garden a.d.d.

My husband likes to joke that I have garden A.D.D. - as in, I have a very hard time just sitting and relaxing in my garden.   There's invariably something that catches my eye that wants doing, a weed to pull or a seedling to water.  No sooner had I taken photos of the new patio and posted them on this blog, but I was outside enjoying a snack in the sunshine and this time got distracted by the cats being adorable.  They love our new couch as much as we do!

But whilst I was up I also noticed that one of the goldfish was hanging out right on the surface and snapped a rare glimmer of gold.

Then decided I should add some closeup photos of the new annuals I put in.  Here's the red salvia.

And here's a close-up of the impatiens.  Look at all of those flower bud ready to go!

That's enough garden A.D.D. for one day!

finishing touches on the patio

I'd been slowly collecting plants for the patio but hadn't had the time to put them in ... then accidentally cut my finger in a kitchen incident and was told to keep out of the garden for a week!  Being told I couldn't cook, clean or type was one thing, but not gardening, how sad!

At last, though, I was able to get in there and finish up the plantings.  Along the back wall are two ginger lilies, I hope they grow up nice and tall by the end of the summer as we can see into our neighbour's driveway over that fence!  In front of the yuccas are those new cannas, still settling in.  In front of those are some annuals for quick colour - red salvias and some "sunpatiens": impatiens bred to tolerate the sun.  I really wanted a row of bergenias along the nearest bed but it's the wrong time of year to get them, so I may plant some more annuals there.

Here's a view right down the patio, including the two bangalow palms.  They seem to have adjusted well to life outside.  We had a lot of cloudy days so they were gradually introduced to direct sun, wind, and cool nights.  Their new growth is powering along, I just hope they don't outgrow their pots too quickly!

And just a reminder, here's what we had in this place before this transformation.  Those thick ficus trees and cumquats dominated and boxed in the space and felt a bit bland and formal.  Now when we sit on our couch on a warm, sunny evening I feel like we're living in a little slice of luxury!

tomatoes are in at last!

I almost didn't think it would ever happen.  Look at how long and leggy my poor toms had gotten!  The basil's still small, though, I'll wait a bit longer before I plant that out.

I made a hug mistake, though.  It's a good idea to plant leggy seedlings several extra centimeters deep in the dirt to grow some extra roots.  When I plucked the leaves off my honey of Mexico, I did this.  Don't do this.  This is silly.  Trim off the leaves, don't yank them.  Good thing I had extra seedlings...

And now, at last, they're in the tub.  They only need a small stake at that size, but it won't be long until I'll be wrapping string all around them to keep them from flopping.  But will I have tomatoes before Christmas?  That's the real challenge in Australia!

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!

cannas, cannas everywhere

I'm really starting to move forward on the new front garden bed.  I've got a birthday party on the 29th so I'm eager to get some plants in before then!

Here's a bit of a "before".  A palm in a pot will go where that cardboard is now (we've filled TWO council bins with cardboard from the furniture and there's still some left!).  At the moment we've just got the yuccas, the pond, and some dichondra at the front.

The plan is to pull out the two shabbiest hedges along the brick and grow some ginger lily.  I also want cannas in front of the yuccas and some bergenias along the bath about to where the pond is.  Finally I'll fill in with some annuals.  Lush, green and a bit tropical!

Cannas aren't in the shops just yet as they seem to wait until they're in bloom and beautiful.  So I ordered some from a canna website.  It also let me be really picky about what I got.  There are hundreds of varieties of cannas in short, medium, tall, with leaves that are green, red, or stripey and flowers that are pink, red, yellow, orange or spotted and either large or small in size.  So much choice!

I ordered five plants and they arrived in the mail yesterday.  So far when I've mail-ordered plants they sure tend to be generous - I count 8 rhizomes here!  Three of them were a bit small so perhaps they thought they should together count as one.

I dug a shallow trench in front of the yuccas, spaced the cannas out (not quite in a straight line, that was on purpose!) and filled them in with some horse manure to enrich the soil. 

Now it's pretty clear they won't be blooming before the party but I hope they at least settle in and put out some leaves for a bit of foliage.  The variety is called "copicana" (no, not tropicana!), about 1.5 metres tall with green leaves and elongated orange blossoms.  Hopefully they'll look like this!

tomatoes almost ready to go

It's time to swap over the beetroots to the tomatoes.  Unfortunately not many of the beetroots reached even "baby" size but I really needed to make the swap!

Once they were out I finally had to dump out all the dirt in this tub.  For the last two years I suspect that my tomatoes have gotten some kind of disease that's in the soil.  Which meant I needed to get rid of all the soil and I even rinsed out the tub with bleach.  I got a bit of a surprise when I pulled the tub away from the steps - a whole colony of snails!

Once the snails were dealt with I put together the wooden frame I use to keep the tomatoes in shape.  This year I got extra-fancy and fit cross-beams along the length of the tub too.  The soil is a fresh mix of potting soil and mushroom compost plus a sprinkle of some sulphate of potash and organic fertilizer pellets. 

The only down side is that I can't plant out my tomatoes just yet.  I was out of town this week so I haven't had the chance to harden them off yet.  But hopefully mid-week I'll be able to finally put them in their new home!

step by step by patio

The patio's really starting to come together.  Last weekend's project was to fill in the strip below the mosaic, where I used to grow rosemary and sage.  It's only about 20cm wide but it means we can push the couch farther back.  We dug out the dirt, roots and bark, then lay down some edging along the back and sand over the dirt.  Then with the help of a spirit level and a mallet we lay out the stones.  Finally we swept some more sand between them.  Not a bad effort I reckon!

And even more exciting, we have our couch and chairs!  Of course the cats are already enjoying them too.

I also bought a pair of bangalow palms, one for either side of the couch.  I'm not sure how well they'll do outside so I'm going to introduce them a few hours at a time for the next fortnight.  They're meant to be pretty tough palms so I hope they don't mind a bit of wind and sun through the summer!

fishies get a new pond

Well it's not actually a new pond, but after two weeks in a bucket of increasingly green sludge the goldfish are back in their home.  Look how crystal clear that water is!  You can see right to the bottom.  As you can see I've added a new plant - dwarf papyrus.  I had a little colocasia in there but the big floppy leaves blew over all the time.  Hopefully these thin little reeds will stay upright.  The water lily is also putting out new leaves and there's at least one bud forming.

The best part is, my patch job fixed the leaks!  Hopefully I won't have to drain their pond again for a year, as long as I can keep the water pretty clean.

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.

jeepers, creepers

I thought I should report on the front path to our house.  It's not a very inspiring part of the garden, more of a chore to take care of.  It's involved lots of destruction, cutting down plum trees and ornamental plums.  They were pretty, but they constantly just into the narrow path and they were so shaded by the birches they'd go mildewy by the autumn.  So now this is all that's left - three lovely birch trees with camellias at one end and my kaffir lime at the other.

But I'm slowly starting to integrate some plants into the bed.  One annoyance is that blackbirds love kicking the barkdust into the path so I'm planting some creepers to keep the bark in place.  The first thing I planted was some cuttings of Kenilworth ivy.  Remember these?  Back in January they were little threads I'd pinched from a crack in the sidewalk.  Now there are three or four lush clumps already forming little purple flowers (you can't really see them in this photo).

But I also decided to mix it up with some native violets.  They're shade-lovers and look remarkably similar to Kenilworth ivy; if you look closely the leaves are shaped slightly differently.  I had to buy these but split the plant into two before planting it.

In addition to some creepers, I'm slowly planting some taller shade-lovers along the fence.  I've planted some cuttings of plectranthus but so far one died and two aren't thriving very well, we'll see how they go.  But I also bought a little white calla lily.  It's flowering for the first time now.  It's tiny now but one day will be a big, lush clump!

Hopefully one day this walk will be a lush, beautiful welcome walk to our house.