Playing Blotanical

Judybec 'Still Life' asked me 'How do you play Blotanical?'

In June last year, I started at 'Blotanical Number 1,200'. Click Blog Directory to check. 1,965, 1,986. 2,004 on 7th April.


When Blotanical was between servers, I sorted my Faves. If you 'play Blotanical' you are still among My 60 Faved Blogs. If you 'don't play' you are now among the 25+ blogs I follow on Google Reader. This only shows Your Words and Your Pictures - no music, wall paper, side bar, comments, blog roll, widgets (that is part of the reason WHY 'Blotanical is slow'?!).   

The road home

Jodi wrote about promoting new bloggers. Someone else wrote - if you just stand on your soap-box and shout, your readers will stay away in droves. The Ungardener says people have to work. I do know that, but if you write a blog  (remember there's a WEB lurking in there) you want/would like it, to be read.


Read my blog? It is a web and you have to get out there. You need to read other blogs, get off your soapbox. It takes as much courage to leave your first comment at a complete stranger's blog - as it gives joy to that stranger when she gets her First Comment on My Blog.


I see a dam wall, first a damp patch where the water oozes thru. Then a gentle trickle. A steady flow. And the wall bursts, Come In Number One! But. Those popular posts, are only Popular because someone, who 'plays Blotanical', Picked them. So now I see someone panning for gold or diamonds. Whichever end you prefer to start - heaving out the rocks, or sieving out the sand. I skim the latest 25 posts from the newest 200 blogs every day. (I used to skim the latest 25 at A-K and L-Z, but now there are 13 lists, I simply can't). Pick out the diamonds and gold nuggets, discard the rest. It's a challenge, like running a marathon. (Someone said collecting points is 'infantile', perhaps that same someone is working on his golf handicap?) Our Reward is - To Be Read.

Olifantskop, our mountain, from a farm outside town

The KISS (short and simple) Guide for newbie Blotanists

1. I love one good post a week. e.g. Our French Garden. A post with a story thread running thru it, and a few magnificent pictures. Does your blog load slowly? Fancy wallpaper? Animated whatevers? Feeds from all sorts of widgets and links. Check with  Numion Stopwatch   


2. Check Picks. My Posts. Thank other equally stressed out, busy people who have given your post a few minutes in their hectic schedule. If the name is unfamiliar, consider clicking thru to your Picker's current post. She likes your blog, you may well find that you like hers in turn.

Rose, with old Canon, digitally enhanced. But Just this ONCE

And the Chelsea Chop Guide for Blotanical addicts, sorry, Gurus like me

1. No time! Trying to find the balance between work, family and your blogging (addiction). Edith Hope has been on Blotanical for 2 months. One good post of her own, balanced with lots of interesting comments for us. Our Friend Ben has 'all these words'!, and NO pictures, and lots of readers. 


2. Do the Chelsea Chop (as a non-UK gardener, I had to go to VP to find out what on earth this means?!) Print out, or save, your list of Faved Blogs. Then - Remove them all. And start again. The ones you love, will come straight back, as you collect your second wind. Think about weeding and dead-heading. Some of those blogs won't make it back onto your second list, for various reasons. Things change, you do, they do. (I followed up someone who defaved me, and he is now focused on Britain. Doesn't like Global Gardening. OK) 


3. What you weed off Faved Blogs can go into Google Reader. Someone wailed, she has 250 unread posts. Admit to yourself, you are NEVER going to read them all. Print out, or save, that list of blogs you read. Be brave. Chelsea Chop them. And make a list you really love, that one busy person (you) can keep up with, and still have a life.

Photos by Jurg and Diana and written by Diana of  Elephant's Eye 

Scandent Scarlet

Think of an English country garden. A Large English Country Garden. With a Rambling Rector in an old apple tree. Now scale your thoughts down again. This is a climbing aloe. The only one amongst 450 species which climbs.

It looks a bit odd compared to most aloes or agave, which have a single tidy rosette of leaves. This one is somehow stretched out, long, and thin. Like a lounge lizard, it leans gracefully where it can. Gives nothing, takes nothing. Mine host is just a convenient resting place. Another plant from the Eastern Cape thickets (SANParks Addo Elephants?) If you plant it in a little dappled shade, you may forget all about it.

Until flickering fire appears above mine host. The flowers are scarlet, with yellow tips and twiddly bits - the colours of a candle flame. And the scandent (shrub) in the title? The lounge lizard habit, of climbing up thru the supporting branches, to display the flowers in the sun, where they can be admired. As a typical aloe, you can simply harvest bits. Tuck them in the ground. And they will grow. And grow. And grow. This bit came from our Camps Bay garden. A passalong like Bulbine, and just as surprisingly pretty when it blooms.

From plantZafrica

Aloe ciliaris in the Asphodel/Aloe family

Almost all aloes come from Africa and its islands. Young aloes have opposite leaves, older plants leaves are in a spiral. This aloe can climb 10 metres or more. Stems lying on the ground will root. Flowering almost throughout the year (tho ours have just flowered now, with the first rain and cooler temperatures). Grow in dry river valleys, in thorny thickets dominated by succulent plants. Rain mostly in the summer with dry winters (but it grows happily in our Mediterranean climate). Ciliaris refers to the teeth, arranged like eyelashes around the base of the leaf. Pollinated by sunbirds. Shallow roots use the upper humus rich soil layer. As a climber, it grows fast. NOT resistant to heavy frost. Drought tolerant, and will take high rainfall if well drained (ours lives on our Karoo Koppie).

Photos and words by Diana of Elephant's Eye

Earth Hour Today

Earth hour - Remember 

Today - 27th March 

Please Turn your lights OFF from 2030 to 2130 

For this Earth on which we live

This picture is from Day and Night World Map as at 8 in the morning UTC (was GMT), 10 in the morning here.

I wonder how many of you read the recent 'rant' Becoming Better Gardeners???  about geoengineering. Geoengineering is truly terrifying. Science fiction as fact is stranger than fiction. Fact is - the earth is warming, the climate is changing, we are each responsible for the burden our consumption lays on the earth. We have arrived at the edge of the world, where the old maps used to say 'Here be dragons'.   

I first used these images in a post last September

                        

Midday in Cape Town

Midnight in Cape Town, darkest Africa

Words by Diana of Elephant's Eye

Today we have warthogs

Earth hour - Remember 

This Saturday - 27th March 

Please Turn your lights OFF from 2030 to 2130 

For this Earth on which we live

Addo 2

Disconcerted? Look at the letters

Not, I hasten to add, in our garden, but at Addo (spekboom jade-plant, elephants?)


An exceedingly strange looking animal. With a head much too big for its body, like an unfortunately crossed, mongrel dog. And then it has huge tusks, and knobby bits on its head. Erratic wisps of long fur, and a tail which looks as if Mr God was interrupted.

When they eat or drink, need to get the head down to the ground, they appear to bend their front knees, the wrong way. Actually they are resting on the heels of their hands. Just, where the heel of our hand is on the palm, theirs is a callus on the back of the wrist. Most uncomfortable to see, or think about.

They usually have 3 or 4 babies. Who are BORN with those ‘heels on the back of their wrists’. They dig for roots and bulbs, using their back legs to shovel themselves forward - says the Ungardener, retired tour guide, and the book agrees with him. But I, me, myself, I just saw the lawnmower in action.

Would not like to attempt to nuzzle and cuddle, with all those tusks.

We parked up and watched this pair for a while. One was lying down when we arrived. The second was having breakfast. Then he wandered over - Are you alright dear, Anything I can do for you? Then they both had a rest.

With those ferocious tusks, it is quite strange to see him moving methodically over the greensward. A ‘sheep may safely graze’ lawnmower. Leaving a meticulously manicured green velvet behind him.

However THIS lawnmower, if he digs up small animals like mice. That mouse is also down the hatch, grist to his mill. They will eat anything, mostly plants, but also animals, dead or alive. Not so peaceful after all.

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

March garden flowers

Earth hour - Remember 

This Saturday - 27th March 

Please Turn your lights OFF from 2030 to 2130 

For this Earth on which we live

This morning I made my usual monthly record of what's in bloom. At last. Or as usual. (Click the Dozen for Diana tab, for earlier months) First fruits. A solitary orange on our three newly planted citrus trees at the Mediterranean Sun Circle. The berries on the Australian brush cherry - why don't the birds eat them? There is a layer of fallen, ripe berries on our gravel driveway. One of our handful of apples, from three trees! And the guavas are coming, sprouting from the roots of trees we dug up to make the driveway. Now I can see for myself why they are frowned on, as invasive aliens, which we are supposed to only grow with a permit!  

Now is supposed to be the autumn flush of the roses. Jack at Sequoia Gardens in Haenertsburg up north has it. Our roses are only just shrugging off that week of temperatures hitting 40C. Couple of bushes have given up the unequal battle. Pink Perfume Passion welcomes visitors at the front door. A nibbled Germiston gold. Striped Tropical Sunset. Pale yellow Courvoisier, gives bunches of flowers, once it gets going again. And Papa Meilland against the sky, because he is growing so tall, that is the closest I can get. Without cutting him off for the vase.

In the centre is my Natal Bauhinia (plant portait coming). Then clockwise - sky blue plumbago (which we saw growing wild at Addo, with the elephants ((for Andre)) ) Purple Streptocarpus (the pink one I did in, not enough water) Dietes, wild Iris. Purple Dimorphotheca jucunda (renamed from Osteospermum) Dianthus x allwoodii. Blue blue Pontederia, invasive Pickerel weed (but it is so beautiful!) Wild blue sage. White plumbago. And Tulbaghia (which North Americans call Society Garlic. Why? Garlic I understand.) 

March's showgirl is the March Lily in the centre. Clockwise we have tangerine Bulbine. A very deep red Pelargonium, where the camera has captured gold highlights reflecting the sun. Yellow bietou, a daisy bush, planted by the birds as they like the black berries (Book says - Chrysanthemoides monilifera - Common and widespread on sands along the seaboard of southern and tropical Africa). Yellow Tecomaria, Cape Honeysuckle. 3 wild Pelargoniums. Aloe ciliaris, tree aloe, which will climb up through shrubs. And you will remember Phyllis van Heerden?

Photos and words by Diana of Elephant's Eye

Father and Son sunbirds

Remember Bathsheba in her fig leaf bath. With her understated olive grey plumage. This fig tree is right outside our kitchen window, so the zoom lens on our new camera was working overtime.

First, at 8 in the morning, before my time, the Ungardener captured this little fellow. We asked a birding friend why this bird looked so moth-eaten. So tatty. And he explained - that’s this year’s youngster. He is still growing in his new feathers. Trying out his first business suit after ‘years of dreary school uniform‘.

Junior came back for an afternoon refill.

Now this really smart metallic green jacket with the flashy double collar. Saville Row’s finest. Is his dear old dad. Last year’s male. 

These 12 cm little birds go under the catchy title of Lesser Doublecollared Sunbirds. The double collar being a narrow flash of blue and a wider band of flaming red. Puts a robin ‘red’ breast to shame.

This is our most common sunbird in the Western Cape. Found wherever there are trees. They eat nectar (Tecomaria, Aloes, Melianthus and the gardener is working on extending the menu), beetles, spiders and flies. The nest is built of the usual plant bits and cobwebs. (We also have the twice as large Malachite sunbird, occasionally, so waiting on good pictures)

And with that he is gone.


BTW Spirulina, our damaged sparrow, is not growing her wings back. But she is growing new feathers. A black bib and chest plate, a Cape Sparrow. She is no hen sparrow. He is a young cock sparrow. So when the Ungardener rescued him, the parents were probably still hoping junior would learn to fly soon! We’re renaming HIM SpiruliNO. 

Photos by Jurg,
words by Diana of Elephant's Eye

Dozen for Diana

There is a new Page. Depending on where/how you are reading this. Click thru to the blog, and then the 'Dozen for Diana' tab at the top. Since a handful of these posts are always in my Most Popular Pages, I have pulled them all together. If I am inspired I will change my choices. Perhaps demote one of the 12 to a Plant Portrait. Or add a newly discovered favourite. The delights of a virtual garden. No hacking out a mistake. No struggling to get the roots out. No slaving to water in 40C. Just bang away on a keyboard. Read lots of books, and blogs. Drool at the nursery. 

And to prove that these plants do all grow in my garden. Even now at the end of a summer which ended exceptionally hot. I picked these this morning. It is not a florist's bunch of flowers, but it does bring the garden into the house. (For Gippsland who asked about getting the flowers to sit. This is my Swiss glass Advent wreath underneath.)


Today is a kindly autumn day. No more excuses. Going to prune, and lightly weed, the two beds at front door. It will be a start.


PS Small problem, the Ungardener is sneezing his head off, so we've banished the 2 grasses outside again. All is peaceful ...

Photos and words by Diana of Elephant's Eye

Spekboom Jade-plant

Addo 1

Elephant food. I know that lots of readers grow jade-plant. Perhaps in pots. Maybe you know that it comes from South Africa?

Spekboom

Portulacaria afra is recommended as suitable to plant in semi-arid places, against global warming, the greenhouse effect, to capture carbon dioxide. Because the plant is a succulent it does not burn easily, and the carbon dioxide remains trapped.

Spekboom thicket

I have captured this detail with lichen to show you that the plant earns its right to be called a tree.

Spekboom with lichen

Unless of course you have elephants around. Here is a mother elephant with a teenager a few years old, and this year’s baby. Lunch is served. Watching that is like living thru a gardener’s nightmare of – I asked you to THIN that, not demolish it! But the plants have adapted. Instead of whining about the elephant damage and giving up. A branch left lying on the ground, has enough sap to keep growing, strike roots, and carry on regardless. And the same goes for the tiniest little cluster of leaves. You grow, girl!

Elephants eating spekboom

They probably prefer the more succulent, leafy bits. But it is like watching a chipper clearing a heap of garden refuse after annual pruning. We watched this mother chewing away on that woody bit for a while. And she is feeding twins. You’d think the poor little things would get colic, or indigestion, mama too!

Elephant at Addo

And here you can see the difference between the lush green Addo bush. Dense enough and high enough to hide these smallish young elephants (smaller than the ones further North in Kruger Park). And the wide dusty patch herds of visiting elephants have cleared around the water-hole.

Elephants and spekboom

So if you do have elephants around … When we drove into the park, I looked at this and found myself thinking. If they have had a bull-dozer out, why don’t they tidy up the mess? Then I think – Silly, that was The Elephants!

There were elephants thru here

Beginning of March we went to Addo. Elephant Park. Near Port Elizabeth.

From the PlantZafrica website.
 Portulacaria afra is related to the summer annual Portulaca. Grows 2 M in a garden, and 5M in the wild. Small pink flowers in late winter, bring insects, and birds. ‘Elephants eat the plant from the top downwards allowing the plant to spread itself vegetatively by spreading horizontal branches at ground level. Outside the park the plants are eaten by goats who eat the plant from ground level upwards’.

The leaves of the porkbush can be eaten (by us too) and have a sour or tart flavour. Highly favoured by tortoises. Traditional uses also include the increasing of breast milk by lactating mothers.

  Pork bush has the ability to remove more carbon from the atmosphere than an equal amount of deciduous forest. When other plants have to shutdown and wait for sufficient rain, the porkbush can switch to a different pathway called CAM (Crassulaean Acid Metabolism) whereby it can continue to grow and slurp up huge amounts of carbon. This allows the plant to excel in arid or semi-arid conditions.

The large spreading shrub shades the soil from the sun creating a favourable environment under the bush for insects and other wildlife, while the dead organic matter which accumulates under the bushes has an enriching effect on the soil. This improves the soil’s water-holding capacity which further benefits the porkbush as well as other plants and animals including micro-organisms.

Projects in the areas where the porkbush occurs use it to restore over-utilized natural habitats. At the same time these sites act as carbon sinks where carbon can be collected and used where it belongs and is productive to both humans and the environment. Potential earnings through carbon credits could be translated into social upliftment in these areas.

This versatile plant can be used in full sun or semi-shade in dry areas or even in well-watered flowerbeds. It can tolerate moderate frost. Use as a screen or even a clipped hedge. It also makes a handsome and hardy Bonsai.

PS Just found a new link spekboom  Carbon and Poverty Alleviation Project

This story continues with Warthogs

Pictures by Jurg and Diana

words by Diana of Elephant's Eye
- wildlife gardening in Porterville,
near Cape Town in South Africa

(If you mouse over brown text, it turns shriek pink.

Those are my links)

Our kingfisher is back

Last January we got terribly excited. We had an adult kingfisher teaching junior to fish for lunch. Papa said ‘Now watch carefully dear. We dive gracefully, perfectly, like an Olympic Gold Medallist. If those clumsy two-legs listen V E R Y carefully, they may ‘just’ hear me touch the water with my beak.’ And papa flew back into his perch on the tree, and swallowed his Lunch.

Best the old Canon could do, last January

And poor little junior tried. And tried. And tried. Noisy undignified belly flops. Sodden feathers, which had to be groomed and tidied up. Wait a L O N G time for Lunch to decide it is safe to come out again.

Kingfisher

But we did eventually see success. Down the hatch. We were delighted when we went to Rustenberg Rare Plant Fair to find this metal ‘bird with fish’.

Do you mind? I can't see!

Then not a sight or sign of them since. My sister has been staying with us, and who should turn up, while she is here? Our kingfisher!

Then he came a little closer, into the reeds

This one is very nearly adult. So he fishes with great skill and determination and persistence. Just like his dear old dad. He will hunt here for quite some time, but any sudden noise or movement and he is SO out of here.

Call THAT a kingfisher? I have a body like a penguin!

Background info from Joy Frandsen’s Birds of the South Western Cape - Malachite kingfisher. 13 cm. Magnificently colourful. The adult is a rich golden cinnamon, with a white chin. The crest is a metallic blue green, striped with black.  The wings are a deep iridescent cobalt blue, and there are matching white marks on the back of the neck. The short tail shares the cobalt and cinnamon colour of the rest of the bird’s plumage. The long bill is bright red, and the legs coral. Young birds have black bills (if you look carefully, you can just see the last of the  darkness fading from our bird’s bill). These birds are common at fresh water, where there is vegetation to shelter in. Breeding from September to February. Perches where it can overlook water, and dives for its prey, skimming low over the water. Feeds on (fish, none here) tadpoles, beetles and grasshoppers (mostly the Ungardener’s beloved dragonflies). Turns round very quickly on its perch.

PS As I read your comments, I remember one day walking home from work, in Aarau. Joining a few people gazing in wonder at a shimmering blue Eisvogel. The only kingfisher I ever saw in 10 years of living in Switzerland.

Photos by Jurg,
words by Diana of Elephant's Eye

The Wearing of the Green

For Carrie in Ireland, who is planting spuds on St Patrick's Day

And for my maternal Anglo-Irish grandfather

'Pat' Frederick George Yeates

7th Oct 1878 to 2nd Sept 1918

Air Mechanic, 35th Kite Balloon Section of the Royal Air Force, 

in Northern France, at the Bucquoy Road Cemetery, Ficheux 

We have a studio portrait of my grandmother, with two small girls. My mother was only four. "With love from all of us." Which would have been returned to her, with his effects.

O Paddy dear, and did ye hear the news that's going round?

The shamrock is by law forbid to grow on Irish ground!

No more Saint Patrick's Day we'll keep, his colour can't be seen

For there's a cruel law against the Wearing of the Green.

I met with Napper Tandy, and he took me by the hand,
And he said, "How's poor old Ireland, and how does she stand?"
"She's the most distressful country that ever yet was seen,
For they're hanging men and women there for Wearing of the Green."

"So if the colour we must wear be England's cruel red
Let it remind us of the blood that Irishmen have shed;
And pull the shamrock from your hat, and trow it on the sod
But never fear, it will take root there, though underfoot 'tis trod.

When laws can stop the blades of grass from growing as they grow
And when the leaves in summer time their colour dare not show,
Then I will change the colour too I wear in my caubeen;
But till that day, please God, I'll stick to the Wearing of the Green."

(I found these lyrics to a traditional Irish ballad at Triskelle)

Our garden is anyway mostly green, mostly foliage, in style. I don't do displays of annuals for colour. I prefer a more Japanese interpretation of seasonal interest. Now we have the March lilies. And as soon as it rains, we will be smothered in waves of lemon yellow Oxalis pes-caprae.

Today Pam at Digging is hosting Foliage Follow-up. Perfectly timed for St Patrick's Day. (I am wimping out of labelling all these greens. But they do all grow in our garden. Photos were taken this morning. And if you want to know, ask and I'll tell you the name)

Photos and words
by Diana of Elephant's Eye