Spring promise

Pink Ribbon 4

Blue foliage on Festuca glauca and Dianthus allwoodii. Small pink marguerite daisy,

a Pelargonium, Valerian and lavender. For planting plan see In-a-Persian-garden

I was cared for by three very special doctors. A GP who told my sister – Diana is strong, she’ll be fine. A surgeon who answered a thousand what, why, how questions, and left me with a body I can live in, and a scar I can see and touch. And a specialist who said – nice scar! – high praise from someone who spends her day looking at mastectomy scars.

Tillandsia, air plant. Did you know they would flower?

My body is complete, because it ends here. I regret I have lost the source of that quotation, through ten years that have blurred the sharp edges of memory.

As anonymous said

Dust we are

And to dust we shall return

And in between, we plant a garden.

Two wonderful memories. I would wake each morning and tell my body to stretch, from the tips of my fingers all the way down to my toes. (Starting from the Ungardener laughing at me as I struggled to hang the washing, one arm would go up, but I needed both!). So, I remember the morning I woke up, told my body to stretch, and, TA DA, it DID! And the second was being carried through the waiting time between two operations, in a state of grace. My Swiss friend lit a candle for me in a church in Austria, and so my mother and sisters lit a candle for me in Cape Town. Two prayer candles for a state of grace. A robot on autopilot, the body did what they told it to. And the mind retreated from the horror of the biopsy. Then waking up after surgery, with body and mind hand in hand again.

L'Aimant, New Zealand

Pearl of Bedfordview, Silver cloud with yarrow

Lord, Grant me the strength and courage

To give support and encouragement in my turn

In the beginning my mind kept churning around, then, one day, I realised I had moved on. That, is history, or rather her story. Now, life is a garden! A Blotanical garden blog! I love words, and the garden is beloved.


The rose garden a year later ... 2010 Pink-Ribbon-4-Spring-Promise

To Blotanists new and not new

One day, approximately 20 weeks (10 new blogs coming to Blotanical each week) after you joined, you will find yourself bounced from “Posts from 200 newest blogs” to amongst 1,700 and counting blogs, divided into A-K or L-Z.

In the Hantam Karoo near Calvinia

We have graduated to High School now. No longer promoted as new, we have to fight to be seen, heard and noticed. You, my reader, are either a faver, or a follower, or a bookmarker – Thank You, or new here – Welcome to Elephant’s Eye. A warning would be nice. Then we would have a chance to warn Blotanists who are relying on “New Blog Posts” if they want to go on reading us in future. Only now do I realise, that’s why I have lost some of the blogs I used to follow with interest and enjoyment.

Because there will be 1,700 blogs at Blotanical, in another week, it is a gargantuan problem to keep up! One good solution I use – is Posts from my Faved Blogs. This is a wonderful service from Blotanical, but you have to fave your choice of blogs. Gives you a steady trickle to read on a daily basis. Keeps up with new posts as they are published. Weed and deadhead periodically. And, if your quota is full, either bump someone you no longer read. Or, get picking. The more you pick, the more faves you earn.

OK. But I still have a problem. I used to follow the new blogs, because I could also check that my posts were feeding thru. And I could sort of skim 200 blogs. Now how on earth do I skim 1,700?

For Silence who would like a heated bathroom floor

Whaddaya think? If when we ping our posts, we would say please list this post under (and these would be my categories)

• Wildlife
• Indigenous/native plants
• Away, travelling, garden visits
• Africa

With an option to just list all my posts

· under Africa, Galloping gardener would be all away

· And we would need Eclectic for http://esthersboringgardenblog.blogspot.com/ and http://ourfriendben.wordpress.com/. Only and all garden gets (bor-ing).

If you don’t choose a category – you get lumped in with common or garden A-Z.

As a reward to master/guru status we could have personalised picks list. As in Posts from my Faved blogs. ‘Please offer me posts about wildlife and indigenous plants – because I know although they are not in my corner, geographically, they are in my corner out of interest and/or conviction. Please offer me any new posts in or about Africa. And the Eclectic posts to leaven a lump which could get doughy.’

Then I could skim the A-Z when I needed something fresh. I would like to know where yesterday’s posts start. Some dates in those long lists would be helpful. I know there are cookies, but … I canNOT read them all.

Pink tuberous Begonia and Mona Lavender blue Plectranthus

So – 25^th June this year when I joined blotanical you joined with me.

• Midwest native plants, gardens and wildlife http://midwestplants.blogspot.com/– who is on my faved list, see, native plants and wildlife!
• Central Texas gardener http://klru.org/ctg/blog/
• http://feedseedbarn.blogspot.com/
• http://gisforgarden.blogspot.com/
• http://patchworkgarden.blogspot.com/
• www.laptopgardener.com

Tropical Sunset and Pearl of Bedfordview

And now I see we were not only drawn together, but flung together by the fact that we were all new together.

• 21 June brought us Autumnbelle in tropical Malaysia http://www.mynicegarden.com/ 
• And Kaija in southern Finland http://crowcottage.blogspot.com/
• 4 June, Habitat Steward Meredith www.greatstems.com
• And lyrical http://susanjtweit.typepad.com/walkingnaturehome/
• 31 May, the great http://thegallopinggardener.blogspot.com/

So fellow Blotanists, do share with us. How do you keep up with 1,700 garden blogs???????


PS Update from Stuart September 2010 How to be successful on Blotanical 

Weaver bird building his home

We chose this plot because of the wall of giant/Spanish reed in the distant bottom corner. There are weavers living here, and the Ungardener dreamt of sharing our garden with them one fine day.

The reeds are an invasive alien in South Africa. They are growing in that corner because we are in lower Porterville. This was once a vlei (seasonal pond) and the one before last farmed RICE here. No wonder we have been floating in a houseboat for two of our three winters.

These are masked weavers (see portrait on 29th August). We also have Cape weavers (see 13th September). And we do have visiting red Bishops (see 10th October), but the weavers will not allow them to stay – NIMBY in the bird world too.

It is quite fascinating to watch how quickly that nest is woven. By one bird. Tying knots and weaving with his beak. No hands. No fingers. No opposable thumb. For us, the pinnacle of creation, quite impossible. (Although I do acknowledge foot and mouth painters, from charity Christmas cards).

Just off to get some more supplies dear

When he has finished, he waits eagerly, bobbing up and down in breathless anticipation, to see if his lady love (one of his lady loves, he has a harem) will approve. If she does, structurally sound was his problem. She gets to enjoy décor and furnishing the nursery! Bit of fluff from the sheep next door?!

Masked weaver Ploceus velatus. Sparrow family. 15 cm. His lovely lady wears grey and green, to offset his peacock display. He builds two types of nests, one for roosting and the other for the eggs. Eggs are white to pale pink, others blue white to greenish blue, plain at times, or blotched in varying amounts of grey and brown.

from Birds of the South Western Cape, by Joy Frandsen. 1982

And perhaps, one fine day, the Ungardener will achieve weavers nesting on Ungardening Pond. Since they do prefer to nest near water.

Chincherinchees

We have the same farmer to thank, who gave us Melianthus (honey flowers) and Zantedeschia (arum lilies) along his stream. Who has built open sided sheds to give his dairy cows shade from the brutal summer heat, and they really appreciate it. We see them tidily arranged in the rectangle of shade, with one or two having a nibble, or a drink of water, or stretching their legs. This plant will kill cattle, so now I understand why those cows are firmly fenced away from this flower display.

Long, long ago, when I was a girl and Interflora was much simpler, my mother sometimes sent granma chincherinchees. They were airmailed as buds (think Iris or Gladioli) to open slowly and give pleasure over weeks. Like the arums nature spreads them with such glorious abandon, that I once thought the sheep in their fields were clumps of chinks!

According to PlantZafrica Ornithogalum thyrsoides will follow the sun, as sunflowers do. This bulb is one of our local wild flowers curving thru us from Namaqualand in our North West to Caledon in our South East. 114 of 120 species in this genus are South African. Yet another branch of the Hyacinth clan. 'Ornithogalum is derived from the Greek words 'ornis' meaning bird and 'gala' meaning milk, in reference to the white flowers. 'Bird's Milk' was frequently used by the Romans to indicate something wonderful (Smith, 1966). The Afrikaans vernacular name tjienkerientjee is the simulation of the chink sound made when fresh stalks are rubbed against one another and is based on the name given by Thunberg in 1772 as tinkerintees. Chincherinchee is the English translation of the Afrikaans name. Both names were in use in the eighteenth century. The species was introduced to gardens in Holland before 1700 and is known to cultivation in Europe from about 1750’.

These white ones are those that I know and love, but there are also shriek orange species, NOT so appealing.

The ridge of mountain is the Olifantsberg, which we see from our house in town, and just visible over the top are the Groot and Klein Winterhoek peaks.

Autumn fire

Pink Ribbon 3

Dark foliage on Prunus nigra and Diospyros whyteana. Flamboyant red Kalanchoe and a Pelargonium. Fierce pink flowers and large dark leaves on tuberous Begonia. First red rose bud – Duftwolke. For planting plan see In-a-Persian-garden

It was January 2000, as I lay sleepless, between diagnosis, and surgical biopsy, and a mastectomy, there were the worst fires in Cape Town that I can remember. (Except once in Camps Bay when we had walls of flame blazing on three sides, the middle of the night so bright you could read a newspaper in the garden …) Everything burned except Cape Point Nature Reserve and half of Table Mountain. That was when they launched Cape Talk radio station. On the first programme Rod Suskin talked about fire as a cleansing/purification ritual. Um Mr God, the cancer was only a few millimetres, you didn’t need to burn down half of Cape Town. When I looked back at my journal, they were evacuating houses in Constantia and Simon’s Town. It went way beyond frightening, to living in Reality TV, life as entertainment.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427295.700-scorched-earth-wildfires-will-change-the-way-we-live.html

I wanted blue roses, but find most of them too brutal cruel. A shard of ice in the heart.

Burning Sky is a blue rose with fire on the edges of its petals

What? Causes. Breast cancer? http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427301.700-4-breast-cancer.html

(Don’t read this, unless you’ve got a strong stomach. I did warn you …)

Tuberous Begonia planted for voluptuous large dark asymmetric leaves.

The flowers are a bit over the top, but give me Autumn fireworks for this post

And the best words in the English language – this sentence from my surgeon’s report. She needs no further treatment.

We moved to Elephant’s Eye in May 2007. No curtains. Books heaped on the floor. WHICH box is it in? Floods and Swamp Monster mud outside. Our lovely first fire!

W. H. Auden in his poem "Miss Gee" defined cancer as 'foiled creative fire'. Teilhard de Chardin said that when we discover how to be truly loving, we will have discovered the power of fire for the second time.

(This is my century. One hundred posts.)


Same old words but the garden is a year older with  more pictures!

Tiny tigers, burning bright

(with apologies to William Blake's poem ...)

I saw a batch of minute eggs on my little L’Aimant rose. So I asked the Ungardener to take some of his superB Super macro photos. Imagine our wonder when we saw, not just the bugs newly hatched. But the unborn bugs waiting in their transparent eggshells. Now it is a few days later and they have all dispersed. Just a little bunch of empty shells hanging on the rose stem.

The tattooed carrot, is the tip of the Ungardener's finger, for scale

Our insect book, Field guide to insects of South Africa, by Mike Picker, Charles Griffiths, Alan Weaving. New edition 2004. Published by Struik, identifies this as Graptocoris aulicus. “Metallic black-green head and body markings” you know the greenish cast liquorice has? Distribution in the book says sub-tropical part of South Africa, and on the East, summer rainfall side. Global warming starting to bite here too. These are tigers to the leopards down there in ladybird world.

They eat Malvaceae, the Hibiscus family (Abutilon and Anisodontea are South Africans in our garden, but they would prefer North American subtropical Malvastrum or Malviscus).My beloved plant book is The South African What flower is that? by Kristo Pienaar. 1984. Struik. Wild plants which seed themselves, and get gently weeded out, as the plants are straggly, the flowers insignificant. But now I know someone wants to eat them, I will leave a few more.

The rose with its frilly edged petals that I love. A very gentle salmon blushed pink. And fragrant, chosen for its name, because my mother loves the perfume of that name. Now it just needs to grow a little larger. This is one of the last roses I bought, so it is playing catch up with the earlier, bigger bushes.

Travelling to Skilpad

After Robert Louis Stevenson – It is better to travel hopefully, than to arrive.

We had not been this way in years. Last time we came this way, we could go this way. There was not a river dividing the two bits of road. Just before Clanwilliam, this is a more serious version of our Olifants River, which flows along the Olifantsberg (Elephant river and mountains). So plan b, we found another road. And a sign that said – this road is closed in the rainy season. But we went that way. And then had to go to plan c.

Travelled where we had never been before, over Swiss passes to a Methodist mission called Leliefontein (spring with lilies) on top of the mountain.

The daisies for which Namaqualand’s spring displays are famous – come in many, many varieties. This gorgeous apricot and cream – is good enough to eat!

Was enchanted by this cartoon at the Eden Project in Cornwall. It is true. After the summer, the fields are baked hard. Maybe a few dry bushes. Some struggling vygie/Lampranthus bushes. Rare trees along the dry streambeds. Then the winter rain comes. And in days all sorts of annuals and bulbs emerge from “nowhere”. Sheets of white – rain daisies – Dimorphotheca pluvialis.

Here you can see just such a field. An elderly barbed wire fence. And flowers as far as the eye can see. In an unbroken carpet. The orange are flat faced daisies. The deep yellow is little button daisies. And the shimmering butter yellow is my favourite Namaqua spring flower – Grielum (part of the rose family), which trails along the ground, covering it with patches of spectacular colour.

We went to Skilpad in my 14^th Oct post and this is the journey there.

Karoo Koppie - Succulent garden

Our last garden was on a 45 degree slope, with lots of rocks, in Camps Bay. So the Ungardener found this square, flat, featureless, rockless, ex vegetable garden

– a bit flat,

– and featureless.

We built a pond (see 6^th and 7^th Oct) with Pani’s Falls to the North East of the house. But on the South side, apart from a row of inherited fruit trees near the wall, the garden railway, and Apple Creek, we still had a large open expanse. We also had a problem. This was a newly built house, why is there so much builder’s rubble? Because first they built it. Wrong. Then they built it right, leaving a mountain of used and broken bricks, and a million bits of concrete. We chipped off the dry mortar and used those bricks to edge the paths.

Clockwise - Cotyledon orbiculata (large green leaves), spekboom Portulacaria afra, lost this name??,

Lampranthus multiradiatus (shrubby vygie), Aloe plicatilis (fan aloe)

Aloe greatheadii (with spots), Cotyledon orbiculata (grey leaves), Sansevieria (stripy),

Aeonium (wine-red leaves) and Crassula (orangey leaves)

Book aloe, tree aloe (A. ciliaris, a climber), Clanwilliam aloe, and nameless puppies

So we collected all the builder’s rubble, arranged it in an umpty-tump which looks “natural”, covered it with soil, and planted succulents. Our Karoo succulents are adapted to winter rainfall, but they still don’t want to stand in sodden clay soil, so a raised bed with a well drained core works. It is also a good home for tree stumps, photogenic dead branches, and my always growing collection of rocks!

An earlier generation here, as in most country towns in South Africa, had leiwater. There was a system of channels thru the town, and a roster, e.g. Tuesdays from 10am to 11am, the water is yours. It flows onto your small holding along your ditches, and waters your vegetables and fruit trees. The Ungardener collected our old sluice gates, recycling history, and arranged them on the Karoo Koppie. Nessie, a sheep’s head, or an eagle’s head?

Most of our garden succulents are South African, from the Klein Karoo (see 30^th Sept). Two exceptions – Echevieria, for its Mexican roses, and because it spreads generously, and an Aeonium (also New World) for its gorgeous wine dark rosettes (and it spreads …) And the Agaves, which are going, going, getting gone!

Yellow Aloe, modern cultivar, bought at Rare Plants Fair

Pregnant onion, chincherinchee, Ornithogallum

Kalanchoe

Sour fig, Carpobrotus, which Californians know as a firescape plant

We have a glorious sweep of deepest orange/red Kalanchoe, which started as a minor ingredient in a gifted pot plant arrangement. Now we have dozens of plants, which are currently covered in garlands of flowers. Since it is such a happy plant, I have bought a very gentle orange/yellow to add to the intensity going forward. Kalanchoe, Echevieria and Sansevieria all prefer afternoon shade, so they are planted at the East end, morning sun, then afternoon shade from the mountain ash trees.

August 2008 we did the first planting. Having just finished the last bit of path, have planted the new East section. This is covered in drifts and swathes of the plants which are already flourishing here. Inspired by a Blotanists photos of the Lurie gardens in Chicago?? There it was blue Salvias, on a far GRANDER scale. But the idea is fun, even in a domestic garden setting. Somehow soothing, and satisfying, and right.

Started in August 2008

Extended this week

Aloe speciosa, Aloe ferox, Sansevieria

PS A Koppie is a small mountain. Very small, in our garden.

PPS It is October 2010 and Someone has put this on Facebook bringing me new readers. Someone in California? Thank you! Won't you leave a comment? 

Pictures by Jurg and Diana, words by Diana of  Elephant's Eye

Summer gold

Pink Ribbon 2

Golden foliage from Acorus and New Zealand’s Coprosma. Yellow Dimorphotheca jucunda Buttermilk and yellow (markings on Dietes). Yellow stamens of Elizabeth of Glamis and a bunch of buds on Germiston Gold roses. For planting plan In-a-Persian-garden

My Strong Family History, such a sinister * phrase (unless you are just left handed like me). It was a month before her twenty-fifth birthday. With a young husband caring for their toddler, and a baby (who would only feed from the healthy side). Over 40 years later, thanks to surgery and radiotherapy, her daughter can say to a sympathetic doctor – NO, No, my mom is fine! I celebrate the courage that printed the steps I follow in. And those two daughters. And her granddaughter.

Take your doctor’s advice, but focus on all your female relatives who are WELL. And don’t use no family history as an excuse to avoid health care. Most breast cancer patients have no such family history. There is still so much we don’t know. Draw together 20 women, and ask each to name a vegetable – potato, cauliflower, cabbage, artichoke, carrot, spinach, asparagus, etc. All different, all vegetables. Don’t focus on my friend had such and such treatment, your doctor will treat you (and Your Vegetable).

In 2000 we knew that we needed Vitamin D for our bones. In the meantime we also know that we need Vitamin D to fight against breast cancer. Doctor told me they had just compared Jo’burg and Cape Town. They get enough winter sun, but we DON’T. http://www.bcrfcure.org/action_scnews_vitamind.html

(*BTW You say that the dextrous are people who use the right hand. By which you mean the not left hand, the English language has no way to separate right=correct and right=not left. You say that people who use the left hand, the not right hand, are sinister, evil, devilish. But dextrous and sinister are simply the Latin words for right and left handed. Me, I am ambidextrous, so I can write legibly with the wrong hand. Which you call the right hand, and I call the wrong hand, the not left hand!)

This is the Germiston Gold bud from the collage above, with three more buds coming – my SFH, her daughters and granddaughter. Today I wish you a happy birthday! Which is being celebrated in style!!

I have added a PS to Part 1 – Winter Chill on 8th October




Same old words, but the garden is a year older, with 
more pictures!

Namaqua National Park

Pam at Digging has invited us to share our National Parks. This park was created to showcase the spring display in Namaqualand in the Northern Cape. Once it was a farm called Skilpad se Graafwater (=the tortoise’s digging place for water). With the low rainfall, farming is challenging here. Tourism for wild flowers is another way of earning a living, while still protecting the environment. There are some very short-sighted politicians who chant – if it pays it stays!?

The spectacular displays of sheets of colour from annuals, tend to be on abandoned wheat fields. There the seeds have the opportunity to flaunt themselves in gay abandon, with no competition or shade from shrubs. Not too many trees here, except along streams or in shaded kloofs (=valleys).

These daisies live a very gracious life in their short season. We rise at 10, and retire at 3 in the afternoon. If it is cool, or breezy, we stay in bed, and wait, for a better day tomorrow. We turn our faces to the sun, so it is up to you to plan your route so you see their faces, not their backs. Plan a leisurely journey. Make time to get out and walk, where you are allowed to. Please keep to the paths – they have such a short, vulnerable season, and your galumphing great boots will kill them. (The same mentality that likes to smash Thanksgiving pumpkins, needs to walk and lie on fields of flowers!!!)

This is the Ungardener's picture of the only wildlife I can't abide - locusts

Don’t despair if the weather is cool and overcast. It is only on foot that you will see rarer plants – bulbs and shrubs, which on a fine day are totally obliterated by the over the top extravaganza of unbroken sheets of orange daisies.

Tomorrow bloggers are showing that we want to be part of solution to global warming and climate change. Namaqualand with its Succulent Karoo vegetation, is the only arid biodiversity hotspot in the world. Now the 350 mm of rain a year (and the sea fog rolling in) can just, carefully, be stretched to support plants, wildlife, people and farming. Once, there were elephants migrating through here …

A little hotter, and we will lose the plants and the animals to full on desert. The people will have to leave the land, and go to the cities. And there what will we all eat – Soylent green anyone?

There are so many special plants to choose from. So many pictures. In this collage you can see a gladiolus with the most subtle gentle colouring. A Gazania (still in its pyjamas) in its natal home. The heart of a beetle daisy. And a plant I keep trying to grow. Have one in the garden now, looking sad and lonely, but we will keep trying. It is called Lobostemon, no prizes for noticing it is part of the borage family.

There is accommodation in the park. Best we have ever had. Each one stands away from the handful of neighbours. Just you, and the view, all the way, across rolling hills, down to the sea. The very best bit is an enclosed veranda, two comfortable chairs, dining table, concertina windows which open completely, or close to block the wind. We loved it there and will go again. (If you want to stay over, you need to book at least a year ahead for the spring flower season. Here Namaqua or in the hotels and B & Bs in the surrounding Namaqua towns)

And this is the only time we have ever seen a sunset with a barley sugar twist in the tail!