Heading towards the vernal equinox, and the sun is starting to make an impact on the garden. We've had this plant in the front garden for ages, where it spreads promiscuously but rarely flowers - or at least, rarely flowers profusely - and last year Liz moved it into a bit of a dead spot in the back yard. This is about 3 years worth of flowers from all the plants in the front in its first spring, so I guess it likes its new home. It gets more sun, but the soil is abominable.
The grasses in the background just go from strength to strength.
This is one of the few non natives left in the back garden now, and we really only keep it out of a mixture of sentiment (it was our first garden purchase for the original design) and the month of new leaves every spring. Sadly, the heat is going to destroy the tips of all of these, leaving a ratty looking and inconveniently placed plant (it was supposed to go up, but it only ever went out). It does stay red, but I think the heat is too much for it. Mind you, it was originally in shade, and nearly died. When we moved it to its current location, we didn't really expect it to survive.
A bit of art, courtesy the auto focus function. The daisy-like flower is attached to something that I think was described on the label as a correa. I know they have a pretty wide range of flowers, but this one is a bit startling. It's in a new bed - well, obviously, an old bed, but one that has radically altered its nature after some savage tree pruning. We're not replacing the tree, rather we're going for an open bed with ground covers. Whatever this is, it's prostrate and sprawling handily about. It's main threat comes from neighbourhood cats - hence the green plastic you can glimpse. Since Eddie passed away the back garden is unguarded. Saffie isn't allowed outdoors.
This guy is having his time in the sun - I pulled out about a tonne of native iris that was obscuring this climber during the winter. It has flowered before, but possibly not with such enthusiasm. Plus, it was impossible to get close enough to get this kind of picture.
This is the last of the grevillea - once these flowers finish we'll be pruning it back within an inch of its life. It's been going for close to 13 years now, and really held together amazingly well, but the rest of the garden has changed so much that it's no longer appropriate as a ceiling storey plant. We could easily have so much ceiling that we could grow moss on the bricks in summer, courtesy a couple of neighbours, and a dwarf eucalypt we planted on the other side of the garden that - well, wasn't. Or if it was a dwarf, it's lucky for us we didn't accidentally plant its full-grown sibling, because the dwarf is a good 4 metres high.
Liz, resisting temptation at the community nursery.
Council, being idiots, sent out their tree planting guys to put a tree in our verge garden. This despite the fact that the verge garden department had been explicit that there wouldn't, shouldn't and couldn't be trees in the verge gardens. As an apology they gave us a large number of plant vouchers for the nursery - but we don't actually need more plants, just as we don't actually need a 15 metre shallow rooted tree (a water gum) lifting up the pavement, knocking over our front wall, and trashing our storm water drains. Sigh.
I'm hoping the fact that the verge garden people are nearly as cross as us will help us negotiate towards a more acceptable planting. We're quite keen on the idea of a tree - just we'd prefer to be involved in the discussions on which tree.
This is the (our) latest addition to the verge garden - sorry about the auto focus, I'm not sure what the camera thinks is in focus here - maybe the wind blew at the critical moment. You can see here, and in the picture below, that Liz is going for a massed small leaved over-planted effect, which, in the 6 months since February, has come along pretty well. It really is impossible to see how a 12 meter high large leaved plant actually fits into that design. Well, I guess we can prune it aggressively - council calls that vandalism though.
The other peculiarly stupid thing is that there are power, phone and video cables overhead, at about 5 metres. If we don't prune it, council has committed themselves to a lifetime
of pruning.
Somebody can maybe work out what plants are here. There's knot weed in the left foreground, half a dozen grasses, a heath-y thing whihc has been flowering madly for months now, I keep expecting it to die of exhaustion. There's a daisy of sorts, and native geraniums too, although I'm not sure if they're in shot. The shadow on the left middle edge is the new tree, obscuring the limited sun the front of the house gets (dawn until 10 in summer, hardly any in winter).
This is the front garden. It hasn't changed much over the last few years. Occasionally we have to go o an onion weed war, but the rest of the weeds seem to be out competed, which is satisfying. These are some of the bluer blue flowers, which tend, to my eyes at least, to be significantly at the purple end of the idea of blue.
On the vertical garden in the back yard, a succulent whose leaves Liz harvested on a walk around the neighbourhood. We have about 30 succulents that fit this description.
This is the orange tree that was in the back garden when we arrived. It suffers a bit from serious competition (it's surrounded by bromeliads and swordfish ferns) and a total lack of citrus care from us, but still, amazingly, about every third year manages to produce a lot of fruit. The oranges are small, but very tasty and very juicy.
There was a bee on that flower when I decided to take the picture, but by the camera and I agreed on a focal point, the bee had gone. Auto focus is pretty astonishing, and sometimes it's a good thing, but I've decided that my next camera will have a manual focus button as well.
