Africanaussie

Lots of things spring to life in my garden once the wet season starts.  My ginger bed is erupting with little green spikes and I know under the ground lovely juicy ginger tubers are forming.  The sweet potato bed is doing the same, and  turmeric  is popping up in a couple of places, where I knew I had planted them.  The torch ginger and this lovely beehive ginger is flowering, although the leaves never totally die back during the dry season.  My neighbor gave me a plant with a beautiful flower at the end of the last wet season.  She said it had died and I tried to tell her it was ok but just going dormant.  No, she wanted me to have it, insisting I was the one with the green thumb.  Here it is rising up in all its glory six months later.  Behind it is kampheria, another plant that completely disappears during the dry season.  This one I know is Siam ginger, with a lovely pink flower - I picked it up for a song on clearance - clearly the nursery staff had no idea that the plant would 

I have recently developed a love for leaves with red backs....  In the shady garden I thought that a lot of plants would not flower and began to look or more interesting foliage,and that is where it all started.  I picked up one of these little plants at the orchid show last year, and have already subdivided them once.   I volunteered at the local markets on Saturday and  found a few plants I just had to have. The one was this variegated leaf Calathea. I have admired the Calathea with red undersides, and on looking it up discovered that the first plant is also a Calathea, or peacock plant.  Some plants like this cordeline start off pink and then turn a darker shade as they age. This one has even more color distinction between the old and new leaves. I think my favorite foliage plant though has to be this grey leaved rex begonia.  From one little slip I have subdivided it many times and each area you place it in it adds a spot of brightness and color.  I particularly adore the su

I am really liking the way the entrance looks from the front now.  My hubby took this photo.  This green tree frog lives on our front veranda.  He seems to be giving me a little smile here :)  Just look at his feet! - no wonder he can climb up the wall with no trouble. Hopefully he is eating as many mozzies as he can!

I have been enjoying the garden bloggers bloom day posts that everyone else participates in, and suddenly I thought why don't I participate? - so here I am!  On the 15th of every month Carol at  May Dreams Gardens  hosts a celebration of what is in bloom all around the world.   Have a look and enjoy... I have a new plant!  My wonderful hubby will often bring me a lovely bunch of flowers, (I know, I am very spoiled) but last week he showed up with a hydrangea bush!  Gosh I have never seen such beautiful, large flowers - and such a lovely shade of blue! Just look at all the little buds waiting to have their turn to shine - aren't they just too cute for words?.  They do like a semi shaded spot, and I thought right at the front gate would be just perfect. Morning sun, and then afternoon shade - just perfect. Doesn't she look happy there?  thank you hubby! I think I am going to need a bit of cooling blue - this summer is going to be very hot and wet.  Just through the gate

Friends came to visit on Saturday and helped us harvest some lychees.  He was up on the roof and she and I were scurrying around picking the lychees as they fell.  We got knocked on the head a few times, but all in all it was great fun.  After trimming the branches and separating out those that need to ripen a bit more we ended up with six buckets!  Wow, and the tree is still loaded!  I have since read that they will not ripen any more after being picked, so reckon we should just go ahead and peel them all.  There are not a lot of green ones, just some that got knocked off in the process, and those are just a little sour. We have been busy peeling, and hubby worked out a good way to peel and de-seed at the same time. I blended up the de-seeded ones and packed them into small containers to freeze. These I will use for lassi.  a marvelous drink- equal parts lychee puree with yoghurt and a touch of cardamom.  Other peeled lychees were just refrigerated for snacking. Neighbours and frien

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 released into the air! Last weekend I cut the bouganvilla back quite drastically.  To allow the stephan

Great excitement in our house at the moment with the lychees ripening.  Unfortunately it is not us gorging on the ripe fruit yet.  The bats move in at night and you can hear their mad chattering as they devour the fruit.  You can see the fallen skins and seeds lying around on the ground. They are ripening from the very top of the tree, and there is no way we could harvest those so high up. Lower down though, we will be able to reach them, and so in order to keep them to ourselves, we have got a couple of mosquito nets to stretch over them.  The only way to reach up there though is to get onto the roof, and I am not game to do that.  The same friend who gave us the mosquito nets also said she has a long handled picker and I am thinking if we  could  just pick the ripe ones, we  wouldn't  have to bother with the net.   Mmmm I hope she gets it to us soon, and we will soon be enjoying juicy lychees, instead of leaving them all to the silly bats..

There I was, once again, admiring Bernie's  bloom day post when I thought - oh gosh I have some wonderful photos of my torch ginger ready to go and it is Friday so why don't I enter?  I have been a long time lurker viewing everyone else's wonderful flowers every Friday.  It is time I joined in the fun! I don't use fertilizer - just my own yummy compost and natural amendments like seaweed and comfrey juice, so I will flaunt without the fertilizing. The torch ginger has opened up even more  - the best thing about these flowers is that they hang around for so long - it has been in bloom for over a month now.  You can see more photos when it was  just opening  up.  Just look at the detail :) You can see a little ant off to the side if you look closely.  These are green ants (and can give you a nasty bite!) and  they make nests every now and then in our garden.  They are supposedly beneficial so I just try to keep out of their way as much as possible.  If you grab one qu

I love the garden from this angle, but it never looks quite as good in a photo as it does in real life.  You have to get in closer to see the colorful cordeline leaves. This one is the most common and often taken for granted, but its color is always reliable as long as it gets a bit of sunshine. You have to bend down low to see the ground orchids - they love the wet season.  and wander down one of the paths to admire the anthiriums - Look at those shiny leaves! Watch out for the prickles on the pineapple bromeliad! such a cute little thing this is, as long as you don't get too involved with the prickles.  Thanks for taking a wander through the garden to find its hidden delights.

I have decided that I will in fact only have this one blog for my gardening and my crafts.  After all I am one person with many facets, and this craft is so interwoven with the garden.  After the silk painting course I did I was very excited to continue on.  Unfortunately my silk supplier here in Australia was way too expensive to even think of using, so I had to do a search. I found a great mail order company with the option of cheap slow shipping, called Dharma trading (they have not given me any compensation for recommending them)  My order initially did not go through and upon inquiring I was told that they had upgraded my shipping to priority so I received my package in record time! I had a friend come around and we painted on the paint, and then laid leaves and flowers onto the scarves and left them in the sun for the sun to work its magic setting the colour.  This out we put out while it was much wetter. the paint seems to have pulled away from the edges - maybe I did not th