Category: seasons

Australia · David Austin roses · from my garden · garden flowers · rain · roses · seasons · subtropical weather · summer · vine plants

In A Vase On Monday

Joanne29 Comments

When I went into the garden this morning at 8:30 am to choose flowers for my contribution to Cathy’s meme In a Vase on Monday at Rambling in the Garden, I didn’t have any plan other than to pick roses and hydrangeas.

Armed with only secateurs and a plastic container of water to put the cut flowers in, I went straight to the main rose garden, dead-headed the old roses, and chose the best of what was available of the Olivia Rose Austin and Desdemona – both David Austin roses – and one lonely red rosebud whose name I cannot remember.

Desdemona at the front, and pale pink Olivia Rose behind.
The lonely red rosebud is now among friends.
Beautiful pale pink Olivia.

As usual, a random weed here and there distracted me, so they had to be pulled out. The gerberas have consistently flowered since … when? Late winter, perhaps. The more I dead-head the gerberas, the healthier the new flowers look, and currently, apart from being a tad bedraggled by the overnight rain, they look beautiful.

Gerberas always remind me of Shining, Happy People!

Now I have the Shining, Happy People song by REM in my head! So here’s the link, if you need to listen to it, like I just had to. 😉

Next, I went into the arbour garden, named for obvious reasons – there’s an arbour there, with a Pierre de Ronsard rose growing on either side. It’s a fairly new garden which I worked on just before The Hill Project, and I have read that it takes three to four years for the roses to cover and arbour. I will add photos of the garden soon. 🙂

There are two other roses growing in the arbour garden as well, a Jude the Obscure and a Roald Dahl. The Roald Dahl in particular needed some attention, but I did cut a couple of the roses to bring inside.

Peachy orange bloom of the David Austin rose, Roald Dahl.

Once in the arbour garden, I spent more time than I planned on doing – I couldn’t find a Gordonia tree I had planted nearly a year ago! It took some clearing of a Baby Sun Rose ground cover, which has really taken off, to find the tree. The ground cover had grown over it! The tree was bought as a tube stock plant, and was minute when I put it in the ground. The last time I checked on it, it was beginning to become established, growing healthy new leaves, so I knew it was in there somewhere. Needless to say, I removed the Baby Sun Rose, to give my Gordonia a chance to grow. I can plant more Baby Sun Rose, which is easy to strike from a cutting, when the tree is bigger.

Between pulling weeds, dead-heading spent blooms and choosing flowers, time got away on me. When it started to rain, I ran indoors feeling hot, sweaty and wet, and discovered I had spent three glorious hours in the garden. 🙂 After a shower, when I arranged the flowers, I found I had enough for three vases!

And here are the Hydrangeas ~~

Hydrangea flowers from two different plants.

Somehow, one of my Hydrangea bushes has ended up growing green flowers this year. I wonder why that is, when in previous years the flowers have been blue?

Faithful lavender always looks beautiful and smells divine!

Four Hydrangea blooms filled the vase, leaving just enough room to add a few stems of beautiful lavender.

Where’s the vase??

As you can see, the vase is almost lost beneath the showy Hydrangeas.

A few miniature roses among a Roald Dahl and Olivia Rose Austin.

A couple of roses had short stems, so they went into a tiny, plain white jug, which was another find when we cleaned out my inlaw’s house before they went into aged care. I also added some miniature roses, three Chameleon and a Love Potion rose. The purple sprays behind are ‘Walker’s Low’ Catmint, which grows in abundance around my garden and keeps the bees very happy.

With the flowers arranged, I chose three different places to display them – the Rose and Gerbera vase is in the main living area ~~

And the vase of Hydrangeas and Lavender is on the mantlepiece ~~

The final, tiny vase I decided to put in my office ~~

When my son-in-law replaced my computer recently, he suggested I move the tower and speakers, which previously lived on my desk, to a built-in shelf under the desk to free up some space. Now, I just have a set of red, metal drawers on the desk, which holds printer ink and paper – and is the perfect place for a small vase of flowers. So I thought it might be fun to add a photo of my office work area. 🙂

And from my desk, this is my view of the flowers, turned towards me ~

As always, thank you Cathy for inspiring my creativity with flowers! 🙂

Update: A Tuesday edit ~ here’s an additional photo for Cathy at Rambling in the Garden, who featured yellow/mustard coloured daffodils and narcissi in her vase this week. Cathy accompanied her vase with a tin of Coleman’s mustard, established 1814. I haven’t seen Coleman’s mustard here in Australia, but we do have Keen’s mustard. So for Cathy, here’s an additional photo, taken today ~

Next time I visit the supermarket, Cathy, I’ll see if we have Coleman’s here. 🙂

Australia · daughter · from my garden · garden flowers · Ixora · native Australian plants · rain · seasons · subtropical weather

In A Vase On Monday ~ Bird of Paradise

Joanne21 Comments

This week for my contribution to Cathy’s In a Vase on Monday meme at Rambling in the Garden, I have limited my arrangement to three flowers, based on the potted Bird of Paradise that has decided to flower! It only flowers during summer, but not every year. I am sure the plant would flourish if planted in the ground, but I have heard that once in the ground, Bird of Paradise grow huge and are difficult to remove. So in the pot it will stay.

In previous weeks I have said that I don’t like mixing purple and orange flowers, yet somehow I manage to do so often. If the colours are light shades, it doesn’t “clash” as much. Yet having said that, I have seen arrangements of orange and purple flowers looking beautiful together. This week, however, I decided to stick with just orange flowers with green foliage.

Strangely enough, if you look closely at the Bird of Paradise, the have a thin strip of purplish colour with the orange. Regardless, orange is such a bold colour, so today, orange can be the star attraction.

It is fortuitous that during the same week my Bird of Paradise flowered, my Ixora ‘Prince of Orange’ is also in full bloom. I found plenty of long stemmed Ixora to cut for the vase today.

I have discovered that orange flowers en masse do not photograph as well as the more subtle colours I usually choose for my Monday vase! Or it could be the dull light in the house that is the issue. Today is the first day in around a week that it isn’t raining, but there are so many clouds that the sun is struggling to peek through.

Ahhhhhh, that’s more like it – a delicate spray of light coloured Lilly Pilly flowers. 🙂

This week I have been out and about more than usual. My area is overtaken by tourists for the summer holidays. I live just south of Queensland’s Gold Coast and just north of Byron Bay, which has become world renowned in recent years. Byron to me will always be a sleepy little beach village, yet since several of the “rich and famous” moved in, suddenly, everyone wants to go there! So during the six week summer school break, I tend to stay close to home.

One day during the week, I went shopping with my daughter. The shops have begun their Easter displays, and although I had no intention of buying anything, this vase jumped out at me and said “take me home!”. And when my daughter said she had found a dish that looked very “Mum-ish” – her word – I had to agree. And considering my choice of orange flowers for today’s vase, the colours blend beautifully with the bunny designs.

I know for certain that I will not limit the use of this vase to Easter alone. 🙂

In this last photo, once again the orange of the flowers doesn’t look as clear as it could – I think I will blame the dull day – but I wanted to add this photo for the background. I often mention the purple flowering Tibouchina tree just outside my front door: in this photo, the tree can be seen through the window. Hanging from a branch is Tillandsia usneoides – Spanish Moss, or as we call it, Grandfather’s Whiskers. To the right is a mozzie zapper, although those blood-thirsty pests haven’t been as active this past week, thank goodness. And just beyond the tree is the garden which featured in my Hill Project post recently.

Thank you for your dedicated weekly hosting of In a Vase on Monday, Cathy. 🙂

Australia · from my garden · Mount Warning · photography · seasons · subtropical weather · sunset

Silent Sunday

Joanne23 Comments

This week, I have been a tad out of sorts, with a cold and laryngitis. So today, I appreciate the Silence of Sunday …

In other news, my computer went to heaven. Yesterday, however, my son-in-law installed a new computer for me, so I’m back online. My iPad just didn’t cut it when trying to read blogs and add comments. I will catch up with everyone this week.

And on the weather front, we had a couple of fine, mosquito-free days, which resulted in an amazing sunset in the valley. This photo is straight out of the camera.

Have a wonderful weekend. ❤

Australia · challenges · Changes · concepts · family · gardening · grandchildren · in my garden · inspiration · photography · seasons · subtropical climate

Karma’s Photo Hunt ~ The Hill Project

Joanne35 Comments

When Karma suggested a photo hunt for her blogging friends to join in on, I immediately knew which photos I needed to search for!

Last year, as I have mentioned before, I spent a lot of time revamping several of my garden beds. The hill directly opposite the front of my house was the largest project, a garden running almost the full length of the house. Plus, it’s on a sharp slope. We had tried to make the hill manageable previously, without a great deal of success – what I didn’t realise was that our first attempt at constructing a manageable and attractive garden was in 2010!

Here’s the first photo I found during the hunt –

15th April 2010, before the first Hill Project began.

As the photo shows, the hill was steep! So anything we constructed there would be a challenge to maintain. You will notice growing on the far right of the photo is a small pine cone tree. I decided this tree would be beautiful when fully grown, and would shade the front of the house.

19th October 2020 – the tree had grown!

The next photo I found during the hunt was taken in 2020. I had even convinced husband to extend the retaining wall out in front of the pine cone tree at some stage, to accomodate the tree’s roots. The original plan had been to cover the whole hill with drought tolerent ground cover plants, which may have worked well if most of the plants hadn’t struggled to get a root-hold on the slope!

By this time, husband had lost interest in helping me with the garden. Weed mat and mesh wire to hold mulch in place simply wasn’t successful on the sharp slope. I slipped down the slope when trying to pull out weeds. Also, by this time we had brought home potted plants galore from my inlaws house when we had cleaned out their property, ready for sale. It was a trying time, putting my inlaws into aged care facilities and dealing with my father-in-law’s declining health. I think it fair to say we had both lost our gardening mojo completely.

The day my seventeen year old daughter brought home a boy “she thought she might like” – nearly nineteen years ago – little did I know what an inspiration he would be to me in the years to come! I wrote a post about him several years ago, I think I called it A Man of Ideas or some such thing, as I had discovered he has a unique knack of getting into my brain, seeing the vision I have, then improving upon my ideas. He’s wonderful! So when we spoke about a possible solution to the most challenging part of my garden and threw around a few ideas, we came up with a solution that he was prepared to help me bring to fruition …

Winter 2023 ~ the Hill Project 2.0 begins!

First, the pine cone tree had to go. Next, the retaining wall needed to travel along a straight line once the roots of the tree were removed. What was I thinking when I insisted the tree stayed? Those tree roots were gynormous!!!

Three little people, along with the dogs, enjoyed watching Daddy – to the two little ones on the right – and Uncle – to the little one on the far left – hack away at the hill, essentially restructuring the land to accomodate our vision for a new, attractive, easy care, easy to access, garden.

The dry creek bed under construction.

During times of heavy rain, the far corner of the garden washes away in a stream of water which cascades down the hill. My man of Ideas suggested we construct a dry creek bed in that corner. This area of the garden is still under construction, but I think this photo, taken around October last year, shows the basic formation of what we have in mind.

And here’s the constructed garden –

The construction and planting is complete!

The height of the lower section of the retaining wall has been raised, another small block wall has been contructed and a wooden sleeper wall at the top runs along a hedge of Sacred Bamboo, Nandina Nana. It had to be a rockery garden to compliment the natural surroundings, so my son-in-law lifted the larger bush rocks into place with the mini-excavator and left several smaller rocks for me to play around with, to create the garden I had in mind.

It was a long process, but we did it! I hope my son-in-law realises how much I appreciate his contribution to everything he helps me with around the garden. Maybe the thousand times I have said thank you may have been a clue. 😉

So there are my before shots, before-before shots, during and after shots, Karma – you did say the rules of the photo hunt are loosey-goosey – right? 😉

There’s still time to join in, so why not follow the link to Karma’s Photo Hunt!

The second part of the challenge is to take a photo, one for each season of the same place, which I will join in also! I am eager to watch my new garden plants grow and change as the seasons progress. 🙂