Seasonal fruits

I'm so excited.  Having finally moved into a permanent abode a year ago I was able to invest in some of the fruiting plants I've always wanted.  I'd lugged several rasberry and loganberry plants and a couple of pepinos around from flat to flat in pots, where they sulked and wilted due to neglect.  


Now that they've been undisturbed for 12 months and their roots have been able to stretch out, I'm excited at the first signs of an actual crop of berries!  Admittedly, it's a small crop still but it hints at wonderful things to come when all the bushes mature.  My hastily bought red currants which I'd shoved in under our bedroom windows within weeks of moving in, sulked all last summer until I finally moved them somewhere where they get a couple of hours sunshine all year round.  Much to my delight they have produced a whole ramekin full of luscious red berries... despite the aforementioned neglect that I am famous for.  Hopefully, with my new resolution to prune and fertilise all my fruit producers correctly all year round, the currants will produce an even better crop next year.

The strawberries are once again disappointing.  Between my haphazard watering and feeding and the lack of sunshine hours in our little jungle, strawberries just don't fulfill their promise.  However, my new favourite fruit ever is the alpine strawberry which grows and produces, even under trees, has a small steady crop all year round and has tiny little berries that pack an enormous taste punch! With visitors coming from overseas soon, I'm resisting the urge to graze as I work and instead I'm picking 3 or 4 of the delicious berries off my mature plants each day (I have also bought a dozen new plants off TradeMe which are growing like the clappers and will hopefully start producing this summer too) and chucking them into a tub in the freezer to have with icecream when our visitors arrive.

One of my passionfruit vines has not only survived (a previously unheard of occurrence) but is also the proud parent of 2 flowers at the moment!  I don't dare have high hopes of a couple of actual passionfruits but I'm hoping that this might be a sign that my black thumbs might be becoming just slightly tinged with green?  I've been trying to grow vines for years and years to capture some of the tastes of home.  Back in Malawi and Zimbabwe where I grew up the vines grow like weeds and can take over an entire garden if they're not watched carefully.


Ah... there's just no better feeling than eating something you know you grew!  


If anyone has any $$ saving advice for growing fruit, I'd love to hear from you.  I'd love to grow lush fruits but am increasingly realising that fertiliser, etc, is darned expensive, especially if you've got a reasonable size plot.

Delightful details

Two days of good hard rain has left my garden nicely soaked and just as I was beginning to worry about the lack of drainage in the lawn (Good old Palmy clay!) the sun came out.  It seems to be here to stay for a little while so I'm thinking that tomorrow might be D-day for the weeds and wilderness that has developed.


Since the place is a bit on the wild side I've invested in a some tunnel vision and taken to admiring the details in the garden. I'm not depressed about the voracious strangle weed jubilantly winding its choking stems around the veges if I'm busy admiring the colours in the Hydrangea petals.

The vege garden continues to look sad and unproductive in its dark, shady corner but the bush beans and the cucumber have just begun to flower (finally) and the mushrooms and fungi growing in the damp are fascinating :)

The pomegranate tree is in full bloom, despite a lot of the early buds been knocked off in our stormy spring.  I love watching the tight bulbous, orange buds grow and burst open to reveal blousy, hot-orange blooms.

Fuchsia's are my favourite flowers this year.  Since moving here I have found that some of my pre-conceptions about certain flowers have been shattered.  I used to think hydrangeas were 'nana-ry' until our inherited collection bloomed and I discovered how different ever plant was.  Add to that the fact that they bloom in our densely shaded garden, the bushes literally smother themselves in flowers, the flowering season lasts for ages, and that the older the flower the longer it lasts in a vase and you've got the world's most perfect garden plant!  That was last summer's epiphany... this year I've come to realise how easy fuchsias are to grow and maintain, and our inherited bushes are covered in cascades of colour.  

Ah well. Blinkers off tomorrow.  There's serious work to be done!  I've been so slack lately that the self seeded lettuce in the concrete path has turned into a Christmas tree!

Merry Christmas everyone.  Hope it's a memorable season for you all :)

Pond Progress

Sam wants a pond.  So we dug out the ENORMOUS flax plant that blocks the sun from our patio, dug out the stones that were twisted in its roots and removed all vegetation from the area.  Then... nothing!


A stale mate was reached.  Sam wanted to build the pond out of concrete. I had serious doubts as to his ability to artistically use concrete.  He said it would be easier.  I said it would be ugly.  He said it would be permanent and I said, "Yes I know. That's what I'm worried about."


I won in the end and he agreed to line the pond with plastic but I'm not sure it was really a win.  He sure wasn't happy and he certainly wasn't motivated to start.


After what felt like months of waiting while the muddy hole in the garden filled with water from the endless rain, my better half finally got stuck in (with endless moaning, muttering and griping) and lined the pond, creating the setting for our little fern grotto!

(I let him buy some slate to make the waterfall.  It cheered him up no end).

The lining goes in (with much grizzling).

Positioning the waterfall and trying not to put a hole in the tarp (again).

The pond takes shape!  He did it - and here I was doubting that we'd ever get to this point LOL.  (AND it actually doesn't look half bad).  Well done Sam!

It didn't take long for the cats to discover the advantages of a pond.

The present day pond.  The gardens are slowly filling up with Warehouse seconds.  I bought 2 grotty looking Maiden Hair ferns for $4 each (and with a bit of love they now look FAB).  Bargain!

Good-bye spring

It's that time of year again!  As Christmas approaches the momentum builds and the 'to do' list only gets longer at work.  No sooner is a task crossed off than another 2 are added to our plate, there's never a dull day!  But with only 8 days of school left before I'm free as a bird for the summer, I've finally been able to get into the garden this weekend and begin clearing some of the spring plants that are looking decidedly tatty and past their best.  The weather is gorgeous - and it's just been too nice a day to waste on paperwork - that's what nights are for.  After all... who needs to sleep?


Since I've not been able to get on and update my blog I thought I'd just post a pictorial journey of the last 2 months in my garden.  It looked so good for a while there :)

We're keeping the path to the secret berry patch weed free by laying down our grass clippings there.  It's not all that pretty but it' effective.

The asparagus peas filled out the front garden beautifully.  I love their little red pea-like flowers.  I'll definitely be planting these again next year.

The first of the rose bushes to bloom.  The perpetual spinach and rainbow beets were too much for us to eat and bolted, which rather spoilt the effect in this little garden :)

The first sweet peas!

Mignonette, roses and cerinthe major.

Agapathus 'Tinkerbell' and lobelia (and weeds!) in the rock garden.

My beloved Chatham Island Forget-me-nots seems to be thriving.

We de-thatched our lawn this year to remove the moss build up.  I managed to remove 2 wheel barrow loads from a 4 metre squared section!  (There wasn't a lot of lawn left after removing all that moss.  Whoops!  Should have done something about it last year).  


I had the brilliant idea of using the moss to mulch my strawberries (trying save money on pea straw, which is so dear for us townies).  Watch this space to find out if it works or not!

Look what came up in the veggie patch!  

Sam wanted to know if they were toadstools or mushrooms, "Because if they're mushrooms we can eat them and if they're toadstools they're poisonous."  I'm pretty sure this is a very simplistic way to look at it! Wonder who told him that?

Here comes the sun!

Labour weekend dawned grey and gloomy here in Palmy but fortunately the sun came out by Saturday afternoon.


It's been a fantastic weekend of gardening, although I managed to spend my entire fortnight's 'pocket money' all at the nursery again!  I wish I was a skilled cutting taker and seed sower.  Maybe I'd be able to save some money.  Ah well... maybe with time and practise those skills will develop.  I bought myself some cherry tomatoes, since my own germinated well but then succumbed to my neglect and either shriveled and died or grew lanky and thin and fell over.  I tried planting some of them out anyway but they don't seem to be doing ANYTHING poor things.  I guess it's back to planting lovely healthy seedlings raised at Oderings again.  I also bought baby leaf basil, which I fell in love with last year.  It grows into beautiful round bushes which look almost like topiary balls and make a lovely short hedge around the vegge patch or along the driveway.  It's delicious too with a real classic basil taste.


This afternoon I picked myself a few heads of Elderflower and had my first ever go at making Elderflower champagne.  All the garden magazines are going crazy for it and it seems really easy so why not?  I've got a beautiful pot of gorgeous looking white flowers and lemon chunks sitting decoratively on my kitchen bench waiting to ferment.  Photos to follow when I remember to collect my camera from work :)

A glorious riot of colour

There were a few disasters in the flower garden this year.  After a gorgeous spring display of cherry blossom last year I cheerfully pruned the 'overgrown' trees confident that they would be pretty, pink and compact this year... but it was not to be.  A simple rookie mistake.  I pruned them too late in the season and took off all the flowering wood so the cherry blossom has been minimal at best this year.

Thank goodness for drifts of delightful Forget-me-nots.  They hide a multitude of gardening sins :)

However, other things have made up for it... I planted as many daffodils as I could afford but was thrilled to discover that the previous owner could clearly afford far more than me!  I didn't have a garden full of every imaginable type of daffodil possible but there was plenty of variety that's for sure.

The freesias were lovely, especially the ones I bought on a whim and planted in clumps.  And what a delightful surprise some of them were.  Down our street a neighbour has some of the most beautiful tulips I've ever laid eyes on under a deciduous tree.  I covet them.  I feel an obsession with bulbs building.

I don't remember buying raspberry spotted freesias... but I'm sure glad this beauty turned up!

I thought my poor potted gerbera was a goner just a month ago.  I've recently discovered they're indoor plants... guess it didn't like being left outside over winter then!  I've moved it into the shaded patio area under the golden elms and it seems to like it there so far.

Cerinthe Major (Honeywort).  Just flowering now and its the first plant I've grown from seed all by myself! A proud moment when those petals appeared :)

The first fuschia blooms.  Here's hoping there'll be many more.

I love this lavender!  Yellow and purple is my favourite colour combination and I'm especially proud that I bought it as a throw away second and nursed it back to health.  Do I have green thumbs or what????


Aaaahhhh... spring.  It's completely glorious.

Here come the bugs

Summer is coming.  You can feel it everywhere.  The warm air, the warm rain, the warm ground.  The garden is growing at a rate of knots but life is never all rosy because here come the summer bugs!  My rose buds are about to burst forth and decorate my driveway garden with dazzling colour... if the aphids don't get them first.

And while admiring the fresh, lush new growth on my raspberries I came across the first caterpillar and first 'fluffy bum' of the season.  Grrrr ... I loathe fluffy bums!  My garden is packed full of flax and hydrangeas - both host plants for these annoying little critters (also commonly called Passionfruit hoppers).  I guess in a couple of days I'll have to get out there of an evening with my fly spray.  They absolutely decimated my hydrangea buds last season and stung all the new growth severely.  Not this year!

Fascinating!  I wondered why this Cineraria flower was covered in a writhing mass of ants.  On closer inspection I was able to see the 'aphid farms' that the ants were tending.  The ants 'farm' the aphids so that they can collect the honeydew they excrete - gross!

 A closer look at the aphid 'farms'.