Sunday, May 14, 2006

May in the garden

G'day all!

Time for some pictures of flowers in May. May is Spring for many of you but here May is getting into the coldest part of the year. It's late autumn or early winter. And we are definately working on the wintry weather!

Many of the roses are still happily growing and flowering. The English roses and floribundas are going great guns - they obviously reckon 15 degree maximums are beaut. Some of the old garden roses have shut down for witner - they are not doing anythign! Because we aren't getting frosts, or near frosts (we would expect 3 or 4 in May) the aphids are still going strong. Grr!

This little rose grows on the back fence. It is an old fashioned miniature climber. A possum neatly trims off the top of its growth, so it stays just below fence height.




These two roses were here when we got here. They need some looking after - once winter really kicks in I'll clean them up a lot.


Sophie's rose, an Austin rose, has flowered almost constantly since we planted her over two months ago. I think this is Sophie's rose - might be another one but I don't think so....


One of the fuschias is going nuts (sorry about the blurry photo).

The vegie patch has gone from looking like this:

to this in about three weeks:

Yes the plants are too close cos I am used to losing up to half the seedlings, only this time around there were no cutworms or snails to eat half the danged things. I've got multicoloured silverbeet (love the stem colours! Love them!), beetroot, golden podded peas, honeypod peas, crimson flowered broad beans (why yes I hate broad beans but someone will like them!), onions (two types), heritage multicoloured carrots, spinach and some seeds planted in there too that I can't remember. LOL.

It has an extra patch by it, which I dug out on my father's death day anniversary:

This patch has leeks, carefully dug up by Nutmeg cos this is the BEST cat toilet spot EVER (except for the area that I dug up to plant daffodils in in the front yard...), sad little cauliflowers (I forgot about them and then refound them and discovered that they are actually ginormous ones, not the mini ones I thought I had bought), two punnets of chinese cabbages, more seeds of some mustardy family stuff (why no I didn't label them! I figured I would work out what they are when they have more than their little cotyledons).

Now before I forget about the leeks, here is a picture of the punnet of leeks I bought. Sweet innocent baby leeks eh?

Well if I plant out a punnet of leeks with each little bubby leek 5cm from the next bubby leek, I end up with about 6 metres of leeks. That is a LOT of leeks! But alas! (hooray?) between Nutmeg digging the things up (despite the wire) and the blackbirds digging up one end (before the wire was put down) I only have about 3/4 of those I planted out originally.


No autumn would be complete without a mushroom. I wonder if one of my friends will ask me for it cos I have inadvertantly taken a pic of a very special sort of mushroom (I found those very special mushies up in a national park).


Next door's tree dahlia has started flowering this week - they certainly grow fast! The rest of the dahlias in the area are long gone.


The goldrush zucchini is still producing one or two zucchini a week. The old foliage is looking very tatty now. It won't be long for this world - a good frost or two and it is gone! I'd best go out and hand pollinate any flowers it has today.


Even the hibiscus is still flowering, though the flowers are a little smaller now.

There's plenty of other plants still flowering - I haven't even started on the heathland plants! - but that is enough for one post.

anon!

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

By popular request...

G'day all!

I give you pictures of our house, taken on Anzac Day (April 25) this year. Pics are warts and all.


The north face (ie the sunny side down under), facing the street. Lots of junk about, a partially constructed greenhouse, some seedling benches, a skyrocket whose days are numbered....


The west wall - faces the hottest sun and gets some of the worst winter winds. Complete with nifty pressure valve stuff and solenoids for the watering system and toot.


The south wall, with kitchen and bathroom windows, gets the worst winter weather (ie driving rain, hail, lashing winds). Complete with 1000L watertank, pump and various bits of junk. That canopy over the door is going to go - it makes the place look like a mobile home.


The garden by the front gate, complete with recently planted violas and pansies.

We have to do an update on the greenhouse in progress, though we might leave it until more is done so you can see obvious progress. We also got a new rain water tank on Monday, only to get it into place, we'll have to pull a bit of the garage roof off! Ooops!

Just to show you Lynne is not a complete slouch in the garden, here she is attacking an agapanthus with the mattock. Mattock 1, agapanthus nil. Lynne's back fine, but swinging a mattock is a surprisingly good way to develop lats (the muscles underneath the shoulders that help give a body builder wide shoulders).



Though the agapanthus is still there, as you can sorta see in this pic of Cheshire sniffing the grapevine that has snuck through the fence from next door.

Of course Cheshire has to sniff the vine - after all things all around it have moved! Must sniff things when they move even though they have been sniffed 10,000 times in their old spot!

OK, more pics anon!