Africanaussie

Happy New Year to all of you!  I wish you all lots of Health, Wealth and Happiness! Dear Lizzie at   Strayed from the table   has her post up and running ready to link up to.   I really enjoy seeing how everyone elses garden is faring, although I must admit after looking at Lizzies okra I have okra envy - I really thought okra would grow well here, but mine is struggling. The humidity and heat over the Christmas season was really oppressive, and then over the weekend it rained!  When I aded these stones last year I dug a bit of a ditch on the outer side, but clearly that was not quite enough for the quantity of rain that we have.  I started to make this path a little lower, hoping that the water would run down there and soak into the ground to be used up by the plants.  I discovered that the asparagus roots are reaching out into the path, so moved the side of the perrenial bed over a bit, but probably need to make another plan, maybe just a skinn...

A couple of years ago when I still had quite a few bare spots in my back yard I accepted a couple of passalong plants from a neighbour.  I had seen them in his yard, and they were magnificent.  The leaves were lovely and silver-backed and HUGE, and made a lovely sound brushing against each other in the wind.   I was quite taken with them, and planted two out in the corner of my garden next to the heleconias.  That side and corner really started to fill in. Did I mention they were HUGE?  What was I thinking?   I have been slowly cutting some of them back and noticed that they were spreading rather rapidly.  Suddenly I wasn't so in love anymore..... I started working on one clump about a month ago, and it ended badly.... with me sitting in tears sobbing about how I was just not a gardener, nothing grew right in my garden, how stupid could I have been to plant these....everything was just a mess..... I had cut the 12ft leaves down, and dragged...

  I have been cutting back overhanging branches and overgrown bushes and shrubs to allow light in.  I don't want to cut back branches of the lychee tree as I want to be able to harvest as many of those luscious fruit as possible come harvest time.  Removing the rhoeo was a good decision, as the pavers were lost under the vegetation.  They are still mildewed and I am working on getting them cleaned.  For now it has just been bleach and elbow grease, but I am wondering about one of the leave on products like wet and forget.  Does anyone have any advice about that?  A bit of sunlight would be good too....  The grass does not do well without sunlight and we also try not to walk on it too much.  I weeded and mulched the bromeliads and found the best way to do this was to just pull everything up, remove the pups and plant them back in with some mulch.  Now it is easy to walk along the stones, giving the sodden grass a miss.  We have b...

I was talking to my neighbour the other day and she said that a visitor had commented on the lychee tree in their back yard.  They don't have a lychee tree - we do!  Because we grow the same type of plants along our fence lines both of us can use the illusion that our gardens are bigger than they actually are. This large tree and the palm trees are in her garden, but who would know?  The heleconias and gingers are a bit overgrown now and are going to have to be cut back to contain them, but I also don't want to lose the illusion of space.  Once a heleconia stalk has flowered, it dies, and sends out another stalk.  So the ones that have already flowered are taking up use-able real estate.  This bed is full of these lovely big red heleconias.  The red ginger are way too cramped and overgrown.  Here you see them from both sides of the fence.   There is a little path that leads just to the back fence, but...

Just recently I posted about an area that I thought was getting too full. This is the pathway leading to that area, and I do think I need to thin it down a bit, but which plants do I get rid of?  It is so hard. The little ground orchids multiply fast and so I have been subdividing them and scattering them all over to add greenery and colour. This bud is just starting....  then once they open the flowers stay around for ages With all the rain we have realised that walking on the grass continually when it is wet and muddy does not do the grass any good, so I have removed the end of the bomeliad bed and am filling it in with stones so that we can avoid walking on the grass. Hopefully that will give the grass a chance to recover.   I didnt really want to make a path through the grass and this idea looks as though it will work. 

I have put down some stones - still have a bit more to go, but this is definitely keeping the place mud free - whch is marvellous with all the rain we have been having.  This is a true tropical wet season, and I am ready for it to end!  It is hard to even find a few moments without pouring rain in order to take  a few photos! I am happy with how the rain seems to drain away quite quckly from the gazebo and towards the pathway garden which I dug a little lower.    I need to bring the level of the stones up a bit, so still need to haul in a few more loads. After my holiday I noticed that the anthirium flowers were green and have been foliar feeding with liquid seaweed every weekend and now I have nice colourful flowers. Some other flowers that are enjoying the wet weather are the lipstick plant, This year it has developed long tendrils and they are covered in lovely red flowers. When they start out they look like lipstick emerging from a tube!...

As you know we have had large amounts of rain since cyclone yasi and that is what concreted the idea that we must do something about this area where no grass will grow.  I began to dig out the grass and level it out, of course I had to wait for the mud pit to dry up a bit.  The sand that I dug out was used to mound up this area since a dip in the middle of the grassy area had formed.  I want it to drain out away from the house.  I will have to add the sand a bit at a time so as not to kill the grass.  We went to the hardware store to suss out all the options and came back with these slender pavers which were easier to maneuver around the tree roots. I think this is a rather pleasing look don't you? I am putting down a layer of cardboard and then will top it up with stones around the pavers.  To put the area that I am talking about into perspective - here is a wide view of the side entrance, with the gate open.