 Days exhibition. 

You can pop over to visit Gallery Red's
Facebook page to find out more about
the 31 Days exhibition. It begins in late
August, and anyone can pop in to visit.
Here's a link to the Facebook page:
http://on.fb.me/MVH41Y
And here's a link to the 31 Days preview
http://on.fb.me/QAKZ5K

That's groovy, baby

Sydney's summers are very prettily bookended with purple showers. In spring (November usually) backyards throughout the city shimmer with the pale-purple blooms of magnificent, spreading jacaranda trees. And now, in autumn, it's the turn of the tibouchinas to provide a similar carnival of colour to farewell the summer. You can find tibouchinas in bloom in virtually every street here right now, and their version of purple is a stronger, bolder, more tropical hue, and the plants themselves are a fair bit smaller than the stately jacarandas.

The problem for me is that until now, I have run out of space in my garden and don't have anywhere to plant a tibouchina, but now all that has changed. A very small dwarf form has just been launched on the market, and I just planted one this morning. And my darling wife Pammy is so very pleased about all this, as it's another one of 'her' plants in our garden.

If some of you are saying to yourself "Tibouchina, never heard of them" perhaps their former name of Lasiandra might ring a bell? Like the jacarandas, tibouchinas are also originally from South America, but they are very much at home here in Sydney's warm climate, and they love things to get even warmer, thriving all along the subtropical coastline up to Brisbane and beyond. When in bloom, the trees are virtually covered in these simple, open blooms which are about two to three inches across.

This one belongs to my neighbour across the road and it's the typical size you see here, about 3-5 metres tall on average, but some species can grow a fair bit bigger, say 8-10 metres, in an ideal spot.

While jacarandas are a popular street tree in many cities and towns here in Australia and also overseas (eg, Pretoria in South Africa), tibouchinas are not used so often in this way, but about two suburbs away from me there is one street lined with tibouchinas, and this is how it looked this morning. It's no wonder Pammy likes these plants, but we just don't have space for even one extra 4 metre tall tree. And then I worked on an article in our magazine about the new dwarf tibouchinas, and when Pam saw little 'Groovy Baby', that was it. We were getting one.

This is such a new release that it's only coming out in limited numbers this autumn, and more are scheduled to be produced in time for next spring. In fact, none of our local nurseries had even heard of it, but I tracked down the supplier, spoke to the sales guy, gave his details to our local nursery, waited two weeks, paid $10.95 for it on Thursday, and I planted it today.

'Groovy Baby' promises to grow just 60cm (two feet) tall and 80cm wide, but I don't trust or believe plant labels, and so I am hoping it might even stretch to 80cm tall and 1m wide if I look after it very well. There are other dwarf tibouchinas around here in Australia, such as 'Jules' which reaches about 1 metre tall (but often exceeds that) and the new Jazzie and Carol Lyn, both of which are a bit larger than Jules (about 1.5 to 2m). All of them would be too big for the spot I have available.

Planting was easy, but I do have one or two little planting tips for shrubs which might be useful to someone about to plant a shrub or tree.

1. Don't add anything to the planting hole: no fertiliser, no compost, nothing. Sometimes too much fertiliser can burn tender young plant roots, but at other times an over-fertilised planting hole simply stops the roots from growing down and out in search of food. If roots are already surrounded by food, why go elsewhere?

2. The ideal size for a planting hole is the same depth of the pot's root ball (in this case about 6-8 inches) but at least twice as wide as the pot's root ball. So, don't dig too deep but by all means loosen all the soil around the plant, get rid of rocks, weeds etc.

3. Don't cover over the existing root-ball's soil surface with any more soil. Try to get the plant into the ground so its soil surface is the same as the surrounding soil.

Having managed all that, I watered the plant in well with a watering can mixture of a seaweed solution (in this case, Seasol), then I mulched the whole area. I won't be feeding the plant at all until it shows some signs of growth. At that point I'll give it some slow-release fertiliser. It has a few flower buds on it, so we're hoping for a early splotch or two of purple from our little 'Groovy Baby'.

And right now, when I say 'little' I mean teeny weeny. When it grows up it's going to fill that space, and so my job will be to regularly trim back the ever-encroaching grevillea on the left, and the thyme motherlode that's just barely visible on the right, to give Groovy Baby the space to get going.

Autumn is probably the very best time to plant things here in Sydney. It's a mild season and the soil is warm, so plants settle in well. Later on, our winters are mercifully mild and so by the time spring comes around I am hoping Groovy Baby will really get growing, and by this time next year Pammy will finally have that dazzling purple patch she has waited for so long.

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.