Flowers in February

Christmas collage, January and now February. Went around the garden today. Once the rain had stopped, and the clouds were starting to part. The flowers are spangled with raindrops. The roses have eaten their belated dinner, and were nicely pushing thru bunches of burgundy leaves, and fat buds. But that one very hot day has left ‘frostbitten/sunburnt’ brown leaves.

Left – Dainty Bess twice, Elizabeth of Glamis, Help Kids
Centre – Karoo Rose, Elizabeth of Glamis in bud
Right – Maverick, Alec’s Red, Burning Sky, Chaim Soutine

Dragons and a damsel

The Ungardener is having fun exploring the possibilities of his new camera. Sometimes - why won't it do that? Why doesn't it focus? What on earth is it doing? And then he caught a blaze of dragonflies (Tx Wikipedia collective nouns), and a far more elusive and fragile damsel. But despite the name, these are all highly visible MALES.

TWO RED

Wagtails and a frog

We have frogs. I said FROGS!! There are enchanting little clicking reed frogs, usually start up around 4 in the afternoon. A gentle little murmur in the background, very soothing and reassuring. The woodwinds. Sadly we only see them when Chocolat has found them, and I don't like to post sad pictures of the (walking) wounded. If you have a cat … you can fill in the dots for yourself.


Then after dark the real frogs get chirruping. A little louder, but still a restful noise, a lulling lullaby. The string quartet. We do like our frogs. A good noise, the sound of the sea rolling peacefully in, and out, or a river flowing by.

This frog was photographed at night 

Dozen for Diana 11 - Phyllis van Heerden

This garden has over 30 rose bushes. The first garden was on a mountain slope above Camps Bay - west facing into the sun, prevailing South-Easter which once tore the roof off our neighbour's house. Now we have heavy clay, summer heat, and in winter it Rains. The next garden will be sand, salt sea breezes - not suitable for roses. We will concentrate on the endangered indigenous plants.

I am imagining that townhouse/courtyard garden. No lawn! Somewhere to sit with a tiny pond. And we welcome birds, bugs and all.

COLLAGE First 11 of Dozen for Diana

I want to start gardening, she wails!

(Broken links for photos restored October 2021)

Lots of plants.Waiting impatiently in pots. Been there for more than a year, while the house was built. The Ungardener did most of the Ungardening (read hard landscaping) himself, and that takes time. Months of time.


Remember we had floods, on heavy clay soil, with no paths. You can imagine the mess, inside and out! The driveway was functional to give the builders access to our panhandle plot. But we needed four single steps built, to get to the outside doors. And washing lines (we are allowed to dry our washing in the sun and the breeze). Everywhere I try to dig there are gobbets and sheets of concrete, broken bricks, broken glass, bits of plastic and metal rubbish.

2007 planted in June, bulbs in July, by November it was green,and the bricks for the edging