Four weeks in one day

We Sydneysiders can be quite oddly proud of our rain at times. We get quite a lot of rain, especially for such a sunny city, so how do you combine lots of sunshine with lots of rain? Easy ... just make sure the rain buckets down when it does so.

This morning is a classic example: a whole average month's worth of rain (83mm for November) in a couple of hours in several parts of Sydney. My how it rained (and still is)! As a rain radar fan, I just have to share this random shot of our fair town this morning.

The red and orange bits show the heaviest rain, and this morning they are doing their thing complete with thunder and lightning flashes; at its peak the grumbly bits seemed to be about 10 seconds apart. It was a good one, if you were safe inside your house that is.

All the truck and delivery drivers, commuters, public transport staff, homeless people and emergency services workers had a different, more scary experience, of course, so all I can do is hope they got through it OK.

But here in selfish little gardener-who-works-from-home land, it was mostly perverse fun.

(I should at this stage put in a special mention for art teachers, too, such as Pammy. She is conducting a watercolour workshop this morning on, ironically enough ... skies and clouds, and so her mobile phone has been running hot with text messages from students asking whether the workshop is still on. It is, and god bless their cotton socks, all of them are still attending, and with help from her loyal driver and husband, Pammy will have to make the dash to the studio a couple of streets away where she conducts her classes.)

Click on this photo and should come up as a big, wide, soggy panorama. No need to water the garden this morning!

This downpour is perfect timing for our garden. I spent all of Sunday pulling out weeds, spreading mulch, and adding some fragrant Dynamic Lifter (chicken poo) organic pellets here and there. Thanks Huey for the perfect timing. Garden health is rated good right now.

This soggy sight is the other side of the garden, and in the middle foreground, that little bare patch of ground with green seedlings coming up is an experiment with seeds. Last year I grew little Zinnia linearis there, and they flowered all summer long. At the end of summer I harvested the seed heads, popped them into paper bags to dry off in the shed over winter, and so a month or so ago I scattered the seedy contents of the paper bags over the bare ground, watered it well that day and every day for the next two weeks, and lo and behold I have stacks of zinnia babies coming up.

The other great thing about very rainy days is the opportunities it provides to amateur photographers like me. Leaves and water are a magical combo, such as this mini lake perched precariously on the tough, strong leaf of our potted fig tree.

The other photogenic thing about rain is the sight of usually glamorous garden beauties drooping and drenched with rain. This NSW Christmas Bush, also in a pot, is looking truly gorgeous in the late November sunshine, but even in the aftermath of today's storm it's still lovely to behold.

So don't just stand there at your window looking out at your soggy mess. Get out there in amongst it; you'll get some great photos and see a side of your garden that only happens now.

If that sounds weird, don't worry. I'm from Sydney, we like our rain. We're strange that way.

(Not) doing the rounds

Well, I was going to write this blog posting two days ago, while the rain was still falling. And I was going to start it with something like "it's been 900 days since the rain began falling, or at least it feels that long ..." but things got away from me. 

And now today the sun is out, the sky is blue and Huey the Rain God is having a good old chuckle at my expense. Very funny Huey. Love your work.

But truly rooly, the non-stop month of rain that was March 2017 was getting to me, as a gardener. There wasn't much to do, I found that I was getting out of the habit of doing my normal "morning rounds". It was so wet outside that I stayed inside and just looked out, most mornings.

All that is over now. It seems to be turning into a more normal April. Our local newspaper informed me that Sydney has already had half its 12-month average of rainfall in the first three months of the year. So a not-so-wet April and May would be a welcome gift to autumn.

As you can see from the panorama shot above, it's not as if the garden is suffering from all the rain. If you look closely it's not thriving especially well, either. That only happens when there is plenty of sunshine, as well as lots of rain.

Our newest jewel, the baby frangipani, is doing what all good Sydney frangipanis do: it's coping well with whatever Sydney's weather gods dish out.

Various flowers have taken a beating in the constant rain, but all foliage is thriving. A long time ago in this blog I spent about 20 photos and even more words documenting the various different shades of green and greeny-blue/bluey-green we have growing here, and this one photo is a summary of that notion. A beautiful colour, green.

The lemon grass loved the rain, but it would rather be somewhere warmer, like South-East Asia. This lovely plant has become on of my favourites in the garden, once it has grown its summer crown of fragrant, willowy straps.

Every year in autumn the grapevine growing on top of the pergola belonging to our neighbours, Michael and Soula, finally scrambles its way onto our olive and murraya trees, but this year is its best effort ever. The vines have made it over the top of the olive tree and are now cascading down the other side. In late autumn Michael always cuts the vines back, and I get out my extension loppers and trim off the remnants dangling over my side, so order will be restored in winter.

And so the seasons roll on, but I would like it known that the first month of autumn 2017 has been a soggy one. I'm looking forward to getting back into the routine of doing the morning rounds. First item on the agenda is pulling weeds. Lots of weeds.

Soggy = Lazy

I suppose I should try to feign disappointment, even though I'm pleased that it's raining. "Oh darn and drat, it's raining today and so I'll have to put off doing all those boring garden jobs I had on my list for today - like trimming the hedges."

Reeks with insincerity, doesn't it? Yes I am pleased. And it's great to have the garden naturally watered by Hughie the Rain God. There really is something extra in rainwater than tap water doesn't offer. Plants just launch ahead in growth after a rainy day.

And so I have limited myself to soggy day pottering, pulling weeds foolish enough to show themselves, taking photos of raindrops on foliage... you know, soggy day lazy stuff.   

Raindrops on my Tiger Grass. Click on this photo to make it
come up bigger on screen and you can see its fine green riblets. 

This is the hedge I'm avoiding today. Lush green unruly
assaulter of passers-by, Sydney's favourite hedge plant,
Murraya paniculata, also called orange jessamine.
Soon, soon, I'll trim you soon. When the sun comes out! 

Water turns to gel once it hits this soft-fleshed succulent. 

Lovely big fig leaves, and fruit forming too.

Lettuce always looks lovely in the rain.

Here's a job lazy bones could do: thin out the lamb's lettuce
(ie corn salad, mâche) seedlings to give the remaining ones
room to spread. This wide shallow pot should only have
4-6 plants here, and at the moment it looks like 46.

So glad to see the Thai lime happy. Nothing
to do here, just move right along, folks...

Tomato Numero Uno is coming into full colour now, all that
is wrong is its shape. It's meant to be an egg-shaped Roma
tomato, and it looks more like an oversized cherry. Most of
the others are egg-shaped. The first few aren't.

The NSW Christmas bush is starting to lay on the festive
colour a month ahead of schedule, as it does every year.

And popping up over the fence is my
neighbour Nick's Justicia Carnea, doing what
it does so well this time every year. This is
the ideal lazy gardener's flower, as I don't
plant it, water it, worry about or prune it.
But I do get to enjoy it all the same. Thanks Nick!

So, when the sun comes out so might I, but right now I have books to read, cups of tea to drink and a bit of feet-up rest to enjoy. Can't work in the garden all the time. As far as I am concerned, just sitting out there, doing nothing but enjoying the garden on a rainy day is still gardening! In fact it's one of the best bits.

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!