Africanaussie

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? ...

As you know a while back I decided to remove the remaining grass and create a new garden bed and path.  I didnt want it to stand out as separate , but the path was to provide access, so I mulched it the same as the garden bed.  Right now it is spring and the scrub hens are looking for places to lay their eggs.  They dont sit on their eggs - they gather together a huge pile of leaves and then the eggs are laid in the warm composting mulch.  Somehow a silly scrub hen thinks she can gather together enough loose mulch in my garden to build her nest.  I hung a very colourful kite above this area to warn her away. Once this lavender takes off and forms a little hedge and the hippeastrum behind put out their georgous flowers, there will be a defined edge to this new path.  Update:  Hubby found her digging right underneath the kite!  I think once they get used to something it becomes part of the garden as it did seem to be working for a  wh...

A while back I made room in my little bromeliad bed for the strelitzia, and after languising for about four years, it seemed to like its new spot.  Alongside was the only little patch of lawn I had kept.  My little ceramic sheep were not doing a good job of keeping the lawn cropped, and then when hubby put a play pool for the grandkids on the lawn I knew I had to reclaim that space for my own!  No blue pastic pools in MY garden! The only thing to do was to let the water flow out of the pool all over the grassy area.  That made it easier to dig, but my gosh, was it messy.  Instead of showing you the mess, I just have a few photos of some prettiness.  Rex begonia flowers.  Rex begonia leaves. Is anyone else having problems that blogger is turning their photos sideways, and then they are impossible to turn back again?   grrr.  I am posting this anyway in the hopes that when they are posted they will once again be the right way up. ...

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...

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...