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!