| Greg's garden: flowers in late summer 2020 |
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These are the flowers we had in the garden in late summer 2020, taken between 24 and 25 February 2020. They're not all overly pretty, but the purpose of the photos is to record what was in the garden at the time.
Summer has 5 days to go, but you wouldn't know it. The strangest thing is how unusual this summer has been. While further north and east there have been record droughts and bushfires, here it has been comparatively cool and wet. For the first time I can remember the grass is green at the end of summer. Here a comparison from a couple of days ago and the same time last year:
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I've been spending a lot of time attending to irrigation and fertilization, and it may have paid off. Some of the plants that seemed to be dying have now stabilized, such as this rosemary bush and the Coleonema pulchellum:
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Clearly most of the rosemary is dead, but the part that's alive is now flowering. Hopefully it will recover.
Other things that seem to be doing well are the Box Elder and the birch:
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The Box Elder is still tiny, but the autumn look is gone from its leaves, as it was from the birch. And we even have another volunteer birch on the other side of the house:
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The pepper tree that we transplanted a couple of months ago continues to improve:
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And the Paulownia kawakamii, though not enormous, is at least looking healthy:
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And the curry tree now looks almost normal:
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The Hibiscus rosa-sinensis “Uncle Max” that I planted outside is now looking much better than in the spring:
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Hopefully it won't suffer as much in the coming winter.
One herb I certainly don't need to worry about is the Epazote. It has completely taken over the herb garden, and I probably now have enough of it for the rest of my life:
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Looking at the way it's seeding, though, I don't think I've seen the last of it. It has completely taken over the thyme next to it:
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On the other hand, there are still causes for concern. My last Buddleja suddenly looks sick again:
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I've been trying for nearly 5 years to build a hedge of the things, based on their behaviour in Kleins Road: plant a twig and watch it grow. But here it seems a real problem. Out and spread about 1 kg of fertilizer in the area, in the process noting:
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Why are there those brown patches under the bush? They're nowhere else. Is that an indication of some soil problem, or the Buddleja drying out the soil? The second photo might suggest that: the irrigation repairs that I made three weeks ago don't seem to have been very reliable. OK, fix that, water in, hope that the thing survives.
And then there are strangenesses like this Persicaria odorata (daun laksa, Vietnamese mint, ...):
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It's not dead, but why has it died out in the middle? Again, it's a thing that normally grows like a weed.
There's a rather different issue in play with this Pelargonium:
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Clearly it needs trimming back, but how? Would it be easier to replant some cuttings?
Then there are some volunteers, such as these:
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What are they? They look like they could be Mirabilis jalapa or Valerian, both of which self-seed furiously. I hope they're the former.
And I've noted this one before:
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It looks like some kind of Solanum, and I can't make up my mind whether I like it. The flowers point down, so there's not much to be seen. But for this year, there's nothing to replace it.
The Strelitzia nicolai hasn't quite finished flowering:
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But the tomatoes are still waiting. They're growing well, but nearly all the fruit are still green:
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This time last year we had been harvesting them for weeks.
Here are the rest:
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