Africanaussie

It was lovely to have my eldest daughter visiting for a couple of weeks, and she wanted to write a guest post - so here it is :) I was sitting drinking a lovely glass of wine, nibbling on salad fresh out of my mom’s garden and chatting when I noticed that the ground was alive.  This was rather disconcerting until I discovered that the movement was hundreds of “frogs” which my mother quickly corrected me were actually toads.  I was enthralled by the steady hop, hop, hop –somehow all in sync.  The remainder of the evening was spent happily watching the toads move, the sky darken and the flowers fall from the lychee tree. Here is a cute frog........... and here is an ugly toad... As her blog follower’s you may not know my mother’s gardening history. For years and years my mother wanted a garden. And every time she got one and built it up just like she wanted, life got in the way and took it away. I’m not a gardener, but I get plenty of garden based emails and such. It all kind of bore

I used to love to move the furniture around, but our little unit is so small and everything is just where it has to be, so I had to take the urge outside. :) After my lovely neighbor gave me a garden chair a couple of months ago I placed it snugly under the tree fern.  Nobody sat there, leaves fell all over it, and as the fern got bigger I wondered about where else the chair could go.....  (I put up these "bali" flags for my MIL's 80th birthday and quite like them there - they might stay).   Back to the point - that chair did look a little less than inviting didn't it? So.... after giving the ponytail palm a  bit of a haircut and moving it over to share its space I found the perfect spot for the chair.  It also means that the small heleconia plant can spread out a bit and be noticed - gosh you cant even see the space that the chair took up... While I was checking out the chair in its new spot I began to think about the fact that the grass doesn't grow well, an

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 starting to create volunteers as well.  My aim is to have more of those as a lower edging to the bigger pink ones

I could say that my overgrown veggie garden looks rather permaculturish!   I do need to warn all those dear friends that I sent cosmos seeds to that if they don't harvest the seeds they might find themselves with more cosmos than they need! I let quite a few of mine die off in situ scattering seeds far and wide, and now I see the results.... - oh dear, now where was that path again?    I started to move the other path over a while back - to widen the bed next to the fence and make the central bed easier to reach into the middle from either side. The bed next to the fence is for the ginger and I plan to grow even more this year. We have been walking down this very narrow path for awhile now....  The chia seem to be doing well - the leaves are a bit prickly, but I have been adding a few of the young leaves to salads. I have no idea how high this plant grows, what season it should be grown in and when I can expect seeds.... here it is interspersed with baby cosmos. Look

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 wire waste paper basket and hung it up on the fence.  Every now and then I remember to water it, so forgiving - look h