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? ...

Over the weekend on the way to the beach with the grand kids, we detoured off the road to find a garage sale, and just as we were leaving I saw these wooden trellises propped up against a dresser.  At one dollar each I thought I could definitely use a few.  I picked up five - maybe I should have got more as now I can imagine all sorts of projects.....  We did our bit to clean up the beach and brought back some yummy seaweed for the compost.... along with some ash from a  fire.  That always gets the compost chugging along nicely.  My bin is starting to split - It is three years old, but I tend to push against that side when stirring it up.  At the end of the wet season I will empty it out and turn it around.  That should give me a few more years. The pumpkin vine was not offering up any more pumpkins so out it went - also into the compost!  On went a layer of mulch - this ...

This plant, called a desert rose, has been one of the shining stars in my garden. Appropriately, in South Africa it is called a Sabi Star!  It always seems to be flowering, and although I bought it very long and lanky it does now seem to be putting out some branches. Such lovely flowers. Then I noticed something the other day - it is putting out a seed pod, oh no!  not just one seed pod but lots of them!  I had heard that in order to capture the seeds you need to place the seed pod in a paper bag.  Gosh with all these seed pods I am going to have a paper bag tree!   I have a little one in the side of the pod that was grown from a seed - I got it from an open garden a year or so ago.  If anyone in Australia would like some seeds, just e-mail me at  vemvaan@gmail.com.  I am not sure how long it will take, but the story is that when these seed pods explode thousands of tiny seeds are ...

My wonderful hubby gave me a huge hand tuned wind chime for my birthday, and the sun shone all day so I was a very happy camper working out in the garden with the gentle sounds of the chimes ringing in my ears every time a gentle breeze wafted by.  Oh heaven!  The sunshine has brought out all the flowers :)  I knew that would happen - sunshine does marvellous things. I never even knew this plant flowered - I have had it for years, in quite  a few places, and mostly at the back so never really peer in between the branches.  Isn't it lovely against the background of its striped leaf?  so many tropical flowers are like this, a bunch of succulent little bulbs that the flowers peep out of. The crepe paper costus is similar- it will soon stop flowering as we enter our dry season and then this little beauty carries on throughout the year - tiny flowers, but oh so pretty with the variegated foliage and the stephanotis are opening up - aren't they so pr...

Years ago at the sunday markets I bought this vine - stephanotis - she said it was called - it has lovely white very fragrant flowers - the type that florists use in bridal bouquets.  Well, I planted it and forgot about it - firstly it just grew one long stem, which wouldnt  twine around any supports I provided and kept flopping down.  Eventenually I nipped off the growing end and it began to put out a few branches.  Not too many mind you, and since it was in the corner out of the way I really just stopped thinking about it much.  It has been a couple of years, and then then, during all this rain I noticed a few buds - yeah. :)  I guess maybe I need to be more aware of some of these plants that seem to require a lot of water. Originally I thought I would start this post and track the progress as the beautiful flowers opened up and even have a scratch and sniff ( :) ) since they supposedly smell so amazing. for a week now the buds have l...

It all began with harvesting my jicama, I had popped a few seeds in the ground alongside the fence before the wet season.  The plant insisted on climbing through the fence and flowering on the other side.... and in order to grow bigger tubers these flowers and pods have to continually be pruned off.  So on Sunday I decided to harvest the jicama and remove the vines. The jicama are pretty puny, and I found out were quite hard to harvest behind the other plants so I wont be planting there again.  Not sure if they will shoot up again from remaining roots. This has left the fence very bare. I had an old wire wastepaper basket (useless in the office, as everything falls out the side) and I put a crucifix orchid in there and hung it under my thermometer.  That helps to make the wall a little less bare in that area. I realise that I have been just adding plants in this area without much of a plan.  The only plan being to hide the fence and have some greener...