The End Of Spring

The Gymea is flowering now, much to the delight of the New Holland Honeyeater and the bees I can see buzzing about. Of course this calls for another photo of it.

My Crambe can be hit and miss. It's a lovely thing, although this year I only managed one stem of flowers despite there being quite a few plants. Maybe I should try a bit of lime around it to see if that will help them along.

The Scabiosa Columbaria always looks great this time of the year. It sends up plenty of stems for weeks on end, putting on a lovely lavender show. When the weather warms up I can usually find butterflies visiting the flowers, and it's a nice flower to put in the vase.

More daylilies, all in a row. These are the ones I just mow around weekly and occasionally pull some grass out of. A very relaxing pastime is to stroll along  looking at the individual flowers and array of colours out there.

Other Bits

Here's a little grouping that pretty much designed itself. Creamy Sisyrinchium Striatum, bright pink Lavatera Silver Cup and lovely blue Centaurea Cyanus. All self sown from last years plants.

 Lilium Pink Perfection
have begun to come out, mixed in here with Feverfew

Any bare earth soon disappears. Lychnis, Poppies, Euphorbia, Iris & Foxgloves in the background.

Mostly Daylilies

This bearded iris is curious in the way it starts out like an ordinary iris, but as the days go on, flops down and looks for all the world like a Japanese iris.

I can't be sure, but I came up with Judy Mogil as its name after doing some googling. It has irregular light blue streaks and is very pretty both upright and flopped over.

I really wanted to use the same flower in both pics, but had to find another in the garden to properly show its form.

The daylilies are really starting to flower. This one has been putting on a beautiful show.

They have come forward in leaps and bounds from the old yellow ones I remember during my childhood.

I don't know any of their names unfortunately, but they're a good tough plant that doesn't seem to need any attention. In fact some of my plants are planted straight in the ground, no garden beds, I just mow around them.

Some are so perfectly formed and have thick petals as an added bonus. I have seen the petals used in salad and apparently some varieties are tastier than others. One day I'll sample one for fun.

The daylily below at the top left has a gold dust edge which is more apparent in sunshine. I tried to get a close up but nothing beats seeing things in real life.

In the last 7 years or so we have started to get visiting king parrots. Before that we had lots of crimson rosellas and a few of the shy eastern rosella, so the king parrots are still a novelty.
This is King Wally. The locals must feed him because he is very quiet and calls in now and then and not necessarily for food. We know it's him because he usually lands on the spouting and peers over the edge. The others usually feed in the trees and aren't curious like Wally. He called in this morning and was unperturbed at me taking his pic while he perched in the Melia

Sunny And Hot

After all the cool weather I knew we would have to get a hot day sooner or later, and today is it. 30 degrees, but then it's supposed to be cool again tomorrow. Certainly a funny old spring this year.

I called in to Kurinda Rose Nursery at Warragul to have a look. Everything has grown since I was there last and it was looking spectacular in full bloom.

Mum had asked Stan to graft one of the roses she had grown from seed some years ago, so when I mentioned that he generously gave me a potted plant of it. Although not registered he calls it "Memories of You" which I think is lovely. He showed me another of hers which doesn't open out so well.

I bought Lanes Moss while I was there and will get them both into the ground soon.

Blue flowers always catch my eye in gardens, so here are some of my flowers.
Iris Louisiana Sinfonietta, Nigella, Centaurea and Ixia.

My Japanese iris is flowering with lovely large showy blooms. I probably should have fed it because it doesn't have as many flowers this year. Still beautiful nonetheless.

And the Siberian iris is putting on a show too. This clump is lovely, but another clump has not one single flower on it.

A String of Cold Days

The weather has been really strange, cold and soggy. The rain started Tuesday afternoon and has been off and on ever since. I've tipped 79mm out of our gauge so far.

I had taken a couple of irises to another keen gardener, Margaret, on Tuesday, and of course came home with cuttings and plants from her extensive garden. Her garden is about 50 years old and has some beautiful things in it.

I wanted to get most of the plants she gave me into the ground, and by the time I had had enough, I looked like a drowned rat. Still, I think I have given it my best shot. They are well and truly watered in now.

A few years ago I had a couple of roses come up under the persimmon tree near the cocky cage. Both were  of a rambling sort with clusters of flowers that bloom in spring. One was light pink which I kept for a little while and eventually decided it wasn't worth the space. The other was a deep pink, or it might be described as magenta, and much prettier. It has been left to climb the tree and drape over the cocky cage. When the weather is right, it scents the air with a lovely perfume, although the individual flowers barely have any smell.

Some of the more delicate flowers such as the irises didn't stand up very well to all that rain, others like the foxgloves and linaria haven't been bothered by it. The dull day has made the greens quite vivid.

The White Roses

The white roses I have are all lovely and all different and worth a look.

White Cecile Brunner has a pretty lemon centre which fades as the flower opens. Perfumed and constant flowering with healthy foliage 

Souvenir de Philemon Cochet unfortunately sometimes gets brown petals in its flowers, but not this year. This year it is beautiful and the flowers are fairly large. My plant was grown from a cutting and has taken quite a few years to establish. Its a good five feet tall with typical tough healthy rugosa leaves.

Good old Iceberg, I wouldn't be without it. Responds well to a severe pruning and bounces back with flushes of lightly perfumed flowers, which are sometimes blush in the centre.

This rose came from a cemetery. I took a cutting which grew easily but I don't know its name. The bush smothers itself in lovely perfumed flowers just in the spring. These types of roses are best pruned in summer, so I give it a trim after it flowers ensuring more blooms next year.

The White Rose of York (Alba Semi Plena) is another once flowering rose. The single perfumed blooms and yellow stamens look lovely against the grey green foliage. It has just started to flower in my garden and will be superb in another week or so. This one I leave alone as it has lovely long hips to follow which last into winter. Just a tidy up of dead wood is all it needs.

Unusual, Different

Sometimes I find some oddities in the garden when I'm poking about.

Last March I found this nasturtium doing its very best to survive. I have N. Alaska growing nearby so I assume it originated from their seed. The poor thing only lived for about a week after I captured the pic.

And speaking of N.Alaska, I moved one to a new position only to discover as it grew that it must have been crossed with the trailing Nasturiums I also grow. So now I have a variegated trailing plant. I'm trying to root a piece in water so I can keep it going. Although this is a new plant for me, I see there are seeds available.

Just this week I found something similar happening in the Disporum clump with some stems having all white leaves

And then there's the extra bud shooting from the centre of my Tour de Malakoff rose

But back to the changes that happen when the warmer weather arrives, I always forget how much growth occurs in just a few short weeks so before and after shots are always a good record..

June 2013

Nov 2013

Irises

My Irises are blooming very well this year, with plenty of flowers on each plant.
With all that wind I'm amazed their brittle stems didn't snap off. 

Here is Mum's iris Beaumonde, registered back in 1985.
Its awards are : HC (1983), Merton Calvert Award (1984), AM (1985)

and her lovely unnamed one which grows vigorously in my garden, which Barry Blythe kindly sent me after she died.

I don't think I have ever bought an iris, I could always get some rhizomes from mum's collection and bring them down to my garden. They are such a spectacular flower and I can see why she liked to create new ones as a hobby.
 The only ones I can put a name to in this group are Cameo Wine at the bottom left, and (using google) the top left is possibly Love Is All Around.

The plain old fashioned purple one which flowers early, is one I haven't seen bloom this year. Maybe there are others I have forgotten too.