Africanaussie

This dry season started out with lots of cloudy days.  Combine that with the fact that my neighbor has a high hedge that has grown on one side of my veggie patch and my veggie garden has been starved for sunshine.  This meant things like tomatoes were not doing too well. Lately we have had a little bit more sunshine and suddenly the tomatoes in  the wicking beds are looking a bit healthier. We may still get some tomatoes this season :)  A while back I moved my fig in a  pot out into the front, on the side of the carport.  Normally there is no car there, but at the moment we have our old car parked there, so the fig tree has been pretty much hidden and  ignored.   I have been going back and forth about what to do - do I leave it in the pot?  Do I espalier it?  Will I ever get figs from it?  Well - look what I found - two little figs :)  I am thinking I will keep it here in the pot but not sure about the espalier trellis - it...

Last week we had cyclone Oswald meandering around the area  to the north of us.  We had some flooded roads and a bit of wind, but nothing damaging.   This week it has been wreaking havoc to the south of us - thinking of you and praying for those whose houses have been damaged through flooding just after getting back on your feet after the floods two years ago. It was amazing to see the true Aussie spirit shine through and hordes of wonderful volunteers helping others in need.  Hopefully it doesn't take long for the floodwaters to subside and the clean up to begin. My garden loves the rainy season, these ground orchids really shine at this time of year.  The way these buds are wriggling their way out of the casing reminds me of a fat lady wearing a too tight dress.  Like me after Christmas dinner!  Ah free!  there is something really lovely about white flowers. ...

Along with my seeds from Liz at Eight Acres  I received a tiny packet of kefir grains, and a wonderful sheet of instructions to answer my many questions.  It didn't seem as though that would be enough and since I had never even tried kefir I was not sure how long to leave it fermenting.  At first I took it out too early, but now am leaving it for two days and it is getting thick and effervescent.  I use it with a frozen berry smoothie cube and some other fruit -  some of my frozen lychees still left over from last year are at last being used up!   Thank you Liz for introducing me to the world of kefiring! ! I got stuck into the veggie garden over the weekend and removed some dying tomato plants, then rigged up some trellis for the vines to climb on.  Along this fence I have choko and luffa, with some bok choy and ginger in front.  It all looks rather untidy at the moment, but once the vines grow yo...

A while back I decided to permanently close one of the big gates and create a new garden bed behind it.  That was one of the best ideas I ever had I reckon....   I hung my orchids on that bamboo bar which has slowly sunk down on one end and looks a  bit tacky.  I think what I would like to do is get an arch to put into that corner.  I will hang the orchids from it and hopefully the stephanotis will trail over it. The stephanotis is a rather straggly vine, but the flowers are gorgeous.  Since the lychee tree was pruned and this area got more sunshine it has really flourished.  Great big bushes of  impatients, caladiums going wild, and this lovely little plant called balsam I got from the local markets.  It seems to be the same family as impatients, although the flowers are up the stem, rather than on top. Interspersed among the flowers are lots of cherry tomatoes the project for the...

This week there have been a few days of sunshine and I noticed my personal solar panels are charged up and I am ready to go!  I do hope that the wet season is finally over.  I clipped and pruned and yanked and finally got rid of the pink bouganvilla.  The flowers were pretty but it was far too aggressive for that little corner.  I know, I know lots of  people warned me!  there is still one peach colored bouganvilla there, but I don't think it is quite as aggressive.  I will be keeping an eye out.    Slowly the flowers will shed the weight of the water of the wet season  their heads will no longer bow down with the weight of the water on their shoulders I don't believe I have shown you the view out from the big gate - the little garden in the center is filling in nicely.  I wont show you a close photo right now though, as a lot of that filling in is with weeds....  OK reall...

Our long drought  has at last been broken!  It is very strange here to have months with absolutely no rain, but this last week it has rained very day!   I also have been without telephone and Internet all week, so no way to post any of my fabulous photos as the garden comes to life with all the rain!  When it rains here it really rains, but the tropical flowers love it - look at this sodden hibiscus.  The cannas that I moved into an area that get lots of standing water during the wet season are very happy.  It is not a big enough area to really be defined as a swale, but it works the same way.  Look at the gorgeous red and yellow together - nature can be so flamboyant some times cant it?  Little lipstick cases are forming on my lipstick plant, but so far they are empty.  I took a few cuttings in another pot and they are doing well, so now I have two pots of this magnificent plant.  My bougainvillea cutting has als...

 Hubby really likes the rather wild hot pink bouganvilla, and kept asking me to plant one somewhere.  This is a very heavy plant and has been known to pull down fences with its weight, so I was not sure I wanted one in my garden..   I stuck one in the corner, and didn't really focus too much on the fact that it has lots and lots of horrible sharp thorns.  It also has lots and lots of flowers.... It is sort of out of the way here, and hopefully will climb along the fence, creating lots of  welcoming colour and enticing visitors to enter through the gates. Unfortunately at the moment I think it just looks rather messy.  I have tended to just plonk plants here without much thought.  Originally I had the strelitzia - which will have orange and purple flowers, then the Chinese lantern - a reddish color, then the bleeding heart vine - white a...

The two potted palms in the front never really did very well and one died while I was on holiday.  I re-planted the remaining one into the garden bed, since there is an empty spot at this time of year when the costus dies down.  I am not sure if the costus will stay there, and just come up during the wet season.  The pots are now planted with this bamboo type plant.  I like the look of it and you can just cut a stalk and put it into the ground or a pot and it grows!  The area out the front is looking quite colorful - with my peachy colored cannas  The hot pink bouganvilla  Pink cordelines  and a red canna about to burst open  Of course I do have my token front yard vegetable plant still producing one magnificent eggplant after another!

The dry season is when a lot of native Australian plants come into their own. My bouganvillea that I started from a slip is heavy with flowers  I have a greyvillea that I planted at the beginning of the wet season in the front garden and it has just been sitting there doing not much for an awfully long time.  Greyvillea are one of the iconic Australian native plants, and mostly like the drier areas on Australia.  I figured if I planted this one alongside a fence where I rarely water, and it gets full sun it might be happy. In fact when some eggplant volunteered in the area, I let them stay since the greyvillea was just, well...  there... a grey plant against a grey fence.   It is a Sandra Gordon Greyvillea - supposedly suited to the tropics, flowers year round, or so the label said.  Recently I noticed some little buds forming and now look what is happening.... Look at the details.... I can just see why these attract the little hone...

The venue for the gardening group last weekend was about 6 times the size of my yard, where we last met.  An acre and a half around the house planted with tropical fruit trees on one side, then a section for tropical flowers and another for vegetables.  A lovely creek runs behind the house, and beyond that they have converted the rest of the property back to rainforest - it was a sugar cane farm at one time.  I was a slight bit envious at all the fruit she is growing, that I just do not have room for, but I love my garden just the way it is and would never want to change it.  Well, of course I do have dreams.......  one of the dreams was to create some sort of pond but the conversation on Saturday made me once again aware of how much work a pond can be.  Then again - they always seem to attract cane toads, so in fact I came away most pleasantly fulfilled and happy with my own little corner of paradise.  I also came away with armloads of cuttings ...