Height of fashion

One loss in moving countries is houseplants. Just when you have grown them from cheap, tiny pots to lush, green monsters, you have to get rid of them and start again. Turns out that house plants (plants in general) are quite expensive in Australia, but I eventually found a punnet of six ferns at a garden centre for a reasonable price. Some have gone into pots for the less sunny rooms (one side of the house, with the bedrooms on it, gets no direct sunlight at all so its great for ferns and cyclamen and such). One got used for a terrarium experiment!

 

 

I'm sure you've seen these just about everywhere by now. I've always loved them, but thought they were a bit tricky. But then I kept seeing them, and came across a big jar at the op shop ($1.25! Thanks Salvos!) and took the plunge. I did some reading, then disregarded pretty much everything and decided it was pretty much just a big see through pot. The blue stones are a bit odd, but the only small bags of stones (less than 10 kg) at the garden centre were coloured, so in they went. Turns out, they kind of match some of the other stuff on the mantelpiece. The mantelpiece is probably the wrong place for it (too warm and dry thanks to the heater), however aesthetics are currently winning over pragmatics.

 It somehow has a vintage feel that seems to go with the period of the house (1940/50s), and I'm pretty happy with it. I'll keep you posted if it survives...



Pretty

I know they aren't really indoor plants.

I know the blue pots poking out the top are naff.

 

But they are pretty.

Winter garden

I found some winter hazel in a grown over corner of the garden today. It is so delicate and pretty, I couldn't resist bringing a few twigs inside. I'm off to clear some creeper from it now, and give a bit of room.

Flowering

Moving continents brings lots of surprises and adjustments. The garden of our rental house has mainly shrubs, lots of which are camellias. I had forgotten that these are winter flowering, and how much brighter and un-wintery they made the garden. I am missing my 'proper' garden but these are very beautiful.

Winter blooms

A spontaneous visit to the botanical gardens in Wellington this afternoon. Its been very mild, sunny weather lately, and I was amazed by the amount of colourful blooms on show - magnolias, rhodos, camellias, jonquils, violets. And daphne - some little corners were almost overwhelmingly fragrant. Conveniently, the gardens have an excellent playground (although its a bit of an uphill hike), so everyone is happy. And time for a quick botany lesson on the way home.

Munchkin

Our garden highlight this year (not hard - it was a dismal year in our garden) - climbing mini-pumpkins called Munchkins.

I have no idea how they taste, but they look amazing!

refurbished garden

So on the weekend, we replaced the straw bales around our straw-bale raised garden bed. I have to say, for something that we planned very poorly and did no research into, this has worked really well! We still have almost no weeds in the bed, its reasonably easy to keep slugs under control with nematodes, and our plan to just replace the straw bales when they got saggy worked like a charm. This picture has the new bales on the left compared with the old ones on the right. They are from the same farm, so they are made by the same baler and should be the same size - gives you an idea of the amount of compression/decomposition that occurred in a year.

When we finished, it looked as good as new! There was no collapse of the dirt when we removed the old bales, and the new ones slotted in easily. And now we have five bales worth of partially rotted straw to mulch the rest of the garden with - very handy in this drought we're in! Now I just want to plant away - its very hard to restrain myself - I have to keep reminding myself that its only February still (just for today though), and there is plenty more opportunity for frost. It just feels so much like spring out there :)

ongoing

While we were on holiday, the garden kept growing. And blooming. Turns out those scrappy old leaves I'd been wondering about, dotted around the garden, were irises. Out of focus irises, but still pretty :) And the roses are turning out to be pleasantly old fashioned and wonderfully smelly.

This is my favourite view from inside at the moment. The pot is fresias, but I think the leaves are rather lovely. Outside is the mock orange, which is carpeting the grass in white. Its all very crisp and springy.

Charmer

 In the wild

In my garden.
Snakes head fritillary

Growth

The garden is just bursting into life. There are a few flowers scattered around, but most of the drama is coming from the leaves. The rhubarb astonishes me daily; obviously neglected when we moved in, with the most cursory care it has made a triumphant comeback.

Some of the roses have joined in, opening beautifully coloured new leaves. And almost every day I find a new rose that has been strimmered to the ground, or buried under rotting apples or a mound of climber, and has sent out a few wobbly shoots. I'm sure some won't make it, but others look like they'll give it a go.

Yesterday's discovery: violets! Tiny, stunted, neglected things but now I know they are there I can help out a bit.

Mellow Yellow

Our garden is currently green (grass, weeds & moss pretending to be lawn), brown (trees and bushes about to have leaves) and yellow (daffodils and forsythia). I'm hoping that this trend won't last and that there will be a lot more green and additional colours in the coming months, but right now its kinda cool. It keeps drawing me outside, promising spring. And these duck bootees keep making me laugh (thanks mum!)

Moving on (3)

And the snowdrops:

Moving on (2)

Flowers in the garden too.

Moving in to a new house has the added delight of discovering a new garden. In older UK houses this often means discovering just how many bulbs are in the garden. Luckily, this house is no exception - in addition to very old, established (and long-neglected) rose beds and a stonking rhubarb patch, there are huge swathes of bulbs now popping up. The garden is currently bisected with a great patch of crocuses and snowdrops under the central apple tree. Its hard to get a good shot of the thing in its entireity (maybe if the sun comes out this week), but here are some close-ups. Today, the crocuses.

Spring belle

I am getting oodles of joy from the ongoing delights of my Golden Syrup tins. Remember them?

delicate

Anticipation

I can never bring myself to throw out these golden syrup tins, they are so lovely. At last - a use for them!

Evenley Wood Garden

Last weekend we visited Evenley Wood Garden for their Autumn Colour open days. True to their word, there was spectacular and sometimes surprising autumn colour:

And of course, plenty of leaves for little hands to play with.

I can't wait to see it in spring!

Autumn Harvest

The allotment was pretty neglected this year, but we did manage a good harvest of borlotti beans. This is what has ripened and dried so far, and there looks like there will be more to come - good times!

To compensate for a pretty dismal effort in formal gardening, I've focused on hedgerow harvesting this year. Yesterday, we went out and found a bumper crop of haws, a last few blackberries and elderberries, horse chestnuts (only good to look at, but so pretty!), and sloes.

Fuschia fairies

Gardening is different in England. Its colder, there's less light for much of the year, and more for some of the year than I'm used to. Plants that I think of as perennial turn out to be annuals or biannuals. It makes for adventurous times in the garden. Last year, I had good fun growing sweet peas in pots. This year, I thought I would try some different potted colour.

When I was small, I had a book about a fuschia fairy - the child 'popped' the fuschia bud (as they are so tempting to do!) and the fairy fell out as she wasn't quite ready. She played with the child while her wings dried off and she flew away. My mum had (and possibly still has) a large fuschia with tiny pink flowers, and I loved to pop them. I always felt a delicious combination of fear and hope that I would disturb a fairy! I have really enjoyed the four that I've grown this year, although they are quite small as plants. They don't have the wow factor or the scent of the sweet peas, but they are very pretty. One of them is a trailing variety, but I didn't have a hanging basket so it isn't shown to best potential.

This is the highlight of my garden though - my neighbours garden! Our back gardens aren't fenced off, so while we take responsibility for looking after our own patches, we get the benefit of feeling like we have a much larger garden and enjoying each other's gardening successes (we got the better deal this year!)

Good English Fun

Now, it wasn't quite Midsummer Day, but we went picking elderflowers at midday anyway (only a few days off, so that will have to do). We went out to a nearby village and walked along a gorgeous bridleway in the howling wind, stopping every now and then to plunder the flowers.

We returned home with a great haul, which is being turned into various drinks as we speak. Also, finished knitting (!!) - this is the First Coat from Debbie Bliss' Essential Baby, knit in gorgeous Blue Sky Alpaca Skinny Dyed Cotton. It used about 2.5 skeins, and I think it looks quite handsome! It looks much better in person than in the picture, and needs a block, but I'm pretty happy with it, all in all.

And gratuitous garden shot - I've been waiting for these little sweeties for ages!