Africanaussie

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? ...

Our long drought  has at last been broken!  It is very strange here to have months with absolutely no rain, but this last week it has rained very day!   I also have been without telephone and Internet all week, so no way to post any of my fabulous photos as the garden comes to life with all the rain!  When it rains here it really rains, but the tropical flowers love it - look at this sodden hibiscus.  The cannas that I moved into an area that get lots of standing water during the wet season are very happy.  It is not a big enough area to really be defined as a swale, but it works the same way.  Look at the gorgeous red and yellow together - nature can be so flamboyant some times cant it?  Little lipstick cases are forming on my lipstick plant, but so far they are empty.  I took a few cuttings in another pot and they are doing well, so now I have two pots of this magnificent plant.  My bougainvillea cutting has als...

After all the fretting and researching the amaryllis have finally come right.  Maybe it was just exactly the weather that they like - a fairly cold winter, and then a very dry spring.  About half of them have had two flower spikes, so I couldn't be happier....  The torch ginger flower is opening up - it is quite small, but it is my first flower, so hopefully things improve once the rains come too as it is a wet season plant.  Probably looking around and saying "I thought this was the wet season in the tropics - anyone got a drink for me?"  My chia have started to flower, and I found this very useful information for anyone interested in growing it.  I see you can make a tea from the leaves, so am going to try that.  I doubt I am ever going to grow enough to give me enough seeds to eat, but I will make tea from  the leaves, and maybe put a few flowers into my salads.  I think next dry sea...

This weekend I got to spend a much needed day in the garden.  I put up our little shade cloth over the vegetable garden.  It works very well as it shades just part of the garden for part of the day.  The asparagus was cut right back and mulched and I intend to start harvesting it soon.  Lots of weeds were removed  Paths widened and cleared and the ginger planted.  Still more to do, but it is now looking a bit better cared for.  I am letting some things go to seed which always looks a bit messy.  My neighbor gifted me with a  couple of her volunteer caladiums - doesn't the foliage look stunning next to the rex begonia?   I would love to have swathes of caladiums like Meems in Florida, but I don't have the room and they seem hard to find around here.  The anthirium just go on and on - one of the backbones of my garden, and I am so glad that the little purple one is startin...

Life has taken precedence lately, and the garden has had to muddle on all by itself.  Valiantly fighting weeds and struggling "gasp" to find some liquid nourishment.   This week we have had a bit of rain, and when I found a few moments I wandered outside to find........Amaryllis  buds :)  How cool - I had said that if they didn't flower this year they would have to go.  I guess they thought they better show some action...  so far one flower set has opened up, but there are lots more buds waiting their turn for the spotlight. Yes little lovely you were worth the wait..... Soon this amaryllis and bromeliad bed will have lots of flowers.   One of the amazon lilies is also flowering, and I think once the wet starts we will have more.  I even have some orchid buds!  I had no idea what type of orchids they were, but just shoved the whole lot into an old wir...

I bought five amaryllis bulbs at a garage sale about three years ago, and they were planted in the back garden at the house we were renting.  It was a little overgrown and I was pleasantly surprised every now and then to find a beautiful bloom.  When I dug them up to move over to our new place I discovered they had multiplied and I now had about 15 bulbs!   I gave them pride of place all along the edge of the bed, and as the leaves would flop around I would keep telling hubby (and remind myself)  that the flowers were beautiful, and worth putting up with the yellowing floppy leaves for the rest of the year.   I would trim back the leaves, and occasionally wonder when these silly things do flower.  By the time I discovered that they would commonly flower in spring it was already well into summer, and we had not had one inkling of a flower!   Maybe they needed more sunlight?  I moved some across into the garden outside the bedroom windo...

Look at this lovely bromeliad! What a beautiful addition to my bromeliad bed! We took our grandson to the beach and when we dropped him off I asked my lovely daughter-in-law (very much an un-gardener) if I could take a few of her bromeliads. Yes sure, she said, and I brought home two, cut off the dead leaves and gave them a good drink - gosh they look so lovely now, I am sure she wont recognise them! They add just the right amount of colour amongst all all the green. I  took away the bricks at the back of the bed and moved them to the front, and I think this makes the bed flow nicely.  The bricks will help when the gardeners come to do the edging as I would hate them to catch a rock and have it fling up into their eyes or something.   I need to add a few more rocks, but this is not such a pleasant job. If you tip them out they get caught up in the leaves, in which case you have to reach in amongst all the spines to get them out.  If you try to rea...

You know my sweet potato bed, that my hubby said he wanted to turn into a rose garden?  Well, it seems he didn't really want roses.  He just didn't want sweet potatoes!  I had planted a row of salvia (well the label said salvia , but they don't look like salvia to me) and strewn a few zinnia and nasturtiums seeds around.  The continual rain was a bit disheartening, and the entire bed was fast being overtaken by weeds.  My grandson had grabbed the rose bush on Saturday morning and it had "bitten" him, so I have really been cooling over the rose bush idea anyway. What to do, what to do. At the same time my helconias have been taking over and suffocating the amaryllis.  I do love those heleconias , so decided to give them free reign of that bed and move the amaryllis (called hippeastrum more commonly here) over to the sweet potato bed. It was quite dark by the time I had finished and found the camera to take  a photo, but I am sure y...