december flowers

My laxa vine is in full bloom!  It's a bit hard to tell from this photo but they're along the top of the fence.  I wish the vine covered the fence a bit more fully, but the flowers look and smell lovely.

My new calla lily has flowered.  It was from a random colour mix and I was hoping it would be a tropical orange, but instead it's the standard yellow.  Actually I think it's a slightly softer shade of yellow than the standard colour, and I like it nonetheless.

Finally, my space race orchid has opened all four flower spikes!  They look so festive at this time of year with my Christmas decorations.

The spikes are a lot shorter than last year, when they were well higher than the foliage.  I wonder if it gets more light in my house than where they were grown.  Next year I'll keep them in a darker part of the house when the spikes are forming and see if that encourages longer spikes.

happy orchid, sad orchid

Well my space race topaz gold orchid is happy as a clam.  Since this photo it's opened up two and a half sprays of blooms with a fourth one not far behind.  It should be flowering for about two months, plus it's already putting out new pseudobulbs.  I love this little trooper!

However my wildcat isn't doing so well.  I put it on the front porch but completely forgot to harden it off, that is, get it used to the sun and weather.  I'm 90% sure it was shocked by the direct sunlight and badly sunburned.  One of its leaves already fell off and a second one is on its way out.  However its new pseudobulb is still coming in strong and green, so I'm hoping it will pull through this setback and bloom again next year.  I haven't done well by this one, i only got one flower to open on one spike and now I've almost killed it!

wildcat is open!

My wildcat orchid has opened her blossom!  It may be the one and only this year but it's gorgeous.

It's actually got five pointy petals but the bottom two are hidden behind the bib.  I hope the blossom lasts for weeks!

losing flowers, gaining flowers

My new wildcat orchid is having a hard time of it.  For some reason many of the flower buds shriveled up and of the two buds that were fattening up, one fell off!  I might only have one blossom this year.  I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, since my space race orchid never had this problem. 

In the meantime, my space race colmanara is going great guns.  I saw a little bud today and wondered if it was another bulb or if it was a flower spike.  See it there at the base of the bulb? 

Then I looked at another side and noticed the long flower spike!  It's already several centimeters long!

Look at him go!  Last year he had two spikes, I reckon I'll get at least three this year.  It'll be another month or so before they blossom but I might bring him inside soon so he's out of the wind.

Update: I brought Space Race inside and I'm glad I did - there are at least two more flower spikes forming!  There's also another one or two pseudobulbs coming in, I didn't think they grew both at the same time.

introducing colmanara wildcat Bobcat

I just adored my colmanara space race Topaz Gold orchid that I bought at the Victorian Orchid Show last year.  As a reminder, this is what he looked like in late October last year.  He even put out two flower spikes, you can see the second one in this photo.

As I've mentioned he's still growing strongly, putting out lots of new pseudobulbs.  But he hasn't put out any flower spikes yet, and last week the orchid show was back.  So I decided to pay it a visit and get another colmanara hybrid since I was so happy with this one.  It was so great to speak to the grower again (Woolf Orchid Culture in Queensland, which I'm happy to promote).  I found out the reason my Topaz Gold was getting brown leaf tips was because I'm using normal tap water which builds up salts in their potting mix.  So far that's the only fussy thing I've found with these hybrids; I'll try leaving water in a bucket and dunking them in to water them weekly and see if that helps.

But in the meantime, here's my new addition to the colmanara hybrid clan.  Introducing colmanara wildcat Bobcat!

If she's anything like Topaz Gold, her spike won't fully open until October.  When it does the flowers will be larger than Space Race and almost entirely dark blood-red with yellow edging.  Hopefully by then my Space Race will put out some flower spikes too, and I'll have orchids in bloom most of the summer!

june flowers

Along with the winter vegetables, here's an update on the winter flowers.  The snowflakes are going nuts - every winter their clumps get thicker and thicker (this is what they looked like last winter).

My species tulips are just starting to wake up too.  I start watering them again in the winter, knowing they wake up quite early.  The first growing tip has appeared!  Can you find it in this photo?

My colmnara orchid is still growing away.  They seem to rotate between putting out flowers and putting out new pseudobulbs.  I bought it last year in August just when it was blooming.  It doesn't look like it will blossom again by August, it's still working on several new pseudobulbs.  But I can't complain as it seems to be green and happy!  Maybe I'll visit the orchid show again and get another pretty orchid in bloom.

My three hellebores are blooming one at a time.  The first ones are coming in very pale this year for some reason; last year they were dark purple-black.  Maybe the next flush will come in darker?

On the other hand the second plant appears to be coming in dark.  The third one's sulking a bit but I know it will get there soon enough.

The nearby gaura has finished and is looking a bit scraggly.  After this photo I went in and trimmed them back a bit.  One of them had a bit of dead growth which I cut out, I hope that doesn't mean it's dying.

I haven't shown you the succulents in ages.  I went through a phase where I was growing quite a few, but I decided they're rather boring plants.  They grow very slowly and don't change much; I like a plant with a bit of personality.  But this little bowl of succulents has slowly filled in.  I like that in the winter the ones on the left turn red.

That's about it in the garden at the moment!  That and major pruning but that's not very interesting for the blog.

autumn photos

I'm alive, I promise!

I was on a wonderful holiday in Turkey for two weeks; three weeks and 500 photos later, I'm only halfway through sorting them all!  So I've been neglecting both my garden and this blog.  Here's a bit of an update.

This autumn has been a real stunner in Melbourne, after a wet summer and a cold snap.  Unfortunately I missed the best of it, by the time I got back a lot of trees were just past their prime.  I missed my crepe myrtle's show entirely and after all the effort, missed the best weeks of my white anemones!  But my little maple put on a real show this year, it's the first autumn it's really shown off.

The time last year I was still referring to the poor thing as the "sad little maple" and it looked like this!

Big improvement, isn't it?  The oakleaf hydrangea is also looking very handsome, I reckon there's more red in the mix this year:

Compared to last year (the leaves did lose their green eventually but didn't gain the reddish hue):

I also had a little surprise come out of my giant elephant ear colocasia.  I've seen the flowers on my Amazon Queen colocasia before, but never seen them do this!  I'm not sure if it was just that the species type was more mature than my Amazon Queen or what, but it made a cheerful bright seed pod that looks a bit like an exploding triffid corn cob.

Finally, a quick snap of my lovely little colmanara hybrid orchid.  I took the advice of the grower I bought it from last year; when it finished flowering I put it outside on the porch.  It's grown several new pseudobulbs over the winter, and doesn't seem to mind the cold or the added sunlight from the low winter sun.  It's getting a few black spots that I hope are not mold!  No sign of new flower spikes though.  I wonder if I'll go to the orchid show again this year, and if I'll take home another orchid from this hybrid family.  The whole family seems to have drop-dead gorgeous flowers, and it seems to be pretty easy to care for.  But the real test will be whether I can get it to flower again!

That's all for now.  It's definitely winter now which in the garden is a time for reluctant maintenance in the cold. I've only got a few winter veg to look after this year so it's mostly a matter of raking up the rest of the leaves and getting through some major winter pruning tasks.  So you might not hear much from me for a little while, but I'm still here!

orchid in full glory

My little colmanara hybrid orchid is now in full bloom. The main spike is almost completely open, the second spike is starting to form buds and there's a surprise third spike just forming!

It's funny, if you look closely the "bibs" on some of the flowers are white and on others are yellow. It must have something to do with it being a hybrid ... who knows? I love it!

I hope that when the flowers finish I can keep it happy until it flowers again.

first orchid blossom, continued

My first orchid blossom has now fully opened.  Isn't it a stunner?

first orchid blossom and bloomin' moss

Weeks later, the first orchid blossom has opened!  Well, mostly.  The top two petals haven't quite opened up but I had to share the photo.  One more blossom is fat and almost open, plus the rest of the sprig that's still probably another week or two away.  There should be flowers open now for several more months.

Also, my terrarium has already started to thrive.  Some of the clusters are getting long and shaggy, others are are growing little red pin-pricks of "flowers".  Right click and select "view image" to see it close up to get a closer view.  I'm really happy with this little terrarium, it makes me happy to see it when I'm at the kitchen sink.

starting over with orchids

Well my first experiment with orchids ended with disaster, as most of my sudden fad-interests in plants tends to do. My pretty little dendrobium came with an ugly little rot. It turned the leaves gray and the stem black until all the flowers and most of the leaves fell off. At least the garden centre gave me my money back.

I'm usually very impatient when I get excited about a new group of plants, like succulents or rex begonias. So for a little while I did roam garden shops, wondering if I should buy myself a very expensive cymbidium orchid (usually running $50-$70) because they're meant to be dead easy to grow and they're certainly prolific. But I made myself be patient when I found out that in only a few weeks, one of Australia's largest orchid shows would be coming to town.

Well I went to that show this weekend and I'm glad I waited. The two most common orchids for indoor display are Cymbidiums and Phalaenopsis. Cymbs are relatively easy to care for but there was something about their colours I didn't love - they're all a bit "dusky" and I wanted something with a cleaner, more vibrant colour. Phalaenopsis are lovely, especially the clean white ones, but I didn't trust my ability to make one re-flower. They're notoriously hard to get to flower again.

There were also Cattleyas and lady slippers, but what really caught my eye were the Oncidiums or dancing lady orchids. They just had a wildness to them that takes my breath away. So I had a chat with a few of the growers to find out if they'd suit my limited growing skills.

A man from Woolf Orchid Culture, all the way down from Toowoomba Queensland, pointed me to a hybrid of his that he says is particularly tough: Colmanara Space Race 'Topaz Gold'. He says the flowers will last for over a month and after flowering to put it out on the porch where it'll grow some more greenery and put out another flush of flowers in the same year. This is what the flowers will look like, though they're quite small (a bit larger than my thumbnail) with a good 20 or so per spike.

For now it just looks like this, but as you can see it has a flower spike just about ready to blossom as well as two more small spikes just coming up. In any case, even if I can't get it to flower again or kill it over the summer, as long as I get one good flush out of it I'll be happy. This little potential beauty only cost me $25, which is about what I spend on cut flowers every month (this guy's meant to replace those cut flowers). I'll be sure to post photos when it flowers.

In the meantime, here are some snaps from the orchid show. I think these are Odontoglossums, another one I'd love to grow except I didn't see any for sale (at least not ones in flower). Like my colmanara, I love how "wild" they look.

This one's definitely a Cymbidium and I hadn't seen a colour like this before.

These are some of the weird and wonderful specimens in the show section. No idea what most of them are!

On the right is a lady slipper orchid. On the left, an Edward Scissorhands orchid. OK, technically it's a "Bulbophyllum Elizabeth Ann Buckleberry."

And finally, I didn't even realize Phalaenopsis could come in this beautiful sunset shade! It's called "Brother Sara Gold", though I didn't see a flowering one for sale anywhere.

They are beautiful, aren't they?

back into the garden

Whenever I'm away from the garden I love to see what's changed in the garden whilst I was gone.  A lot of flowers have come in in the last two weeks.  The violas are in full bloom.

Last year only one of my hellebores blossomed, a beautiful purple.  This year all three are blooming ... and lucky me, all three are a deep gorgeous purple (though it's hard to see in this photo).  I didn't know what colour they'd be because they came from a mixed colour batch. 

And finally, the snowflakes are going gangbusters this year.  I think every clump has spread this year.  The cyclamen just keep struggling, but the snowflakes are definitely happy.  I hope they keep spreading and spreading.

My snowpeas have also powered along.  I had problems last year with long, leggy plants not thriving.  This year I chose a "bush-type" pea and put it in a larger pot, and it's thriving more than any of my plants last year.  The problem is that I still only get a few pods ripe at one time.  When we eat them in stir-fries we go through a big handful at a time, but this is only giving me 4 or 5 at a go.  I tried to grow a pea patch out the back but first the possums ate the shoots, and then rats started digging up and eating the seeds!  Maybe next year I'll have a full pea patch.

This is my first year growing broad beans.  It seems to be chugging along nicely, but I do know that they take a long time to develop.  The first flowers are only just appearing so we'll see.

And finally, I bought myself an orchid.  My stepmom had moth orchids in almost every room of her house, they were so beautiful, so I thought I'd try one myself.  I don't remember what kind it is but I loved the colour.

The garden shop also gave me a moth orchid for free.  Their shop was far too cold to keep them happy so as you can see it's looking pathetic - all the flowers dropped off.  In the words of the garden shop they "needed some TLC", mostly warmth. 

I already lost all the flowers on the moth orchid, we'll see if I have the patience to keep it alive until next year when it will bloom again.  And unfortunately, my yellow orchid is starting to drop flowers and a few leaves too.  I hope it survives!