Sunday, 6 January 2008		Images for 6 January 2008
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The bottlebrush that I pruned so radically last month is coming back surprisingly strongly. The first photos was taken on 23 December, and the second one today; in the meantime I've pruned away the stuff in the background, but it's clear how much things have grown in that time.

Coincidentally watched an article on ABC's Gardening Australia programme which confirmed that this was the correct way to prune bottlebrushes.

Monday, 7 January 2008		Images for 7 January 2008
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And suddenly there's nothing pressing to do! Spent most of the day in the garden, mainly pruning trees. I'm gradually getting to understand bottlebrushes better. The problem is that when the flowers die, they don't fall off:

The spheres with holes in them are the remains of individual stamens. If you don't do anything, new growth occurs on the other side. This one shows a stem grown through the remains of two years' flowers:

I've found that there are shoots immediately behind the flowers, so I've been cutting them off very short. Spent some time pruning all this stuff away, with noticeable results: