There has been a few dry days recently, with temperature reaching the low to mid twenties – my garden is so happy, and so am I! The garden is a bit of a mess in some areas with weeds overtaking any available soil space, so the first chore I have is weeding.
For my contribution to Cathy at Rambling in the Garden’s Monday vase, I picked any flowers that looked like they had survived the wet weather, and thrived since their petals dried.
Recently, another Cathy, this one at Words and Herbs, displayed her vase on a crocheted pansy doily. It reminded me of one my mother made, many years ago. I took my doily out today and I can see the main pattern is not the same as Cathy’s, but the edge is decorated by pansies. My Mum told me she didn’t have the patience to crochet the pansies, so I made those and she completed the rest. So to show Cathy my version on the doily I am adding it as today’s prop. 🙂
A few daisies are beginning to bloom again, and this week I found a single Souvenir de la Malmaison rose that was in rather good condition to add to my vase.
The red rose bush (with a forgotten name) also had a very blousy single red rose.
And I picked a few Olivia Rose Austin roses to add to the vase as well.
The man of the house complained that all the roses droop over the sides of the vase! I rather like the informality of roses with a drooping habit myself.
I feel certain that the couple of Verbena Polaris I picked are the last for this season, although I think I may have said that a couple of times recently, lol. They just keep on booming. 🙂
Likewise, I keep thinking I have seen the end of my Gerberas for a while, yet here they are again!
Although I hadn’t expected to add a second prop to my post today, Bowie had other ideas … see him there, lurking behind the flowers?
He quickly got the drift when I shooed him away. I thought he might knock over the vase – he’s a big kitty-cat!
I highly recommend a visit to both Cathy’s blogs to admire their spring flowers. So many plants are in bloom now in the Northern Hemisphere and I so enjoy seeing the varieties of plants and flowers that flourish in cooler climates. I am behind on catching up with everyone myself! But slowly, I am beginning to make my way around to each of my friends to see what they have been doing, while I have been taking advantage of the cooler weather here in Australia and catching up on chores around the house and garden. 🙂
Our family Easter celebrations began two weeks ago this year. My eldest son and his wife are in Bali for the long weekend, while youngest son, his wife and their two boys are in Adelaide, so we had a “whole family” get together two weeks ago for Easter. This weekend I had my two daughters and their families here. So what with one things and another, it has been a busy time.
During the past two weeks also, we have had rain nearly every day, not huge in quantity, but enough to prevent me from doing any gardening. How frustrating! Yesterday, however, when the sun shone for the first time in days, I got all my washing done. I also put my empty “bunny” vase in place last night, ready to add flowers today for my contribution to Cathy’s regular Monday event, In a Vase on Monday.
And what did I awaken to this morning? You guessed it, more rain!
Between showers, I collected a few pretties to add to my vase, although my lovely Gerberas, which I had thought were finished for the season, are a tad bedraggled again. The weight of the raindrops tends to make their delicate petals flop downwards.
Raindrops on roses – (and whiskers on kittens – sorry, I had to say it!) – on the other hand always look so beautiful. This lovely rose is a long stemmed ‘Olivia Rose Austin’; all the other roses on the bush were short stemmed, so wouldn’t suit my bunny vase.
There were a few red roses, but I only chose this one as it is fully opened. I am surprised by how many rose buds are still on all of my rose bushes, given the time of year and the number of rainy days we have had.
The Tibouchina flowers look rather stunning with raindrops on their petals as well. They are slightly weighted down by the moisture, but being stronger petals they seem to cope. I should also mention that the green foliage in the background is a few stems of Port Wine Magnolia. It isn’t in flower just now, but the foliage acted as an ideal vase filler, to hold the flower stems in place.
Being Easter, I had to add a prop of Easter eggs with my vases. The little ones all know where Nana’s stash is, and know that a simple “please” when they visit will have me sharing their “special treats”.
I read today that in the USA, there are no chocolate Easter eggs; also, there isn’t a four day long weekend over Easter, which is what we have here in Australia. So perhaps in the comments you can let me know how Easter is celebrated in other countries? 🙂
When I turned the calendar page to April today, I was surprised also to see a picture on the calendar of cows. That’s not very Easter-ish, but I do love cows. The calendar has an Australian country scene for each month, so that might be something that might interest some of you. This stand in the main living area, where I keep my recipe books – well, some of them – has become my favourite place to display my vase of flowers each week.
I have a row of various coloured Impatiens in my front garden and they have survived the hottest summer days, and now the cooler autumn days very well indeed. When we have a fine day again I will take a photo of them in the garden, as they really do look lovely.
This small vase of Impatiens sits beside me as I write. They have been indoors for about five hours now and I have noticed that the petals, now dried, look much more lively than in this photo.
It is rather late though, so I won’t take another photo. Today was another busy day, complete with visitors – who raided Nana’s Easter egg stash while here 😉 – and I am about to call it a night. I am dreadfully behind in replying to your lovely comments and also visiting everyone’s blogs, but this week I expect life to return to the usual schedule for a while.
Thank you once again, Cathy, for hosting In a Vase on Monday. ❤
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. 🙂
Now the rain has passed and I can see the changing shadows each afternoon, I am reminded of the night shadows that creep across the valley just before sunset during autumn. It’s a beautiful time of year.
Late yesterday afternoon I took a few photos around the garden, and I love this deep red rose against the darkening backdrop of the garden. Red can be an “iffy” flower colour to photograph with the photo often looking over-exposed. The darkness of the day yesterday seems to have helped me achieve a true-to-colour photo this time.
I will keep an eye on this beautiful “Jude the Obscure” rose over the next couple of days as the petals unfold. It looks like the green grasshoppers I have seen on some of my plants this year may have enjoyed a tiny nibble of the pretty petals, but hopefully its just the outside petals that they munched on.
At the moment, I am having a run on university assignments. So far I have completed two recent tasks, with another due this Friday, and another due next week. My apologies (yet again!) for my tardiness in commenting. I’m at the half-way mark for this semester, then during semester 2 I will complete my final unit for the degree I am working on. 🙂
The hazy valley today, rather than being caused by nearby bush fires or dust-storms, was the result of a few good ole sugar cane fires. They seemed to be burning in all directions and filled the valley with smoke.
The thick tuft of smoke toward the top-right in the photo above is near the sugar mill. Which reminds me, I must take a drive down there and take a few close-ups one day.
Usually when I take photos of kookaburras sitting on this branch, the green cane fields form a backdrop for the photo. Today, it was just smoke. The kookaburra didn’t seem to mind though.
Earlier today I had a visit from Larry and Shilo, my two regular kookaburras who have been visiting for years. This is Shilo, hinting that it’s time for breakfast, I imagine, because she didn’t leave until after I had fed her and Larry.
We had other visitors for breakfast this morning too. Six sulphur-crested cockatoos landed in the palm trees near to the house and watched as I fed Larry and Shilo. They must have decided that minced meat wasn’t to their liking though, and soon flew down to the pecan tree. I didn’t realise there were any nuts left on the branches, but those observant cockatoos knew they were there.
I’m pretty excited about this rose bush. I transplanted it during the colder part of winter – although it is still pretty cool even now – and it has several buds on the bush. This is the second bud to open and I love the velvet texture of the petals. I felt I could be taking a chance transplanting three rose bushes that had lived in the same position for about ten years, but now I’m so glad I did. All three look much healthier than they ever have before, and being closer to the house now I can admire them more often.
One of the most photogenic flowers in my garden each year is the grevillea. The whole tree is covered in buds and blooms, and the native honey eating birds are loving it!
I’m working on a uni assignment again, so I don’t know how much time I’ll have for blogging and taking photos this week. At the very least, I’ll take one each day of Mount Warning. 🙂
In My World 