Africanaussie

One of my finds in the big city were a couple of citrus trees marked down to 4.00 each!  wow!  Of course I had to buy them, and supposedly if kept in pots they will not grow too big.  They are called a lime mandarin, so I am sure will be a useful fruit, even if only for marmalade. I am thinking a bit ahead of myself though since they are not healthy looking specimens. I don't want to add too many things until see how they react to a bit of love and sunshine. Most of us do better with love and sunshine don't we? I have repotted one and then given them both a good drink of seaweed tea mixed with Epsom salts. I will see what that does before I try anything else.  The one that I re potted was not particularly root bound which is often a problem with clearance plants.  The other problem is often over fertilization, so I find the wait and see attitude sometimes pays off. I didn't find a plant to fill in the gap  in the front bed, so moved a greyville...

The two potted palms in the front never really did very well and one died while I was on holiday.  I re-planted the remaining one into the garden bed, since there is an empty spot at this time of year when the costus dies down.  I am not sure if the costus will stay there, and just come up during the wet season.  The pots are now planted with this bamboo type plant.  I like the look of it and you can just cut a stalk and put it into the ground or a pot and it grows!  The area out the front is looking quite colorful - with my peachy colored cannas  The hot pink bouganvilla  Pink cordelines  and a red canna about to burst open  Of course I do have my token front yard vegetable plant still producing one magnificent eggplant after another!

The dry season is when a lot of native Australian plants come into their own. My bouganvillea that I started from a slip is heavy with flowers  I have a greyvillea that I planted at the beginning of the wet season in the front garden and it has just been sitting there doing not much for an awfully long time.  Greyvillea are one of the iconic Australian native plants, and mostly like the drier areas on Australia.  I figured if I planted this one alongside a fence where I rarely water, and it gets full sun it might be happy. In fact when some eggplant volunteered in the area, I let them stay since the greyvillea was just, well...  there... a grey plant against a grey fence.   It is a Sandra Gordon Greyvillea - supposedly suited to the tropics, flowers year round, or so the label said.  Recently I noticed some little buds forming and now look what is happening.... Look at the details.... I can just see why these attract the little hone...