Africanaussie

At this time of year the gardening slows down.  The things that grow during the wet season just manage on their own, and I often turn my attention to doing things inside the house. - with the aircon going!  As I mentioned previously I discovered a wonderful organization in Jacksonville that trains and prepares survivors of the sex trade to enter the business world.  You can read more about  my adventure into making necklaces  and see the first necklaces I made, or the company  re-threaded here. Last Saturday I invited some friends over for a crafternoon and afternoon tea. I showed them how to make the necklaces and they each took their creations home with them. I had quite a colorful assortment of fabrics for them to choose from.   I had also made a few clay polymer beads.  Hubby thought I had some new plant decorations when I had them drying on skewers in the most convenient location! All in all I am building up quite a col...

I try to cut everything way back at this time of year so that I dont get lots of leggy growth as the plants spurt forth with the approaching wet season.  Last year our wet season was very late in arriving and in fact, we did not get as much rain as usual. The mandevilla vine which shades the herb spiral has had a very severe haircut, which let in lots of light. I need to cut back the lady slipper orchid vine as it is too heavy for the tree it is clambering over - weeping tea tree.  It is looking so beautiful though that I am going to leave it a little longer.  No photo - it keeps turning sideways - does anyone else have that problem? Vegetables and Herbs  I am going to try to keep some greens growing until the very end of the dry season and in actual fact planted out a new supply.   Tatsoi has become my very favourite green, it survived with very little care while I was away, so I added a little more compost around the base of each plant.  The eggpl...

I feel a bit of a fraud calling what I did a design.  More of an evolution. A note about my old photos: I was having trouble with my smart phone and stopped syncing photos, then thought I would delete them off my phone so free up room.  Take my advice - don't do that - it removes them from Picasa permanently.  So you will just have to use your imagination about what the garden first looked like. :( Basically there was just lawn and I covered sections with cardboard, and lots and lots of mulch.  (I got an eight ton load from the tip)  Slowly as that broke down I planted, ornamentals on the side and a veggie garden out the back.   The veggie garden is a triangular shape. One of the first things I read about was a herb spiral and I got a few big rocks and built up a small spiral, filling in the centre with crusher dust which is very well draining. I managed to retrieve an old photo of the herb spiral.  My main purpose was to be able to grow rosema...

When my brother was visiting with his very fancy camera and lots of long lenses, he took some awesome bird photos. I will share with you one of the awesome photos my brother took of a kookaburra when he was here... He said he was happy for me to share it here. Sometimes though it is not so much the equipment, it is what you have on hand.  I captured this lovely rainbow on my phone camera on the way into work one morning, and now use it on my desktop.  It makes me feel so peaceful. I dont have the equipment to be taking professional photos, but it got me a little bit interested in what all the birds in my neighbourhood are called.  I was sitting watching my veggie garden grow last weekend - that is gardening too isnt it?  The rainbow lorikeets make such a racket feasting on the berries high up in the neighbours garden, and then I suddenly noticed two large white birds sitting on a branch.  From lots of running in and out with bird books, binoculars e...

My microgreens came up so nicely and I was just about ready to harvest some for my dinner, when -whoosh - overnight something mowed them down - they are now just a bunch of little green sticks.  Sometimes growing food in the tropics is just way too hard. Luckily I can spend time with my flowers - the sexy pink lady is flowering again.  I was trimming some branches and look who hopped onto my hand!  I found him a nice leafy branch to move onto.

This month is all about seeds.  Connect with others at the Garden Share Collective. I must admit I am not always very good at saving seeds.  Last collective I showed a lovely photo of my bok choy flowering.  I have been keeping an eye on the seeds as they began to form, last weekend I looked for my little paper seed collecting bags, and then got distracted.  Ooops - now they seem to have scattered with the wind.  A lot of my seed saving is like that, and next year I will have bok choy coming up in that same spot. A while back there was a competition to grow oats and my grand kids got quite excited about it.  They are now ready to harvest (I think!)  I pulled out the plants and lay them over the compost, then cut most of the seed heads off.  the remainder of the plants went straight into the compost tumbler - lots of lovely greens (and probably a few seeds I missed!) The seeds are now in a paper bag pegged on the washing ling line under ...

I feel so blessed to have a garden, with flowers and little dribbles of food (we certainly cannot live on what I grow!) ......... and butterflies ...... and a peaceful place to sit and enjoy it all.   There was some lovely soft seaweed on the beach yesterday afternoon, so we gathered a couple of bagfuls.  I laid it out as mulch on the asparagus bed, but clearly will have to get some more.  I am sure I can be talked into another walk on the beach some time soon.  This asparagus stalk was chopped up and divided between the two of us - tender all the way to the bottom.  The Mary Washington is skinny little stalks as you can see in the background.  I have decided I will go ahead and plant some more purple asparagus seeds.    Look!  I have some eggplant too :)  Purple basil - this is such awesome basil - leaves of this and also amaranth, parsley and lettuce were  added to the leafy mix of our salad.  I guess we are getting ...

It has been so dry here lately, and windy, which dries out the soil even more.  There is promise though in all the buds popping up around the garden.... I love the excitement of seeing little curled up pockets about to unfurl into sheer awesomeness.  As a child I couldn't resist peeking inside the poppy buds to see what colour was going to open next! Firstly there are amaryllis coming out all over the garden.  I know they like a bit of dry weather to induce flowering.  This little red amaryllis is happier in a  shady spot. The giant peace Lilly are living up to their name, the flowers are huge and the stephanotis buds weave through the greenery.  I really must look up some ideas of how to train this vine as I keep looping it back onto the frame. I just think the little buds are so pretty, and their scent is awesome, but it looks very straggly in this corner.  does anyone else grow them and have any ideas of how best to tie them back? ...

I missed last months catchup as I was away.  linking to  The Garden share collective  for October. Hubby took care of the garden and was inundated with scrub hens trying to roost in the garden, so I am afraid the veggie garden took a bit of a beating.  I have been giving it some good long soaks, sprayed a bit of soapy water on the pests, and cut back overgrowth. We are over-run with cherry tomatoes, I even oven roasted some and popped them into the freezer to add to casseroles etc at a later date.  I think they are now coming to an end as the weather heats up.  About a year ago I mentioned in a post that I had placed an order for some seeds that were only 1.00 a packet,  It all sounded too good to be true.  I must admit that when the seeds arrived I thought they were a little stingy with the seed, but carefully planted them out.  I can be a little lazy in following up how a particular seed has been performing, unless they perform in a ...

We tend to live as sustainably as we can, and the newscasts about governments all over the world going into huge debt boggle my mind.  It seems a huge leap, but ideas like this seem to be the answer. The gap between rich and poor is ever widening, and the majority of the world is getting sicker and poorer.  I got this video from  Gavin at the greening of Gavin. The other site that often puts out really interesting information is the Permaculture institute. I reckon any gardener would be fascinated by this. http://permaculturenews.org/2013/10/23/plants-talk/ I know I talk to my plants, but didnt realise that there could be all these other conversations going on.

At some stage I talked about how a bit more white in the garden would be nice.  I think that was before I put in the path, and the garden had seemed rather deep and dark.   I saw these lovely white and green caladiums  at the market and popped them into the garden.  Then I forgot about them - well it seems they were just having a little rest,  because they are back.  I love how you see the veins, and how the white seems to pop right out at you. .    One of the reasons that I started this blog in the first place was to be able to look back and see when things flowered or fruited.  All the caladiums are looking so lovely right now, so they must like the wet season.   Oh!  it is all a guessing game.  Like this bush that I purchased to attract Ulysses butterflies.  I have never noticed it flowering before, and look how the flo...

I did manage to spend a full afternoon out in the garden, weeding, cutting back and unearthing hidden treasure!  This little area is so colorful, and deep under the branches there were hippeastrums flowering!  This little one is the first to flower and I hope will soon be followed by the huge, blowsy, over the top, striped ones that were so pretty last year.  Who needs to live in a country with "seasons" when I get fall colour throughout the year? This croton is really colorful, throughout the year. I also noticed that  the ground orchids have buds peeping up - oh great - I have not had any flowers since the lychee tree was pruned. Once the sprawling tomato plants were staked up I discovered lots and lots of anthiriums just waiting to show their pretty colors.  These are the backbone of my garden, and just keep re-producing - the flowers last so long. Gingers are shooting up from...