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!

autumn in melbourne

Autumn in Melbourne confuses me.  I'm used to autumn and winter being distinct seasons.  The leaves are meant to turn around September/October (March/April in this hemisphere) and by December (June here) it's officially winter and then the winter solstice.  But because it's warmer in Melbourne than anywhere else I've lived, everything's just a bit off.  Sure you get some "cold" days in March and April, but it's the end of May and the leaves are only now reaching their peak of colour because we've only just had a few weeks of nights around 8 or 10 degrees.  So to me it only now properly feels like autumn, but it's almost winter.  It won't get much colder than this all winter long, and in a month it'll be the solstice and the days will start to get long again.  And I kid you not, in a month or two we'll get the first spring flowers.  When there are still some autumn leaves.  So in one way proper "winter" feels very short because autumn and spring crowd it out ... but on the other hand it feels very long because the temperatures stay in the range of 8ish to 17ish quite steadily for 4 or 5 months. 

That's enough waxing philosophical.  Now for some autumn colour!  Sadly no grape vine this year, I had to cut back the neighbour's vine because it was making the fence lean.  But the birch trees this year are lovely.  The last few years they were stressed and looked more dead than autumnal, I really thought they were going to die.  This year they just look amazing.

Under the birch trees are quite a few mushrooms.  No idea what kind they are but I thought they looked pretty autumnal.

And though I'd never think of the fig tree as being a very autumnal tree, it does look pretty nice whilst it loses its leaves.  It doesn't really turn and then drop them, it's more like the ones on the inside turn yellow and fall, then the middle ones, before the last outside ones take their turn.

I'll post more pictures as a few more plants in the garden take their turns.  In the meantime, autumn also means changing over the flowers by the front door to my favourite winter flowers: violas!

And autumn also means it's time to tidy up some summer-flowering plants.  I had a go at the front corner bed near the bird bath.  I thought I had a "before" photo of this corner but only now realise my last photo was from back in January! 

So use your imagination.  The African blue basil in front of the bird bath was covered with spent flower spikes and overgrowing the path it was so lush.  The blue saliva on either side of the bath was doing exactly what I'd hoped - it had grown nice and tall (almost twice as tall as it is now) and has been covered in blue flowers the entire summer. But they both needed a good haircut so that they can spring back again in ... well, spring.  Oh and I also got a bit over-zealous and lopped off the top of the magnolia there on the left.  It never got watered before I moved in and was quite leggy and the middle bits didn't have any leaves at all.  So I chopped off the top two branches to encourage it to get more bushy. It just might take a few years to reach that same height again ... ah well, I'm thinking long-term here!

happy little maple, the back bed, and favourite flowers

I'm glad to announce that the sad little maple tree survived its ordeal.  As you can see the tips of the longer branches have died, although some of them have buds that haven't sprouted yet.  But I'm very proud of its tenacity, and I hope that this year is kinder to it than last year.  Hopefully I'll remember to water it more often!  In the meantime it's going to get some coffee grinds around the roots this weekend.  It loves acidic soil and the grinds should keep the surface roots cool.  I just had to learn the hard way last year, only to put a thin layer of grounds.  Anything as thick as even 1cm turns into a hard caked crust!

I thought I'd add a picture of the back bed whilst I was at it.  The pansies in the raised beds are doing OK but I don't think I'd plant them back there again.  They want more sun, the blooms are large but don't last long, and any bit of rain makes them flop over.  Compare that to the smaller violas I describe in a moment...

In the meantime the oakleaf hydrangeas are starting to wake up from winter dormancy (they're too stick-like to see in the photo but they're near those lamps in the raised beds).  I also wanted to bring the perennial statice to your attention, it's those clusters of broad dark leaves with the whispy purple flowers.  They are fabulous plants, the blooms last forever, all through the autumn.  And when the autumn flowers faded it had already put out another set of buds which bloomed with the spring.  Two long shows per year, and they're tough and drought-friendly.  A great find for any Melbourne garden.

The big bed in the middle is full of manure and waiting for this year's veggies.  I'm thinking I'll try edamame soybeans, the kind you eat freshly steamed as a snack.  It's a Japanese snack I highly recommend if you haven't tried them.

As promised, here's another look at the violas at the front door.  Now you can see why I prefer them to the pansies ... they put out so many cheerful blossoms and they've done so all winter long.  The trick is to pick off the spent flower heads every so often so they spend their energy making more flowers instead of making seeds.  Will definitely grow again next winter.

Next we have probably my all-time favourite flower, geraniums (pelargoniums).  I keep showing photos but I can't help myself.  I can't quite get over that twelve months ago these were tiny seedlings with maybe six leaves.  And now they're going nuts!  This is the cluster that's done so well I've had to prune it back already.

My clivias are doing well too.  I planted them in the autumn and they've all put out new growth, though only one decided to bloom this year.  But what a bloom!  This variety is meant to blossom twice a year, so maybe by the autumn all three plants will be ready to bloom at once.  And in the meantime, I think one of them has had a baby.  You can just see a little green leaf coming out of the bark in front of the parent.  I think it's a "pup", which would be great, I'd love to have a thick cluster of clivia in this bed.  Though I can't recommend them yet as they haven't survived a Melbourne summer yet...

And finally, another flower I can't yet recommend because I don't know if it'll survive the summer.  My hellebores survived a vicious aphid attack, and one of them decided it was ready to flower this year.  I'm very happy with the colour, they came from a mix so I didn't know what colour they'd be.  They go semi-dormant over the summer so I hope that means they'll survive the heat.

pansies and peas

I went with a collection of shades of purple for the back beds.  They're just seedlings now but watch this space!

In the meantime, here are some other flowers about the place.  The violas on the front porch are looking particularly cheerful today.

And this is the roi de carouby snow pea.  I just love how the tendril looks perched above the open blossom.

And the snow peas are starting to pay off!  I hope we get a lot, we eat a lot of snow peas.

autumn in the garden

Well it's definitely getting on into autumn.  We had another few days of sunny warmth with chilly nights, but as of yesterday it turned back to cold and rainy.  There aren't too many trees in Melbourne that put on an autumn show, and they tend to get a bit brown and burnt over the summer which dampens the autumn colours even further.  For example my little Japanese maple hardly has any green leaves under all the dead, burned leaves so I don't know if I'll see any colour from it this year.  But I did take a photo of the grape vine along one fence as it's now in that lovely in-between stage with shades of green, burgundy, yellow and flame.  And it should get even more stunning before the leaves fall.

I also swapped over my porch flowers, the salvia and alyssum were looking pretty tired.  As promised, Mari, I wanted to grow pansies but after looking at what they had I decided on violas instead.  In the garden shop they had big pots of both pansies and violas and the smaller violas looked a bit nicer when they were covered with flowers.  I'm really happy with the colours and I hope they put on a good show!

I also bought creeping fig to plant along the fence, but it's so cold and windy today that they'll have to wait.  Same with the onion seedlings I was going to plant out, until I heard there's hail in the forecast and decided against it.

Edit: OK I got up the courage to plant the creeping fig.  Turns out that narrow side yard is a WIND TUNNEL.  Oh my lord it was freezing.  I'm pretty sure I set a personal record for fastest planting.  No pampering, not even any watering, just into the ground (it's going to rain this week anyway).  They don't look like much at the moment but in a few years, hopefully they'll cover the wall.