Solstice wildflowers for Christmas

In South Africa the Christmas garden flower – what is picked in great bundles to arrange around the baby in a manger in our churches – is Agapanthus. Somewhat looked down on as commonorgarden, easy maintenance around office buildings. I love that colour and that the stalks stand high and Proudly South African. My version of the blue globes of Allium flowerheads.

Agapanthus

Foreign flowers in December

December’s memories of foreign exotic commonorgarden flowers. November was the rose’s month of glory, but today the next buds are unfurling in waves. Yesterday was overcast and it almost rained, about half a millimetre. Kind weather for the rose petals – which are not doing their usual – It’s summer! If you don’t pick us and bring us in out of the sun, we’ll just shrizzle up to toasted hasbeens!!

Tropical Sunset at Paradise and Roses
(the camera always lies, but I love this view of our garden!)

Pushed Out of Paradise and Roses

I have gathered and sorted pictures of the roses from the end of October to today. From bud to glory to ‘the last rose of summer’ as the next buds develop. Four of these roses we inherited. As we laid out our new garden they were stranded half way down the driveway. Against a new concrete panel wall, they faced into the full force of the afternoon sun. My two legs of the grey watering system whined louder and louder. He extended the two beds between the garage and the front door, making space for these roses. Not so far to walk, and they make a gracious welcome home. Now they have recovered from transplanting, we can see what we have. Some beauties, mostly nameless!

Pushed Out of Paradise and Roses

Wildflower Wednesday and Dietes our wild iris

Gail at Clay and Limestone’s Wildflower Wednesday is usually my chance to walk around the garden – collecting what is blooming to attention. But they must be indigenous, native to South Africa. As I did last November. Today our wild iris Dietes will monopolise this WFW. It began life as part of my free seed allocation for members of the Botanical Society based at Kirstenbosch. Now it is SANBI South African National Biodiversity Institute  which hosts the PlantZAfrica site I like to use. Biodiversity e.g. barn swallow migration and climate change.

Dietes grandiflora

Dietes grandiflora has that American habit known as walking onions.

Spring Promise at Paradise and Roses

I love striped roses, inspired by Rosa mundi. Spring Promise is PINK. Chaim Soutine striped in shocking pink and white.

Chaim Soutine

Cape mountain leopard on camera

The Ungardener returned to Driehoek in October, still hoping to help trap Spot, the Cape mountain leopard.

Driehoek dam

While Dr Quinton Martins of the Cape Leopard Trust has traps set, he needs help monitoring 24/7. That is where the Ungardener comes in, as a volunteer.

Autumn Fire at Paradise and Roses

Tea in Paradise with Summer Gold to my right, and to my left (I'm sinister) Autumn Fire. When we built the house I wanted a walled rose garden, face brick to match the house. The most visible of the four beds (when you look out the window, step off the verandah, or walk down the path into Paradise and Roses), I'm grateful that it is the one among the four that works best!

Looking out the window at Autumn Fire

This bed was planted in September 2007.

Some corner of a foreign field

Remembrance Day. Poppy Day.

Poppies grow, between the crosses

Summer Gold at Paradise and Roses

Turn away from Winter Chill, and gaze at Summer Gold, where the sun shines down and we battle with overexposed photos. The first hot summer breeze turns my mind to lowering the blinds.

Looking out the other livingroom window

I want the foliage to support the colour theme and provide texture and interest. Even flowers, regardless of whether the roses are game, or out for the count. I choose first, indigenous, adapted to hot summer, wet winter, clay soil.

Winter Chill at Paradise and Roses

November is rose month. Prompted by Ludwig's Roses Newsletter, I fed them. Puttering around the Paradise and Roses garden dead-heading, I harvest for vases. Imaginary tabletop in mind, I prune the stalks down to the new low. Cut out the extra fork, so the remaining bud can flourish.

Oyster Pearl

I chose to add a lot of indigenous plants. Winter Chill with pale and white roses, has suffered from my enthusiasm. Only two roses have survived competition with vigorous neighbours, who claim their food and drink. I do I do cut back the Dusty Miller hedge. Quite hard so it looks scraggly. Just weeks later we are back to the battle of – but, I’d like you to be knee high!

October’s wildflowers 2011

Join me at Gail of Clay and Limestone’s Wildflower Wednesday meme? 

Click thru to see what she would like from you. 

Photos were taken yesterday in my garden. 

Some of the bulbs have faded and those pictures are from earlier this month.

Bietou, Erica baccans
trailing daisy, Plectranthus neochilus

Sole survivor of my attempt at fynbos is this little pink berry heath Erica baccans.

With the Cape Leopard Trust at Driehoek

Imagine you are hiking in the Cederberg. Ahead of you is a red flag.

Warning flags for leopard traps at Driehoek in the Cederberg

As you get closer, you read about Cape Leopards.

Foreign flowers in our October garden

I did try for the long view, instead of the pretty flowers. When we look at A Flower, the camera and I are mostly on the same page. The long view leaves me befuddled. Why doesn't the &%$#ing camera see what I see? Overexposed, or focused on a plane the human eye doesn't notice. The wrong edge of the wrong petal, of the wrong blooming flower!

Walking down the driveway as you turn to the front door the edge of the gravel has a bunker of nasturtiums. The summer sun starts to bite, and later will shrizzle the leaves, leaving the seed to wait for March, coolth, and the first rain. But for now we have thousands of flowers.

Nasturtiums AKA Cistercians here

In the pond are frogs and tadpoles the size of my thumb.

Wildflower Wednesday in September

I was early for Gail's Wildflower-Wednesday. Last week the flowers were foreign, today they are Proudly South African. Perhaps the spirit of WFW is more about the wildflowers that would grow in my garden, if nature decided. Yellow Oxalis. White rain daisies on otherwise bare earth. In the damp hollows Melianthus and arum lilies. Where the winter rain leaves a few inches of standing water, vlei lilies.

Most of my bulbs were grown from seed. Fairy bells of Melasphaerula. White Babiana inherited from the previous gardener. Vlei lilies, seed didn’t work, so I bought bulbs with delight, when I found them. Arum lily snuck in with a Strelitzia. Freesia alba once from seed, now self-sown. Dietes some inherited, some from seed, some as bulbs – but somehow, they are all the same species.

Melasphaerula, Babiana, vlei lily
arum, Freesia alba, Dietes

Bloom day – not from around here

For Gesine in Berlin – I collect the foreign, exotic, commonorgarden. 

The starring role in the garden now, is a rowing-boat sized white daisy bush. I know where it comes from; the gardener at my mother’s retirement village was ripping out wheelbarrows of the stuff. New gardener’s eyes light up, and I brought a bit home. It sulks in summer – does an Estherism – not sure if it wants to go on growing. So I put it on life support, water steadily thru the summer, feed a little in desperation. Once the rain came, I turned away for a moment – and the blooming thing is as wide and high as I am tall. Green fernish feathered leaves. Large white daisies on long stems, ideal for picking. But only once, the flowers smell evil. Anyone know what it is? A Shasta daisy? I know, despite the huge variety of South African daisies, it isn’t one of ours.

Nameless white daisy

To Driehoek in search of leopards

Since we moved to Porterville the Ungardener has hoped that one day, hiking up in the Groot Winterhoek Wilderness Area, we would see Cape leopards. In the newsletter from the Cape Leopard Trust they recently asked for volunteers. He spent a week at Driehoek in the Cederberg, which flow on from our Groot Winterhoek mountains.

Mountain stream looking across to the Koerasieberg
 at Driehoek in the Cederberg

Leopards and other predators are a problem for stock farmers. They were hunted and trapped. At Driehoek is an Anatolian shepherd dog. Himself was dozing in his chair, when something leapt on his stomach. He woke up thinking leopard!

Return to Groot Winterhoek

Walking with me, the Ungardener is limited to about two hours. With FREQUENT stops for yet another flower. And I me myself, like to walk, on the level, on the jeep track, so I can look at bugs and flowers. He would like to go further, along the river, a full day hike. Andre our Computer Man had never been up to the Wilderness Area. Last Monday, Computer Man and Ungardener hiked towards De Tronk along the river, returning via a very steep uphill slog on my jeep track.

Hiking in the Groot Winterhoek in August

For Wildflower Wednesday

We have the long promised rain. Most of these pictures were taken on Sunday, ahead of the – promising snow on the mountains – cold front. All are in our garden, this August. Were you with me, for  August daisy chain walk last year?

Blue Felicia, yellow
and purple Dimorphotheca jucunda,
cream and brown eyed Gazania

Sunshine bush after the fire

Last Friday I picked out the raisins. To share that, sometimes overwhelming feeling amongst the diversity in fynbos. Every which way you turn, at a second glance, that is so too, a different species. Today I'm caught in the first impression. The Who Needs ho hum flowers, if your fresh ‘spring’ leaves are this flamboyant??

Depending on the season, what you notice as you cross the invisible line from whatever to fynbos – is clumps of restios. Their form quite distinctly revealing that invisible boundary. Time it right and what you are hit with – is bushes – flaming in lime gold and neon burgundy. In the Groot Winterhoek Wilderness Area. Up on the mountain we look out at from our garden.

Looking across to the Piketberg

August Bloom day in Porterville

Today I choose to bring the foreign exotic commonorgarden flowers. Around the 25th will be the wildflowers growing in my garden.

What is most visible now, more so since the pecan is down, is the Japanese flowering quince. A flaming coral torch that takes my breath away, as it startles me, every time I see it.

Japanese flowering quince 

Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold

Became a book title for Chinua Achebe. From a poem by William Butler Yeats. On Tuesday I needed to get images of London Is Burning out of my mind. From 6-things-bloggers-can-learn-from-dr-seuss. I'm too old to have read Dr Seuss as a child, and childless, so I missed his books both ways. A really good, classic, quotable ‘child’s’ book – is not childish. It crystallises wisdom down to its simple essence, to truth.

Dr. Seuss

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes.

You can steer yourself in any direction you choose.

Euryops sp. growing tall
The centre, cannot hold, and scatters seeds

Pecan down

Long lived the pecan. Forty years, five with us. This tree was always too big, reaching its great arms into our view of the Olifantsberg ridge. I had always wanted it cut back, feathered, so the line between earth and sky was unbroken. Five years pass. Looking at Nell Jean’s fallen pecan makes me nervous. They do have a bad habit of discarding HUGE dead branches, and there are many telephone lines in the flight path.

Pecan tree

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

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

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.

July in our garden

We live in a mediterranean climate 33 degrees South.

Courvoisier, Peace
Germiston Gold

For the birds

The Ungardener loves Ungardening, pottering, DIY projects. If not a new one, then tweak the old. 

At the bird feeder

Midwinter in a Swartland garden

Winter interest? Seriously? We are not tropical, with NO winter. We are temperate, we do have seasons. But we are mediterranean, in the valley there is no frost or snow in the garden. So the garden stays green, with flowers, year round.

A New gardener, with James. We are learning summer New gardening. Coming round to letting the plants rest when it is hot and dry, instead of frantically and despairingly battling with life support. The seeds and bulbs wait, the shrubs and trees furl their leaves. Our garden year begins in March, cooler, some rain, March lilies. Garden!

Try again, winter interest. Early in the morning the garden is spangled with dew. On a sunny day like today, and many winter days are sunny, the dew burns off as the sun climbs the sky.  The cats who observe work in their garden, find a gardener's shadow, no reason why we should BOTH be hot and bothered!

Early on a winter's morning, dew smokes from Dombeya leaves

From fynbos fairies to mud

There are no fairies at the bottom of our garden. Perhaps a solitary fynbos fairy? 

A weaver with the sparrows

June wildflowers, birds and bees

When I reread Tuesday's poem, I found japonica and bees. Fitting in to my post for Wildflower Wednesday in Pollinator Week. Today's plants are all indigenous to South Africa in the spirit of Gail at Clay and Limestone's meme, EXCEPT the Japanese flowering quince and the fig and ash trees.

Listen to Henry Reed himself reading his poem, with Frank Duncan (as the lecturer). How strangely wonderful is modern technology! This is from a BBC broadcast in 1966. Text found at solearabiantree.

 

NAMING OF PARTS

To-day we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And to-morrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,
To-day we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens,
          And to-day we have naming of parts.

Japanese flowering quince
with bee
LAST June, today is winter, grey wet and cold.

Today we have Naming of Parts

Anne Perry's quintet was written around the First World War. I have just finished the fourth book – At some disputed barricade. A poem we learnt at school was Henry Reed's 1942 'Naming of Parts'. I have always been fascinated by the fact that widgets and gizmos and thingamajigs do have precise and particular names, if that is what you work with.  

Dani is moving to the farm, but that farm needs a name! Like pub signs, as you drive across country, South African farms have intriguing names, that could and do tell a story. Just outside Porterville is a dairy farm, called Gelukwaarts. The waarts bit is obvious – forward  – This Way! For Geluk you need Dutch or German (and they got it from the English luck!). Happiness. Imagine driving along, heading for home, and turning where the sign says – This Way to Happiness!

Black Stork Island

Red, yellow and bare

The Western Cape on a good winter day. Not one of the cold wet grey days. But one of the lovely blue sky sunny days, walking thru our garden in June. Jeans and T-shirt midday.

Red aloes … on our Karoo koppie. That says winter to any homesick South African.

Pig's ears, red aloe

Take one World Heritage Site

On a perfect day. Blue sky. A fresh breeze, not cold. Just you and I here, walking. No sound, but the sand crunching under our boots. If we pause … we can hear the heritage of world murmuring past our ears.

Groot Winterhoek Wilderness Area
with new roads using gabions

I was very wary of what we would find, after eighteen months of roadworks. Oh! Tarred road! And a gate. But, new signs. A World Heritage Site, and for the hours we walked, we were quite alone.

Berghoff proteas to Chelsea

If you were in London. At the Chelsea Flower Show and the Kirstenbosch exhibit. You could see our renosterbos, and the halfmens on the Richtersveld side. ‘The Pachypodium namaquamum on loan, will be returned to the Karoo Desert National Botanical garden, after the show’.  Looking at the fynbos side, those proteas were growing on our mountain when we went up on the 12th of May.

Berghoff protea farm

Dasklip Pass to Groot Winterhoek Wilderness Area

After the fire-on-our-mountain, we went up to the reserve on the mountain  to see the fire-flowers.  Then they closed the reserve to repair the roads, after fire followed by very heavy rain caused erosion damage. Eighteen months later, the reserve is partially reopened . Last week we went, with trepidation, to see what 18 months of road works looks like, in a wilderness area.

with Google Earth
from Porterville up the Dasklip Pass
to the Groot Winterhoek Wilderness Area

Porterville looks up at the Olifantskop (Elephant Head). Our good fortune that the house faces the double kloof on that long ridge of foothills.

May garden walk

EDITED in May 2014

Mid-month garden walks were going to be about commonorgarden foreign exotic plants. On Friday I will return to the next quarter of the Paradise And Roses garden. Lots of colour in the garden now, and it delights me that it is all indigenous/native. Except Salvia greggei and our sunbirds love that.

Hemizygia

I've walked you round our garden before. 

Bees collect tar

My sense of wonder is intact, as a flourishing great and ancient tree in a natural forest. Remember we recently relined the pond? The liner is tar based, can be cleaned off with water, while it is still wet. The empty cans were set aside in the garden. When I walked past the other day something Deep Middle said made me pause, and look. Bees. Harvesting tar, and packing it into their saddlebags, where nice fluffy yellow pollen should be.

Bee and tar

Is that weird or what?? So I trawled the internet, and found a forum. Bees do collect tar – ‘but I’ve never seen it’. Ha – old wives tales and urban legends. Says the Ungardener maybe they need some glue? I sneer what – for their DIY projects?!

Around Porterville in April

Walking towards the mountain last Sunday morning, to the dam on Houdconstant farm. Pomegranates, oranges, grapes. Where we disturbed a small flock of dark spurwinged geese. As we tried to get closer for a photo, they took off, in bunches, circled and settled, elsewhere. One of the few dams that still has water, after the summer, harvesting what drains down from the mountain. The nearby Voelvlei dam supplies the city of Cape Town with water.

Houdconstant farm dam

Wildflower Week in April

Yesterday I harvested this month’s native / indigenous /  wild flowers for Gail's meme. Our weather forecast for Malmesbury includes a white slab with irregular edge. Frost pockets. They also promise snow on our mountains. We almost had a Western Cape Easter with snow. Carolyn - our snowdrops should feel more comfortable – if they didn’t get cooked to death in the summer.

Bulbinella

Life returns to Ungardening Pond

Little by little we are refilling the pond, after relining it. And how immediately life returns. The frogs have been with us, their lives lived out hunting crickets in the mulch layer we try to cover the garden in. A blur of movement, and a frog emerges as the watering can shower disturbs him. We heard reed frogs clicking in the afternoon, frogs croaking and raucous toads bellowing at night. Now there are tadpoles, drawing back our kingfishers (waiting on better pictures, but the birds are back at long last)

Ungardening Pond in autumn

April flowers, not from around here

As I walk the garden, I know whether that plant is commonorgarden / exotic / alien / foreign. Those are the plants I look at for this mid-month garden walk. 

Aeonium 'Moroccan rose'

Spirulino our rescued sparrow and friends

EDITED January 2014

by Diana Studer
- gardening for biodiversity

Found at the recycling depot in January 2010. The Ungardener has been helping to sort at the town’s fledgling recycling project. There he saw a little bird hopping around. He brought him food and water. But he sees there is something wrong with his wing. He cannot fly. When the door was open, out he hopped to the open field.  Not sure if the wing is broken. Or something attacked and injured him. He brought him home. He is a commonorgarden house sparrow. Invasive from Europe. Our bird book says they were first seen in Piketberg in 1962.

Spirulino's home

Silvery grey camphor bush

Tarchonanthus

I love grey foliage. My Dusty Millers, now in need of rejuvenation. Take cuttings and make silver fountains again, instead of the broken golden limbs. The lamb’s ears, a beautiful idea, but they too are withered and gone. Will spread the Santolina instead. They are both commonorgarden foreigners. Grey foliage is more striking when it is a treeful.

The second grey tree is Brachylaena discolor growing in our new False Bay garden.

Tarchonanthus camphoratus

March garden walk

Mid-month I aim to cover exotic, alien, commonorgarden plants blooming in our garden. Especially the roses. Yes, well. It has been a long hot summer, about 10 weeks with no rain. And each time I look, another plant has waved goodbye. Apparently the roses have thrips, tiny creatures who come from the hot dry Out There to lovely luscious, fed and watered, yummy roses. Today I fed the roses and watered them to encourage the autumn flush, which should be their best time of year. There are buds, both flowers, and leaves coming up from the base. We’ll see. If this autumn weather holds kind, and does not hammer us with an unseasonal heat wave, as it did last year. Then, we lost many of our optimistic newly planted olive trees.

March lilies are Proudly South African.

When the Ungardener is Ungardening on the roof – you know, leaves out of the gutters, resealing the chimney. So you walk down the driveway past the olives, and our greener neighbours, around the curved wall of the rose garden, which I call Paradise. Perhaps I should call it the And Roses garden.

Paradise, the rose garden

On Ungardening Pond 4

In May we walked together in hopeful optimism round our pond. By June you can see winter rain falling, and filling the pond, but, to our mounting despair, you can also see a tideline on the beach. He looks at me sadly and says we keep topping up, it’s winter, can’t be evaporation. There must be a leak!

June, with an exposed tideline on the beach
and winter rain

February’s wildflowers

When I woke there was autumn’s morning mist, burnt off a few hours later. The summer is still hot, but mid thirties rather than pushing 40 C. This year I will be using Gail at ClayandLimestone's Wildflower-Wednesday meme for  indigenous/native/wild flowers  blooming this month in our garden. For me that means indigenous to South Africa, and working on avoiding the summer rainfall plants from the far side of our country. The ones that hang their heads and whisper, it is h o t here … and need as much watering in summer as any commonorgarden exotic foreign plant!  Somewhat intimidated by Californian discussions about planting the right cultivar for My Watershed. In this First/Third world country … I’d be certified insane if I asked the nursery, but is it from Porterville, adapted to the Swartland summer?

Mid-month I will round up the exotics, especially the roses, which are beginning to sprout for their autumn flush. What is most visible in the garden now is blue. Blue sage and Plumbago in drifts.

Blue sage
Plumbago

February walking in our garden

Macros enchant me, because the camera and I agree on what we are looking at.  This year I will do the indigenous=native with Gail at clayandlimestone for her Wildflower Wednesday. Remember the 23rd February if you follow this meme.   And the commonorgarden=exotic=alien will be in these mid-month walks. Roses, kitchen herbs, fruit trees, inherited plants, zone denial, and I just couldn't resist that!

From the outside, looking in

Wildflower Wednesday, South Africa in January

I started last Christmas, to record what is blooming in my garden each month. Not an exhaustive record. More a strolling around the garden, what catches my eye. As a garden resolution for this year, I’ll join Gail at Clay and Limestone for her Wildflower Wednesday, and this year I will only record indigenous/South African flowers. (Leaving the roses and other exotics to shine on my mid-month garden walk).   

This January has been perhaps not as hot as usual, but it is as dry as usual. The level in the town dam is sinking to muddy summer water.  The garden shows itself in summer’s drab greens and browns. I need to take Town Mouse’s advice and cut back perennials and shrubs hard this autumn, so we will get fresh green.

Cyperus and bulrush

Fruit of the Mediterranean

Checking where, which site, my blog visitors came from, I fell over gimcw??? Gardening in mediterranean climates worldwide. They have added me to the gimcw list of blogs. One of my earliest comments was from a Spaniard – ho ho ho a Mediterranean garden way down South at the bottom of Africa! So yes, thank you, for a lower-case-mediterranean!

For years, ever since it was just an idea, I have wanted to visit the Eden Project in Cornwall. Was fascinating to see mediterranean plants from around the world gathered together, where I could see the actual growing plants. Not just a dry list of names, nor even frozen pictures. There I learnt that my lemon verbena comes from South America. Mexican born Fer in Japan (currently hosting a blog carnival) has promised to find us some good South and Central American garden blogs. Company for our lemon verbena, granadilla (South American, that's why I can't spell it) and guava.

A sparrow and weaver sharing our figs

Sunbirds, malachite and collared

We have planted Melianthus in our new False Bay garden. Waiting for the sunbirds to find it.

Return to October November last year. There were young sunbirds. We have two obvious sorts. The large green ones are the malachite sunbirds. Striking for two reasons. First they are twice as big, 24 cm, as their smaller 12-14 cm cousins. Then they go for the shimmering malachite green all over.

Malachite sunbird