We have had a week of relative warmth, redolent of spring, and we’ve even had sunshine which has been superb. I can hear the groans from the Northern Hemisphere as I write, but truly, it’s been an awful winter – too wet, too cold and too long! And the weather boffins are telling us that thanks to La Ninã and the Indian Ocean Dipole, it will be wet on the east coast of Australia until at least December.
I swear I’m done with it.
Anyway, my six:
Where has this last week gone!
I don’t know about you, but mine’s been spent caring for my canine garden-companion who had surgery for bladder stones this week. Being a Jack Russell, keeping him quietly resting requires total concentration. I’m nothing if not a gaol-warden now and trust me, the prescribed opioids etc have not worked at keeping him sedentary. Sigh!
Grabbing pics has been literally on the run and they’re rather an odd bunch of images which I confess I’ve cheated with and added two that are on my wishlist of future purchases, should I ever win the lottery.
But to start at the beginning. This is my first ever potting up of what? Are they Aeoniums? I don’t know anything about them. They were given to me in this pot and I’m potting them on into terracotta. How do I look after them?
This is our Viburnum Plicatum F. Tomentosum ‘Mariesii which is having a short hiccup, flowering in the middle of winter but I dare say it’s as hopeful as I am that spring is coming.
My most favourite rose of all time, the vibrantly robust Madame Alfred Carriere. We pruned it this hard last year and it flourished so I’ve done the same this year. I want to move it as it shadows my veggie garden too much. Terrified of moving it but we have just under 8 weeks till spring so must do it any minute!
I love terracotta pots in a garden, especially when they age and become heavily covered in mosses and lichens. This pot is a year old and is beginning to oblige. It’s got a clematis planted in it which is a transplant. More on that if it lives to tell the story.
This is the first of my ring-in pics. An Arras greenhouse/summer house for sale this week at one of our most upmarket and favourite garden accoutrement shops – the Jardin Room at Oatlands, Tasmania. I love the summerhouse 11/10!!! At approximately $A8000+, I’m waiting to win the lottery or else will ask a welder my husband has much respect for, how much he would charge to make one similar.
And finally, I have this little pot on my wish list as well. There are so many metal and wire floral sculptures that Aimee Pradel creates that I love. I’m tempted by her auriculas but something about a pot of bright yellow-trumpeted daffs on the kitchen bench all year round, really appeals. I have an eye on her stunning wreaths as well. Crikey, I need to win the lottery!
That’s it from me for today. As usual, Jon The Propagator hosts Six on Saturday and please pop over to this link to have your weekly international horticultural tour.
Cheers!
Hurrah, I made it to SoS with pics of our main garden on the coast as opposed to the tiny little Matchbox in the city!
There is a harsh reality elsewhere just now, and I understand if no one reads what I’m writing, but here goes anyway. It may just help a little…
“I went down in the afternoon
to the sea
which held me, until I grew easy…” Mary Oliver
My mother always called the coast her healing place – the place she went when she was tired, emotional, recuperating, grieving or just plain cranky. The name stuck and for all my life thus far it has been that and more.
Like now…
Another one is about to bite the dust.
There’s music thumping outside and people yelling. That’s the difficulty with having New Year in summer – everyone celebrates outside and to hell with the neighbours.
We left the coast because the population has bred like the plague (one wonders if that’s literally!!), had hoped the ‘burbs in the city would be empty like they have been every other year. But then this is a Covid year and everyone seems to be eschewing the super-spreader locations and ‘playing’ in back yards.
We saw the most astonishing display the other night.
We were walking the dog along the river path.
Today was one of those days that reminded me of what the coast is – a summer’s day which releases special memories that go back 70 years.
The morning began with heat that seared the face and bare feet and the drawn out click and hum of crickets in the underbrush. I walked my dog along the beach and he dragged, not really interested in smells, just swims – his seriously wiry coat not what a dog would want to wear when the temperature was up to 32 degrees by 10.30. But the sea was as blue as the sky – they joined at some nebulous floating horizon. It’s the same whenever it’s hot – everything shimmers.
