Google Plus at Spirulino's

When I ask - are you in Google+ / Google Plus – the answer is You what? I joined Facebook because my nieces invited me and my great-nephew has beaten me to Google+.

Not a Geek or a geek? Read the pictures this time.
Dew on a morning spiderweb

For my best pithy polished answer to – What is, why would I, why should I, Google+   I choose magicrowd what-is-google-plus. Firstly because it is a delight to watch, as I love line drawings.  It is not often in life, that you get the chance to start again. Fresh from the ground up. You don’t bring across your list from … although you can start from your email address book. Interested? Here is exploringsocialmedia how-to-use-google+ and mashable's google+-cheat-sheet and kikolani why-i-like-google+.

Cattle egrets
Follow the flock, got herd instinct?

The early adopters were the predominantly male, techie geeks. There has been some controversy about pseudonymity – you ‘must’ use your real name. And specify your gender, although you can choose ‘Other’. This raises social issues for women who are avoiding stalkers. Why-google-hates-women.

Cattle egret
Are you an earlier adopter?

It was and is still, by invitation only. What weirds me out – they hit the first 10 million in 16 days vs. FB and Twitter who took around 800 days to hit 10 million. Unlike FB you add people to your circles, without waiting for a Yes to, will you be my friend. FB gives me a privacy problem but Google+ has Privacy.  Facebook-vs-Google-Plus.

That masked weaver was the very first customer
at the refurbished Spirulino's!

I was invited by Bom plantchaser who is celebrating his first blogaversary. I'm battling to find any garden bloggers who are early adopters - Carole Sevilla Brown of Ecosystem Gardening.

Then the flock of sparrows and weavers and whydahs and doves comes

Sisah at meingartenimfliesstal asked about the button for the sidebar. I first saw it at Louis Gray, from where I copied and pasted. I have redone my button using the official Google instructions profilebutton .  First login to your Google+ profile to get the right URL to copy and paste. Choose the button size. Copy and paste the HTML into your blog. I wanted a few words in my thumbnail – found the hack at mashable google-plus-tips-tricks. Since we are bloggers, get your blog name and its link up there where we can see, that it’s YOU!

One day, Google+ will be open to all

Once you are in, you get 8 invitations to pass on. I see a few familiar faces there but they have a – the lights are on and no one is home – just staking my claim to my place. You can claim my invites. Would you like to join Google+? Leave a comment and I’ll choose eight loyal readers. Four down, 4 to go …

If you are not into joining the geeks hacking and tweaking their way thru this pilot phase, it will soon be open to all. As opposed to the 20 million who are already in. waxingunlyrical thank-you-Google-for-the-antithesis-of-a-more-social-network.

I have two problems. First dual email - I can login to my blog, OR to Google+. Second how to discover a larger circle between those I know and that twenty million!

Pictures by Jurg,
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.)

Wildflower Wednesday with July weather

Fact is stranger than fiction. Beautiful mediterranean winter day here. Blue sky and the cat sitting in my shade. We are in the eye of the storm. The country around us has rain. And snow!! The national road between Cape Town and Johannesburg was closed by snow, and so was the second route. Meanwhile our Swartland wheat farmers wait for rain. We’ve had no rain since the 2nd of July, and this should be a heavy winter rain month.

Kniphofia fading to yellow

This Kniphofia red hot poker was bought as yellow. Above two weeks ago, below today as the older flowers fade to yellow. Hmmph!

Winter bulbs in South Africa

Everywhere is an undercarpet of lime yellow Oxalis pes-caprae. Arum lilies Zantedeschia aethiopica in the Paradise and Roses Garden. Little clumps of mauve Tulbaghia, and pots of deepest red Lachenalia rubida, and the Freesia alba bowing down under the weight of buds.

Succulents on the Karoo Koppie
and the Hedge Fund

The Karoo Koppie still gives an impression of yellow (fading aloes, Oxalis and Bulbinella) and red and orange aloes and plakkies =  Cotyledon orbiculata. At the washing lines our Hedge Fund of Crassula ovata Pink Joy jade plant, is covered with a shawl of tiny blush pink flowers with stamens in raspberry and violet.

White daisy with butterfly

The white Dimorphotheca jucunda flowers are all looking ratty but they still draw butterflies.

South African daisies in winter July

We have yellow Euryops and Chrysanthemoides monilifera = bietou.  Gazanias in yellow and cream. Dimorphotheca jucunda in deep purple flecked with shadows from the tall green grass we grow for the weavers to build their nests with. Finally the true blue kingfisher daisy Felicia – this way to Happiness.

Tecomaria capensis

Tecomaria capensis lutea in yellow, a ‘sunset’ variety in yellow and orange, and Big Red.

Nectar thief left slits in Tecomaria flower

In the University of the Blogosphere I read about nectar robbers. And behold on my computer screen – are the slits in the tubes, left by our nectar thieves.

Pelargoniums

Pelargoniums in pink, white and salmon. Red is a bit slow.

Strelitzia regina and Salvia africana-lutea

Strelitzia regina, above the Mandela’s Gold, below the original species. It is hard in a garden view, to show the gentle difference in the colours. To the right the only indigenous sage blooming. Salvia africana-lutea = Strandsalie beloved by FaroutFlora in SF California.

Winter colour with July shrubs and smalls

Feathery white knoffelboegoe, garlic buchu (with Riversdale memories). Purple ribbon bush Hypoestes. Lavender coloured but fiercely scented Plectranthus neochilus = muishondblaar. Tiny pink (weedy) wildflower? Grewia occidentalis cross berry with star shaped pink flowers on a small tree. Fragrant jasmine at the bedroom window.

Most pictures were taken today, some from two weeks ago, but I gather together all South African native/indigenous/wild flowers from my garden for Wildflower Wednesday.

Pictures by Diana and Jurg,

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.)

Inspired by Ifafa lilies

Last Saturday we went across-our-valley-to-Riebeek, to a new nursery. I will show the plants as they find their new homes in our garden. First the Ifafa lilies. Two bags filled with LOTS of bulbs, so I split them gently. Planted four clumps ‘under’ our baby lime tree. Now I sit on my little chair like Charlie Brown – to watch them grow into an Elizabethan ruff of singing-canary yellow!

Ifafa lily

The Riebeek Valley is more up-market, more schicki micki than Porterville, which is a busy working town. Here we have some weekenders, there, the bread shop explain that they only sell fresh bread Friday evening and Saturday! As you drive around you see stately wine and olive estates. Houses with wonderful architecture, and interesting gardens. We’ve HAD NOT keeping up with Joneses, now we enjoy just getting on with ordinary life.

Cyrtanthus mackenii var cooperii

There is Corne Pretorius’ nursery in Riebeek West where we bought our Ifafa lilies.

Ifafa lilies with a baby lime tree

From PlantZAfrica – Cyrtanthus mackenii. In the Amaryllidaceae with daffodils. (White from southern Kwazulu-Natal), or our yellow var. cooperi from the eastern Eastern Cape. Flowers from July to February! Cyrtanthus curved flower. Mark McKen was the first curator of the Durban Botanic Garden in 1851. Lots of compost. Afternoon shade. Water year round. Lift and divide after 5 years.

Cyrtanthus mackenii

At Garden Bleu we bought a word for our garden. There are fluffy twee cute words – family friends love peace and happiness. I chose inspire. We have our word in the Paradise and Roses Garden. Where we take our tea-breaks. Inspire both in the sense of – breathe in – breathe out – take a break – have a Kit Kat! And in the second sense of inspiration – I-lift-my-eyes-to-the-quiet-hills.

Inspired at Paradise and Roses

Lunch at Cafe Felix where we felt as if we had stepped into a quiet town in France, quite foreign to our prosaic reality in Harry Potterville.

Paradise and Roses Garden
Striped Tropical Sunset, white Great North roses
Mandela's Gold Strelitzia 

I have some roses which do need pruning. Also plum, apple and fig trees to work on.  Pots of bulbs and roses need watering as the rain is not showing up. Gravel paths need weeding. Exuberant plants need reining in, and then the bits go in. My Felicia prunings have their own blue flowers, already!

from Garden Bleu

Thank you 57 for voting on the sidebar poll. You have the last week if you haven’t voted yet.

4 out of 5 blog to share your interests.

Half to show your pictures to a wider audience.

A third are wordsmiths, as I am.

Only a quarter focus on your garden.

15% use their blog to rant and whinge and let off steam.

Finally 1 in 10 enjoy the geeky nerdy techie computer side of blogging.

Remember, you can choose as many as apply to you

and it is anonymous.

PS As ever, we paid our way.

Pictures and 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.)

Across our valley to Riebeek wotsit

We travelled the dirt road across the wide valley to the twin towns of Riebeek Kasteel and Riebeek West. Once upon a time there was a heated argument – where shall we build the church? They built two, and today the towns flow together.

Blackheaded heron 

It is the season for waterblommetjies. Aponogeton distachyos. Literally ‘small water flowers’. Cooked it becomes the traditional waterblommetjiebredie. (I recently read about translating bredie, not ‘stew’ as in getting in a stew, but slowcooked and mellow, a casserole). Oh and we discovered the blooming flowers smell glorious. Left to nature, every tiny pond formed by winter rain is now filled with a sheet of these raised spikes of chunky flowers.

Waterblommetjies with vineyards looking back to the mountains

Looking to Riebeek West and the Kasteelberg

Aponogeton distachyos

We went to explore a new nursery. Remember Org de Rac? The landscaper Corne Pretorius has a nursery in Riebeek West. I had high hopes of finding indigenous plants, suited to our soil and climate. First we drove up and down, searching, until we found it.

We found sweetpea bushes. Podalyria with silver velvet leaves and pink and mauve watercolour washes of flowers. No tiresome fiddling with planting seed each year. This, is a sweetpea presence. Karee Searsia/Rhus. And now, he tells me, let it grow 4 or 5 trunks from the base – don’t try to force a lollipop. They will go near the waterfall to hide the neighbour’s garage. A tiny succulent in a thumb pot – leaves of cream and green with fuchsia margins – forgot to ask its name. Aristea in pink, not the usual deep blue. That will go in Plum Creek, as it grows where its feet stay wet.

And – what is that, a yellow Tulbaghia?  That is the Ifafa lily, a Cyrtanthus. Come and see … and he took us to the neighbour’s garden. Conjure up an image of the Lime Walk at Sissinghurst. Trees formally laid out, each with a square at the base of the trunk, filled with mille-fleurs. SHE wanted daffodils. He said, try the Ifafa lily. I stand, my mouth hanging open in wonder, engraving the image on my mind’s eye. Camera in the car, this was unexpected!

Close your mouth, Diana! Imagine an Elizabethan ruff, a mille- fleurs in a perfect singing-canary yellow. Why ever do we in South Africa battle to grow a few ratty daffodils, when we could have this?? He tells me the plants come from the Eastern Cape, so they need some summer watering. Plant them under a tree, which you will anyway be watering thru the summer.

Then we wound and wove back thru his own garden. A fieldstone waterfall. A plantsman’s garden, each plant provoking a question, unfolding a story. The Jurassic Park garden, with cycads and Equisetum (corralled in a small tub and closely monitored against any invasive intentions!) Fragrant blooming orchids in a hothouse, built of recycled materials and a joy to look at, with a tiny bubbling fountain and a rill to keep the air moist. Sigh …

Crossing the valley, we found a small flock of sheep. Mostly rams with twirled horns.

Sheep and Eucalyptus

Sheep

Ramshorn

We’ll be back at the end of August to collect renosterbos in sixpacks. My sense of place is coming!  

Pictures by Jurg
and 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.)

Berg River Canoe Marathon at Iron Bridge

For my nephew Rob Clegg, who won the race in 1987. Still paddling on youtube!

Berg River Canoe Marathon at Ironbridge 2011

This morning Jurg and Andre went down to the Berg River at Die Brug / Iron Bridge to see the Windhoek Berg River Canoe Marathon. In other years there have been concerns about the water quality, but ‘the quality and quantity of the water in the river will be excellent for the four day race’ and ‘bluegum eradication by Working for Water leaves only one spot where a treeblock might need a portage’ this year.

Berg River

They arrived to see the first lady paddle past. Said the woman next to the Ungardener - can we see on your camera, is that my daughter, coming first? Yes!

First ladies in the Canoe Marathon
And the winner is ... (blonde) Michelle Eray!

Banners and people and crazy traffic, so I’m told.

Banners on the bridge

Last June looking across from the farmlands to a rather lovely old iron bridge. Spanning the Berg River in the middle of nowhere between farms and wheat fields.

The Bridge in June 2010

The very first time we found the bridge. Way back in September 2007.

When we found the bridge in September 2007

They built the bridge here, where the river is narrow after Misverstand Dam, and the valley is deep.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you are in a reader, or on a non laptop/desktop computer, did you click thru to the Poll on my sidebar? – Why? Do you blog? On a good day I get about 60 visitors to the blog, and 46 of you have voted. Since it is my poll I have asked what I want to know. Leaving out options that don’t interest me.

Since mine is a garden blog, I expected most votes there, but, 

36 of you blog to share your interests 

(I often read, this is off-topic for a GARDEN blog … and?)

22 to show your pictures to a wider audience.

16 are wordsmiths as I am.

Only 11 of you focus on your garden.

5 use their blog to rant and whinge and let off steam.

Finally 4 enjoy the geeky nerdy techie computer side of blogging.

Nobody at all blogs for a living or to earn money.

Remember, you can choose as many as apply to you.

Blotanical is wobbling into its new reincarnation. I am reading my blogs via the Google Reader, easy on the Picks, until the glitches get sorted. There I have no feed issue problems, no missed posts.

If you want to ID a plant, try this new option google-image-search Instead of battling to tell the Great Google what your flower looks like in words – er, small? Yellowish, but some orange? You can use your photo of your mystery flower!

Pictures by Jurg

and 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.)

July in our garden

This is for my niece in Johannesburg, further up in both directions, North and high, where winter means frost.

Courvoisier, Peace
Germiston Gold

We live in a mediterranean climate 33 degrees South. Today I look only at the commonorgarden foreign exotic plants.

Great North
and pink Pearl of Bedfordview

I usually prune my roses mid to end July. On Sunday when we walked, the Iceberg roses at church are a textbook illustration of everything I HATE about roses. The ground beneath them is scraped bare – skoon en netjies. The bushes have been pruned down to knee height, all leaves removed. I Hates It! But the gardens we walked past are mostly like mine. The roses are tall, covered in voluptuous flowers. Perfume Passion has an armload of fat buds, carried proudly at my, standing, eye level. And I should cut it all off???

Black Prince, Perfume Passion
Chaim Soutine, Dainty Bess

So this year I will – remove dead and tangled growth. Do the textbook thing for the ratty sulky bushes. But the happy ones I will simply harvest the flowers as they come, on LONG stalks. We’ll see …

Duftwolke, Burning Sky
Alec's Red, Karoo Rose 

When I looked out this morning the ash trees are covered in a soft mauve haze. Flower buds. Even the first few of next season’s fresh green leaves. The deciduous trees from the northern hemisphere, in this gentle winter, simply use the new leaves to push off the old. Bare branches is our very briefest season. Blink, and it was gone.

Mountain ash flowers

The Japanese flowering quince is having a quiet winter. That and the yellow winter flowering Chinese jasmine came with the land. The white marguerite daisy looked so – not long for this world in summer. Now the bush is as wide as I am tall and the first flowers are opening.

Japanese flowering quince (coral)
yellow Chinese winter Jasmine
white marguerite daisy

Our exotic foreigners include lavender and basil. Pineapple sage and Salvia greggei which give the camera a migraine.

Lavender, pineapple sage
electric pink Salvia greggei 

On Saturday we worked hard in the garden. I stood on the verandah and said – up a bit, bit more, no the one to the left. The four Searsia/Rhus trees we planted are steadily climbing and spreading to obscure our mountain view.

Before we pruned the Searsia/Rhus 

And he used our new telescopic parrot. Very cheap (WHY??) and cuts quite thick branches like butter. The pecan tree was too big, 5 years ago when we bought the plot, and has now reached its sell by date. But that we must have removed by the pros.

After we pruned the Searsia/Rhus 

b-a-g experiments-with-plants said – 'the difference is that when we stand up, you see two snow-capped mountains and I see suburbia'. Ah no – to see the snowcaps we need to drive a little, so the foothills no longer obscure the mountains. When I stand, I see, from our panhandle plot, 9 neighbours. Usually they are manicured out of the photos, but today I have left a few walls and roofs, so you can see, we do, live in town. Non-collage for Alistair in Aberdeen who doesn’t like collages, but then you would have scrolled thru 31 pictures?

Olifantskop from the Paradise And Roses garden

Gesine at Seepferds Garten has her July link up for garden bloggers bloom day.

Pictures and 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.)