Buzzzzzz

Buzzzzzz

Tuesday, 29 April 2014

A Little Bit of This and a LIttle Bit of That - More Autumn Ramblings


Almost at the end of April, we're experiencing the tug-of-war between summer and winter. Warmer days and cooler days and nights weave their way in and out of our weather patterns, as if some invisible marker was being pulled to and fro over an imaginary line on the ground that represents our days.

There are those days that we seize and fill our washing lines to capacity and then there are those when we are grateful to snuggle up with a blanket and a cup of hot chocolate and catch up on a movie or two.

Some nights we can smell the wood smoke from the wood fires warming homes in the gully behind us. Soon this will happen every night. Although Sydney is not cold by polar standards, for all my North American friends, it's really more what you're used to than relative cold!

All around are the signs of things winding down before the onset of winter. The calla lilies have yellowed and are drooping, the  leaves on my frangipani tree have started to wither and will soon begin to fall. 

Three small and slightly nibbled Granny Smith apples have appeared on the ground beneath my apple tree. I assume our visiting birds are responsible, although I had no idea the apple tree was still carrying any apples at all, I had thought all had already been consumed.

This year's apple crop


One of the apple bandits


Apple bandits (AKA Crimson Rosellas)

I figured I might as well give the apples to the birds and the Rainbow  Lorikeets were quite
impressed.Lorikeets are essentially fruitivors so the apples are really better for them than the
seed we leave out for the other parrots

The Lorikeets seem to be very hierarchial, the senior birds get to eat first

They also startle easily, once one goes, the whole group departs.

When the perceived danger has passed they soon return

And await their turn to eat



A hungry Galah


Froggie Love - I so hoped he'd oblige me and sit on the lily pad, but frogs have their own ideas on such things


All around our us, Tibouchinas are in full bloom, their vibrant purple hues demand admiration in many gardens and in ours, my own babies are putting on their own show for us. Tibouchina Groovy Baby still stands at only around 25cm and the flowers seem way too big for such a tiny plant to carry. Fully grown she will reach around 40cm, she is flowering her little heart out and laden with many more buds just waiting to unfurl their brilliant contribution to our autumn display.

Tibouchina Groovy Baby


Tibouchina Peace Baby will grow taller in time and her blooms seem in better proportion to her height. I love the contrast of the pink and purple stamens against the fresh white petals. My bush lost a fair bit of foliage over summer and as a result resembles a lanky teenager at the moment and I think a judicious trim once flowering has ceased may be in order. Even so, these brilliant flowers make it impossible to walk past without a second glance.

Tibouchina Peace Baby



This particular Blue Frills fuchsia flower is massive.
I've photographed it with another Blue Frills flower to show the size difference


Fuchsia Pink Ruffles

Fuchsia Heidi Ann

My Rescue Fuchsia in the front, Fuchsia Brian C Morrison at the back


I am always amazed to find my lilacs spot flowering. Although they do this with some regularity, this year seems to be the best, perhaps a pay back for the extra effort I've given this garden bed this year.

Early Lilac spot flowering

More Lilac spot flowering

Lilac Buds

The last of the Geisha Girl Flowers,  the flowers brown and  fade, then berries come to take their place.
The berries on the Geisha Girls
Yesterday's surprise was this humongous flower on Mister Lincoln, and it had a friend. After sulking for the past
 18 months he has once again grown higher than the top of the window and has produced some amazing blooms,
 this one dwarfs my hand.
Mister Lincoln, so fragrant and so superb, now I remember what I love about this rose and why he has a place in my garden.
Gertrude Jekyll (David Austin) has also been very quiet, now erupting into action with this magnificent bloom.
L'Amour (Brindabella) - so delicate, simply stunning!.
Mister Lincoln & L'Amour - it's always a delight to bring the garden indoors. L'Amour is very fragrant but you need
to smell her first because Mister Lincoln makes her seem insipid by comparison.


This is a time that the roses are able to shine, gone is the scorching midday heat. This is also a time for forward planning. We've been digging in the new rose garden ("we" being my other half and myself) and the lower level retaining rocks are now all in place which is a massive achievement that has, with one thing or another, taken us 5 or 6 months to reach. More soil will need to be brought in soon then the long suffering pot rose population can move into their permanent garden.

Tuesday, 22 April 2014

Internet Gardening

Is it here yet?

I hurry down the stairs to peer through the a clear section of the leadlight glass panel in my front door and eagerly scan the portico outside for my much awaited package.

Nope. Not yet. Maybe tomorrow.




 "YES!!" I punch the air with the enthusiasm of a bowler who has just taken a wicket and stolen victory in The Ashes, it's finally arrived. After a week or more of anticipation, my new frangipani is waiting on my doorstep.










My new Frangipani Salsa, closely resembles a stick at this stage











Whilst buying plants by mail order is not a new concept, the internet has taken it to a whole new level.























As a newly wed, in our first home, gardening mail orders were available, although these were mostly limited to spring bulbs and bare-rooted roses and on those horrible, humid days in late February/early March, I would sit indoors and pore over the catalogues, fill out my order form and post it, dreaming of how beautiful my garden might look next spring/summer.

Many, many years later mail order catalogues do still exist, although ordering through websites is much more common.

The internet has radically changed how the mail order plant companies do business. A website can be constructed and maintained relatively cheaply and often by people without extensive computer training and thus many smaller specialist nurseries can sell via the internet, giving them access to additional business, way outside their local geographic area. This means that businesses can be working and raising their stock well away from metropolitan areas and still sell their products to a wide range of customers, provided they have access to a reliable delivery network. In fact this is the primary means of selling for some businesses.

For consumers these are very exciting times. We now have access to many more gardening options than ever before. We can research pretty much anything and everything in our own time and our own homes.

Jasminum Sambac at the Sydney Botanical Gardens










On a visit to the Sydney Botanical Gardens, I noticed an adorable form of Jasmine that I had not seen before so I took a photo of the plant and its label, and was able to do a quick search on my computer that night and find that the Mudbrick Cottage Nursery in Queensland had them in stock.  A couple of clicks later and I've bought a couple of plants and they are on their way to me!







My Jasminum Sambac with a few months of growth

The fragrance of these flowers is exotic,
evoking the taste of  my favourite tea,
Green Dragon Eyes (with Jasmine)
The flowers turn a delightful shade of aubergine as they age

There are online forums for people to ask gardening questions and have other internet users share their own experiences, not to mention websites that cater to bloggers who want to share their own garden pictures and information with their family, friends and even with people all around the world whom they have never met.

But the internet has put pressure on the traditional garden nurseries, many of whom have also gone electronic (to some extent) and developed their own online campaign strategies to reach us through the internet.

What are pluses and minuses to buying over the internet?

On the plus side is the convenience. You can shop at any time of the day, or night, in the comfort of your own home. You can shop for bargains and you can spend hours researching, if you want to, before making a purchase and your new plants will be delivered to your door. This can be a great way to obtain lots of plants at relatively cheap prices.

On the minus side, the plants you buy will frequently be quite small so the "bargain" you think you are getting may take a year or more to reach the same size as that plant you saw in your local nursery. It also may not flower for a season or two and should you have a problem, you'll probably won't get the same level of advice from your internet supplier that you would from your local nursery, who has experience with the conditions in your area and therefore in your garden.






This is a recent internet plant purchase. It consists mainly of 5cm tubers that arrived packed in their fully customised plastic transit containers. It's amazing just how small and insignificant my new plants look in their tiny tubes and travel packaging.







And even more amazing how much bigger these same plants look once potted up into larger containers.

Potting up tubers is one of my favourite garden things to do, perhaps this is why I tend to buy so many plants this way.

I love taking the tiny plants and placing them into bigger lodgings and moving them to my sheltered new plant area where they can grow a little bigger and get used to being Sydney plants before they are launched into the garden.

Because my garden is still a fair way from being ready for them to move in, they have the luxury of having some growing time before they need to be planted.



4 months on my Frangipani stick  has grown some leaves.

Because these are tropical plants, I won't be planting this baby until next spring, when all risk of frosts has passed. In the interim I can move the pot around, into a more protected place should I need to.

In a few weeks these leaves will fall and I will once again have a Frangipani stick but the reward will be greater next spring/summer when I might even be favoured with some flowers!

I chose to buy "Salsa" frangipani via mail order rather than simply buying a plant from the  nursery up the road (for about the same price I could have bought a bigger plant [with lots of leaves and maybe also with flowers]), because I had very specific size requirements and most generalist nurseries only stock a limited range.  It will be planted in my front garden in an area that has limited space In years to come it will provide summer shade to plants beneath and protect them from searing midday sun, which a frangipani will love. It will happily absorb whatever the sun throws at it and in winter it will shed its leaves and the plants beneath will receive the gentler winter sun.  Anything growing larger than about 3-4 metres high x 3-4 metres wide would be too big. "Salsa" is said to grow to 3 metres high x 3 metres wide (in tropical Far North Queensland)  so maybe a little less in Sydney,  Most full sized frangipanis grow up to 5 metres, or more and the dwarfs around 1-2 metres so "Salsa" is a good choice for this space. Frangipanis are tough once established and quite drought tolerant, their root system is compact and non-invasive and they strike easily from cuttings.

Sacred Garden Frangipanis in QLD offers an enormous range of frangipanis, including dwarf and evergreen varieties, for sale, which they have sourced from all over the world. They also provide lots of helpful information for each cultivar. If frangipanis are your passion then their website is definitely worth a look.

I'm essentially a patient gardener. I have realised that gardening is a lot like life. We need to enjoy the journey rather than the completion (for who wants their life to be completed?) and although we need to have long and short term plans and goals for both our gardens and our lives, progress is better measured over months and seasons rather than over days and weeks and we should try to find the time to enjoy and appreciate at least one thing each day.

Oh, and we mustn't forget to take lots of "before" photos because it's important to keep on looking back over our shoulders just so we can see how far we've come.

Tuesday, 15 April 2014

Rain, Rain, Go Away?

Our current weather patterns of persistent drizzly rain on the back of months and months of constant sunshine remind me of my grandfather. Apparently he was renown for saying "Rain always follows a drought". I am not sure why he said this, besides stating the obvious. But he did have some funny sayings and expressions and I feel like a malcontent complaining about the rain!

I've heard that wet weather was invented so gardeners have time to catch up on housework and other mundane chores and I've certainly spent my time of late this way. After many years in the one house we've accumulated a huge amount of clutter and surplus possessions that I have been sorting, culling and finding new homes for.

It has been weeks since I've had to water the garden and this is a welcome break after so many hours spent handwatering over summer in order to keep my plants alive. The soil in the gardens is now quite soft and easy to turn and we've taken advantage of those few fine days here and there to do some more work on reclaiming our new rose garden, although the anarchist weeds are still attempting a garden coup.

Just over a week ago we changed our clocks at the end of daylight saving and this, and the constant cloud cover, has made our days seem so much shorter already. The temperatures have been much lower, rarely making it past the mid twenties. Often we wake to sunshine, only to have it fall away to developing rain an hour or so after.

Taking advantage of a rare patch of clearish sky, I grabbed my camera and headed out see what was new in the garden.

The white salvia seems to be a bee magnet

The garden birds are stealing the fibres from my hanging baskets, strand by strand. I guess they consider this to be an ideal nest construction material.



On reflection, I must vote the Angelonias, Angelonia angustifolia, as the unsung garden heros this year. These cute little perennials, somewhat resembling snap dragons and growing approximately 20cm high in neat clumps 30-50 cm wide, have really impressed me. They are drought resistant and even cope with difficult soil and seem to have been flowering constantly since the spring. Last year I bought a purple and a white, this year I added a pink one to my collection. The white appears to be a little less robust and slower growing than the other two colours but having said this, mine is still alive and doing well. I've put a couple of pieces broken off by the wind into soil and they've quickly taken root and grown into viable plants. Best of all they are pet safe and I know I can grow them anywhere in my garden without putting my felines at risk should they choose to graze.

Angelonia Archangel Purple

Angelonia Angel Basket Pink


Angelonia Archangel White
The resilient roses have dumped their black-spot afflicted leaves and, although they look a little bare at the moment, are busily growing some replacements and new flower buds are beginning. Today I've deadheaded them and given them the last lot of rose food for this flowering season.

Blueberry Hill has almost totally obscured the bird bath.

Delicious has a massive bouquet of buds just beginning to burst open

Delicious



Bonica's sprawled growth is topped by luxurious blooms

Bonica, showing some remnant blackspot affected foliage

Brilliant Pink Iceberg

Brilliant Pink Iceberg

Brilliant Pink Iceberg


Meanwhile the fuchsias seem to be loving both the weather and their new spot at the front of the cubby.

One of my "Rescue" Fuchsias


This Rescue Fuchsia is a true beauty, with its long and slender petals
Brian C Morrison

Brian C Morrison



Heidi Ann
Pink Ruffles




In the front garden the onion weed is doing particularly well and must once again remove the flower heads or have even more of them next season!

The Hiryu camellia sasanqua hedge has burst into flower and is looking amazing, despite its out-of-season pruning in mid January.

The Camellia Sasanqua Hiryu Hedge

Hiryu

The Endless Summer Hydrangeas, true to their name have begun their autumnal flowering while the traditional varieties have begun to enter their dormant phase. Blushing Bride and Original both have two or three flowers in the making and Twist N Shout is following closely behind them. The foliage on these plants is now becoming larger as the soft stems begin to harden up and they are able to support more weight.

Hydrangea Endless Summer - Original

Hydrangea Endless Summer - Blushing Bride

Blushing Bride's summer flowers have begun to turn a tawny red

The apple tree has some flowers, although this seems a little out of season to me.

Apple Blossom

The Kangaroo Paw Anigozanthos Bush Pearl is also in flower, I love the little yellow faces amongst the pink. This variety is part of the Bush Gems range and quite hardy (I don't have a very good track record with Kangaroo Paws).

Kangaroo Paw



And the Begonias are also looking good.





The White Banksia Roses have gone crazy and the obelisk is almost covered. I can't wait to see them in full bloom next spring.

Rosa Banksia Alba


My old favourite, Cecile Brunner is also doing better following a very hard prune last winter. Although I don't think she gets anywhere near as much sunlight as she'd like, her overall shape and flowering is much improved.  I adore her tiny fairy like blooms seeming to float on slender graceful stems and delicate fragrance. As a child, there was one growing beside the footpath at the front of an old abandoned house on my way home from school. I would often pick a flower or two to give to my mother who has a special affection for this rose as it was what she carried in her wedding bouquet.

Cecile Brunner Rose with Hydrangea Blushing Bride

Cecile Brunner