Spent the afternoon tidying up the shed while Yvonne planted some stuff in the garden.
Hopefully it wasn't too early; I'm concerned that we haven't prepared the soil well enough
yet.
More work in the garden, transplanting more stuff. On investigation,
the “black lilies” appear to be a kind
of Dracunculus vulgaris.
They grow from a large tuber. Replanted a few to see how they'd deal with it; it's not
clear how much sun they like.
While looking for a cookbook, ended up buying “The foodies' guide to Melbourne”
and a book on pruning shrubs and trees; together they came to considerably more than I had
planned to spend on the cook book, but both fill a real need. The former, hopefully, will
lead us to better food supplies.
At Midland Irrigation finally found a sprinkler solenoid valve without difficulty, and not
significantly more expensive than Celsius would have asked.
More garden work. It's looking more like winter now, though the cannas are still blooming,
and the first daffodils are coming.
Leonne, surname unknown, has taken a look at
my mystery plants page and has a number of
comments. She writes:
The grub is commomly called a Bardi grub. They are the
larval stage of a moth. Good for fishing bait but not much else. It eats the feeder
roots of plant and often leaves dead patches in lawns. There is a spray you can get from
most gardening places to get rid of them.
The plants you have as asters are very hardy drought tolerant plants. The two yellow ones
are different types of Gazinias and come in all shades from red to white. You often see
them on the sides of roads and suburban nature strips. The middle variety self seeds and
can take over a neglected patch of ground.
It seems that Leonne didn't follow the link here. Also, I believe I'm correct in
guessing that all the flowers belong to the
genus Asteraceae.
Mystery 1 is a common english country garden plant
whose name escapes me at the moment. A nursery man should be instantly able to name it
for you.
Mystery 2 is a type of Arum Lily. Does
it smell really bad like rotting meat? Lilies of that colour often do.
Again, it seems that Leonne didn't follow the link here.
Mystery 3 is Sparixia (not sure on spelling) very old
fashioned hardy bulb that self seeds. very similar
to Ixias (again not sure on spelling) My
Grandmother had acres of them when I was a child and they never got watered and were mown
off when they finished flowering.
I'm quite happy with the book I bought a couple of days
ago, RHS Pruning &
Training, by Christopher Brickell and David Joyce. It's the first book I've seen that
makes the distinction between pruning (normal maintenance of a bush) and renovation (making
good previous neglect). It's the latter that I want, and the book addresses it almost
directly:
In a newly acquired garden, neglected roses, particularly bush roses, often look as if they
are hardly worth keeping. ...
Today decided to apply the techniques—of which there are two: cut down 50% to 70%, and
cut down to the ground—to a couple of rose bushes in the north bed. These photos are
more obvious when enlarged (click on one of the photos):
We'll see how they fare. The second one is in the shade most of the time, so it's never
going to be really happy.
Winter is here, sort of: we have autumn plants that only now are coming into bloom, such as
the Strelitzia reginae, and
also spring plants, such as a rather sleepy daffodil:
It was supposed to rain today, but the weather bureau changed their minds again,
so Yvonne decided it was the day to finally burn off the pile of wood
we have accumulated over the last 9 months:
The fire's still going! Most of the wood burnt out in the first hour yesterday midday, but
some of the larger trunks were still going this morning. It continued all day, and in the
evening there were still some remainders.
We've been trying to second-guess the
Bureau of Meteorology
for some time now, and today we decided that despite the forecast of rain, we could probably
go riding. Set off, and within about 500 metres it started to rain, so back again after one
of our shortest rides ever. And, of course, the few drops that came down were all for the
next several hours.
More work on the sprinklers, and finally installed the longest stretch yet, 73 metres at the
north of the house. Now I just have the south side to think about.
The fire's finally out! And, to my surprise, there was almost nothing left—just a
couple of charred pieces about 50 g in weight. That'll change, of course; we have more
radical pruning to do.
Up early this morning to head to Melbourne. Just out of the shower, heard the tell-tale
beeping of the UPSs. On further investigation, found that a circuit breaker had tripped on
the circuit that supplies all the computers—and it kept tripping. Spent a lot of time
turning off individual components, without finding anything, and then turned them all back
on again, even (accidentally) a 2 kW heater, and it carried on working.
Was just scratching my head about that when Yvonne came in and told
me that the dam water pump had stopped working, and that she had left it off. This is the
pump that I have been using to pump water from the tank into the horse trough, and which I
had been meaning to use for my new brewery. Confirmed that yes, indeed, it was that pump.
Damn, especially since we were due to leave for Melbourne, and Chris still needed to give
the horses enough to drink. Connected up another hose to the sprinkler system, which is
(currently) supplied only by the submersed pump in the bore.
In Melbourne, went to the
Royal Melbourne Botanical Gardens. It's been over
11 years since I was last in the Botanical Gardens, and in those days I wasn't overly
interested in gardening. This time I was left a little disappointed: the place is clearly
in need of more funding. In particular, the signs are insufficient. It's difficult to find
your way around, and many plants are not identified.
That was particularly interesting and irritating for us. We found at least four plants that
we had been trying to identify. Here the comparisons of the ones that we identified:
We knew that this one is a salvia, but only now do we know that it's a Salvia microphylla It
looks quite like another
variety, Salvia elegans (“
pineapple sage”), but that bush has longer and more pronounced flowers with black
stems:
There seems to be a fair amount of difference of opinion on Salvia microphylla. Some
call it watermelon sage, others blackberry sage, and nothing I've found on the web mentions
the mint-like smell of the leaves, which the sample in the Botanical Gardnes also had. But then,
Salvia elegans is supposed to smell like pineapple, and I didn't smell that on the
sample I saw yesterday. There's also a variety of opinion on the size of the plant, though
all agree that it flowers almost continuously. There also seem to be different cultivars,
one of which has red and white flowers. None of
the links
on the web look quite like ours.
This plant has not flowered since we moved in; last year there were no buds at all. We had
thought it was a kind of magnolia, but clearly it's some kind
of Camellia. We'll know more when it
flowers.
This is Aloysia triphylla,
or “Lemon Verbena”. Yvonne was sure from the start that
this was some kind of Verbena, but I
hadn't been too sure: all the Verbena photos I had seen looked very different. That's
probably because this plant belongs to the relatively small
genus Aloysia. The leaves do smell of
lemon.
Winter is making itself felt, at least in mood. Still no frost, but there was a surprising
amount of mist (called “fog” in Australia) which lifted only slowly, and the
whole atmosphere was as dreary as Germany in November. Perversely, spent a bit of time in
the garden, but not too much.
There was also a second one of a different kind, which bloomed yellow, but which looked old
and not very happy, so we pulled it out. That didn't stop it, of course, and recently a
number of shoots have been coming out of the bed, so today we transplanted them:
There's
another
photo of where we planted them, but it really needs to be enlarged significantly to show
the stakes. The two stakes at the left and the one at the right are the yellow ones; the
other one is a white one which we transplanted a week or two ago.
Toy or not, it was noticeably warmer inside, even though the sun hadn't been shining. We'll
have to keep an eye on things when the weather gets warmer.
This was only one of five, apparently sent by the others (who remained about 50 m away) to
case the joint. He wandered off when I came closer. I wonder if this presages more damage
in the garden.
A little work in the garden, connecting the bore pump directly to the horse trough with a 1
inch pipe. To my surprise, the flow was so strong that it stalled the pump; we'll have to
avoid opening the valve fully until we have proper fittings at the end.
