On the Cusp of Winter

As I write this blog, it seems that winter is close by, ready to creep in one night and claim its rightful place in the sequence of the seasons.

I woke this morning to an overcast sky and the sweet smell of newly fallen rain in the air. Outside everything is damp and fresh and washed clean of any lingering dust.

May was strange, with a couple of record low temps then a quick bounce back to almost springlike conditions. None of the plants seem to know what they are supposed to be doing!

My garden is a mess of contradictions. The roses that dropped the blackspot covered leaves have begun to grow new ones and it looks quite surprising to see the bright reds and greens of the new foliage appearing in June when our thoughts would, under the natural order of things, be moving towards pruning and winter dormancy.

Long Tall Sally has grown a whole new set of leaves - this rose was totally bare a few weeks ago

My Hero

Lagerfeld

Lagerfeld is a rose I moved from the front garden a few years ago. At the time he appeared to be a fairly "delicate" rose, very scanty growth and only sporadic blooms. This year he has responded to vigorous pruning and is a much bigger bush and has produced many more flowers.

It's quite a paradox, the harder we prune the stronger the growth. The way this was explained to me is that survival is the natural tendency of all living things and roses are no exception. When we prune them hard, this triggers the survival mechanism and the rose replaces the lost branches with lots of new growth. In the wild, branches broken off by the elements are replaced and we are simply simulating this.

I've also been told that we should strike the crown quite firmly with the secateurs when pruning so as to stimulate new growth from the crown. This is a response to the "injury" sustained by the rose. Fascinating stuff!

Pope John Paul II

Pope John Paul II, managing a few blooms from his black plastic residence

Perfume Perfection

Perfume Perfection - even the spent blooms look beautiful

Hero (centre) and Leander (top, left and right)

Mrs John Laing

Love Potion

Love Potion is another rose I moved and pruned hard last winter. She has rewarded me for my efforts many times over.

Iceberg patio rose

Meanwhile the deciduous shrubs such as the Crepe Myrtles and Japanese Maple have left a carpet like layer of their discarded leaves on the ground, ready to be raked back onto the garden bed, to provide mulch now and nutrients for the soil later as they breakdown.

This weekend is the Queen's Birthday long weekend and we had planned to have the new soil for our rose garden delivered in the next day or so, so we could devote the weekend to barrowing it around to the back garden. Rain forecast from Friday until well into the next week so has already arrived and the soil delivery will need to be pushed back a few weeks rather than shovelling soggy, heavy soil.

It looks like we have a little hard work ahead of us (shovelling several metres of new soil) and I have a couple of hard decisions to make at the same time. I have two roses that were dug up and moved from the front garden, I think one is Souvenir de la Malmaison and the other Claire Rose (David Austin). These are quite old bushes and  haven't done too well in their pots this year and I need to decide whether they should have a place in the new rose garden, whether I give them another year, or even half year, in probation in pots or whether they get chopped up and go out in the compost bin.
 
In our side garden, the Camellia Japonicas are showing their first blooms. These now almost fill the width of the narrow garden they occupy, and an expedition to reach the furthest bush requires a combination of maneuvers involving trawling along, almost at ground level, and tangoing with the resident spiders.

Of all the plants in our garden, perhaps the Camellia serve the most important purpose.

Through lack of foresight, our home is built quite close to the northern boundary line, a problem compounded when our neighbours built their two storey house almost as close to that same boundary and then proceeded to construct an extensive back deck, 3 or 4 times the size of that in the plans we saw. The end result is that their deck was positioned so they could look straight into our dining room window. When the "multiple attractive climbing plants", that were to form a barrier to ensure privacy, were sold off in a garage sale, an unattractive, wooden, basket-weave style half wall was put in its place and that became the "view" from our dining room.

Fortunately, as soon as the boundary fences were in place, I planted a garden between our house and that side fence, a mere metre wide garden, which we named the Shade Garden because it receives sunlight only when the sun is directly overhead. My shrub of choice was Camellia Japonica and the five bushes have been steadily growing over the years. It took  almost 15 years for the Camellia beneath our dining room window, Debutante, to grow to a sufficient height  to cover the window but this has been achieved and I now trim the taller branches to keep them below the level of the eves and with each pruning these herbaceous saviours continue to bush out and produce a heavenly abundance of blooms, to be appreciated from both sides of the fence.

Camellia Japonica Debutante

The view from our dining room

Geraldton Wax "Dancing Queen"

Whenever I look at this Geraldton Wax, or Wax plant as they are also known, I think of my beautiful sister who delights in requesting that the Abba song by the same name be played at family weddings and parties and insisting that we all get up and dance. I think this song has a certain appeal to all generations and I smile when I think back to the time when this song was first released. (And yes, I know I'm conceding my age here!)

Hebe

This Hebe is weighted down by the rain drops that cling to the flowers and foliage. The wonderful colours are muted today by the grey and cloud-filled skies and fine drizzling mist of rain.