Garden Diary

After a calm and rainy Saturday, the sun showed its face again today and we spent our time trying to knock some items off our ever-growing gardening ‘To Do’ list.  The trouble is, one thing always leads to another – and the ‘other’ is usually something that wasn’t on the list to begin with.

For example, we had two lovely dahlias growing (or trying to grow) under the Feijoa trees.  This had turned out problematical for two reasons…

1. it’s extremely dry under the Feijoas and even though they have struggled on bravely, the dahlias have definitely suffered during the height of summer.
2. The hens.  (Isn’t it always the hens?)  They love to sit in the shade under the Feijoas and scratch around, digging up anything that isn’t solid rock.  Their scratching shreds any new growth trying to push through the dusty soil.

Multiplication and Division

So, the plan this morning was to move both of the dahlias to a new site.  Stage One was accomplished without undue hassles.  This thanks to the fact that a space became available yesterday when Ben removed the Buddleja Globosa growing alongside the banana plant at the front right of the house.  The Buddleja had been a disappointing addition to that part of our garden – it had never done very well, hadn’t even flowered in the three years it had been there, so we’d decided to get rid of it.

Actually getting rid of any plant is always difficult for me, but this decision was made easier by the fact we’ve been able to take two rooted runners from it and plant them elsewhere.

It was while Ben was digging up the dahlias that I noticed the clump of Campanula persicifolia growing alongside.  I’d grown this from seed way back in 2011, but it, too, had never flowered.  However, the clump was looking surprisingly healthy this morning.  So we dug this out as well.

It’s really too late into Spring to divide a perennial – and it had quite a bit of new growth – but we managed to split it into about 20 separate plants.  These have now been transplanted into various other flower gardens, and watered copiously.  Fingers crossed, they’ll survive.  I should have done this a couple of months ago when we divided the Geums and the Asters.

Vegetables

I didn’t get much achieved in the vegetable garden today – in fact I pretty well gave it a wide berth.  But I did manage to thin out the rocket seedlings.  I’m so glad we have rocket again – just the smell of it makes my mouth water.

Pruning – Long Overdue

Another task that hadn’t been tackled yet was the pruning of the old branches off some of our very old fruiting trees – especially the apricot and one of the three plum trees.  We’ve been working away at this judiciously each year to encourage new growth further down the trunks.  It’s a slow process, but of course today I noticed that we still hadn’t done this for this season.  Again, it’s getting too late into Spring for this task – but what is the best solution?  To just leave them as they are?

I still felt it was better to clean things up a little bit, so we set aside one hour and spent that time cutting back branches on our two mandarins, the pear and that one plum tree.   Mainly to remove the worst of the out-of-reach lichen encrusted limbs and to (hopefully) encourage lower growth to sprout.  Many of the branches we removed had died back, or had only a few straggly leaves.

We didn’t manage to get to the apricot – this will have to wait for another day.

Perhaps we should just give up on these old trees, as they don’t always produce much fruit, but I like the fact that they’ve been here so long and that someone else planted them all those years ago.  I like to feel the links to the past, I guess, the continuity.  And why destroy a tree if it still provides something –  even if it’s just shade, a place for birds to build their nests and the occasional piece of fruit.

Update on Blackbird Chicks

We were away from South Head almost all of Friday.  When we arrived home later in the afternoon and I checked the blackbird nest, it was empty.  There was no sign of any damage to the nest, nor were there any signs of anything worse, i.e. feathers or baby chick body parts.  I can only assume that they grew large enough to fly.   I last took a photo of them on Wednesday 15th (see above).

We’ve seen the hen blackbird a few times today and she seems to be taking worms, etc., up to the Lilly Pillies over the fence behind the plum tree.  We’re hoping that this is where the family has moved to.

Vriesea

Finally, here is another photo of one of our bromeliads.  Again this is a form of Vriesea hieroglyphica.  A striking green one, this time.