Mmmmm!

The home grown tomatoes are in the oven.  Considering that the plants (there is a variety of them, from tiny grape-sized ones to fat romas) have NEVER been sprayed or dusted or even, for that matter, tied up to stakes, I was amazed that not one fruit had anything suspect in it - no livestock inside at all!

Hooray for organic gardening!

Some of them were just so perfect, I had to take their photo before I sliced them in half.

Here they all are before they went into an oven set at 115 degrees Celsius.

They've only been there for about twenty minutes and already I am drooling from the smell.  Even my brand new herb plants got into the act - there were enough sprigs on the thyme to snip a few, together with pieces of the rosemary.  Yum, can't wait till they're done!

What the ......!

Perhaps cooking isn't one of my great virtues, but I can honestly say I'm not aware of having starved anyone to death, nor made anyone too sick to go on. However, one thing I can say is that I cannot 'cook' compost! Consequently, anything that goes into my compost heap lives to grow another day.

So it doesn't surprise me anymore when I go to water the roses in the western bed to first have to pick the fruits of the compost added some time ago. Here's today's offering -

I might add, there's probably just as many getting ready to be picked.

So here's what I'm doing this afternoon - Slow Roasted Tomatoes. Yum! Thanks Deb!

When . . . .

did 'r' for noses become 'h' for serbs?

I guess it makes sense, it's right there outside the door to the kitchen, it's right by the garden tap for ease of watering. There's a tomato and some basil, a couple of parsleys, a rhubarb and two different thymes. And room at the back for a passionfruit vine to grow on the fence. My only concern is that it's on the outside (streetside) of the fence and that the pesky 'wabbits' will come in the night for a feed. We'll have to wait and see what they like and what they leave, if anything.

The tiger lilies are flowering - what odd looking things. I can remember them having only one row of petals - not multiple rows.

Funny things!

Some New Year's Gardening Resolutions!

I so want my lengthy hiatus from working in the garden to be at an end! I need cool weather, a little rain on a regular basis, a back that doesn't ache and huge doses of inspiration and motivation.

I guess I can blame a little of my recent silence on the battle I've been having to get my 'new' secondhand computer running. Now, three zero and re-installs later, not to mention two hour phone consultations with the friendly man from Apple, we seem to be cruising. Touch wood!

There's a new house being built across the street from us, such a pity but we need to remember that we don't own the view of the entire mountain range. I figure if you want to control the view to the horizon, you need to own to the horizon! Anyway, the bricklayers have been working across the street and when I looked out first thing this morning, the cement mixer was going round and round, accompanied by the drone of the generator driving it - and the bricklayers were asleep in the truck! They were still there an hour later! Being a fairminded person, I came to the conclusion that I could not really be critical if I was being just as lazy inside my house on the other side of the street. So out I went into the garden.

My first job was to trim back the plumbago which, with the weight of flowers, has drooped across the front path and rewards your efforts of going by with a liberal dose of sticky things stuck to your clothes. As I stood beside the shrub snipping away, the Google Maps car went down the street! Now I know I've said previously that my aim was to be standing, waving, by the letterbox in my pyjamas when they eventually 'did' our street but once they'd gone by, my thought was that they could have let me know, I'd have at least brushed my hair! When they came back up the street, I was standing by the rose arch - is there going to be two of me in the garden I wonder? I guess I'd best be thankful that I wasn't weeding, back to the street, butt in the air complete with plumber's crack!

My haphazard approach to gardening has to stop. I need to go out the front door each gardening day with a clear purpose in mind and I must get into the habit of resolutely sticking to the job deigned to be that day's endeavour. And when I look back through my album of garden photos, I'm always disappointed at the lack of 'before' shots. Why am I never organised enough to take a photo of the way things were? And why do I always think that the lady who lived here before knew everything possible about gardening, much more than I do, and therefore that everything she planted is in absolutely the most premium spot for that particular plant. Truth is, she didn't and it's probably not. Let's turn over a new leaf and start really working on this garden to make it ours.

And we will start with some 'before' photos - or 'nearly before' photos. I've already removed a bucket full of weeds from around the rosemary.

Speaking of the rosemary, how huge and lanky is it! How much can I trim it back before it dies on me? It is growing in a sea of oxalis. I wonder if I would be better off pulling the whole thing out, poisoning the oxalis and planting a new rosemary or two. The trunk at ground level is as thick as my arm.

And those purple pea shrubs next to the fence - they've gotta go! Then I could sort out that corner and grow something there that I actually like!

And while I was taking the 'before' photos, I couldn't resist this of DA Troilus, complete with rain drops. Lovely!

Later -

I have worked all day in the same area and on the same job - it IS a better way to go. I dug out the purple pea things which turned out to be Polygala somethings. I located an old label underneath them, well, part of a label, enough to read the first part of the name and that they cost $14. When I dragged the polygalas to the winter burning pile, I discovered that everything already on the winter burning pile had previously been polygalas as well! A mental sweep of the garden reveals that the last polygala has been removed.

So now I have an 'after' photo!

Gee, I hope that looks better than this morning! Sometimes I feel that my effort makes such a minute bit of difference to the look of the garden. Oh well, I'm quite satisfied. I even got out the Mars Bar mower and tidied up the grass.

The Mars Bar mower - so called because when you've finished mowing, you're perfectly entitled to go inside and eat a Mars Bar! Well, that's my theory anyway.

So now that the polygala peas are no more, I have a spot for planting something lovely - hmm, wonder what I'll plant - maybe something that starts with 'r' and rhymes with 'noses'!

I got my first plant catalogue for the year today - from Tesselaars and all full of tulips and daffodils and other spring flowering bulbs. The seasons roll on!

A lazy Sunday afternoon

Here it is, the last weekend before Christmas. Where did the year go? I should be finishing off my Christmas shopping, but I severely lack the motivation to even get into the car. Mike has bought me a new computer for Christmas, well almost new and we are going to pick it up this evening at 5.00pm. How exciting!

We've actually had some rain in the last few days, and the forecast is for more this coming week including Christmas Day on Friday. That should make the binge eating that gets done on that day a little easier, nothing like hot roast turkey on a 40 degree day!

Some of the days last week reached up to the 40's and I have lost most of the murrayas that I bought online. They are quite pot bound and water I have put on them has mostly just run right through. Or around. I should have been much more diligent.

I am proving to myself the benefit of deadheading roses. Here is Lucetta's next flush of flowers, having been deadheaded after the first flush.

I do so love this rose! It was on my 'maybe' list when I was putting in my bareroot rose order with Mistydowns and only made the actual order when something else wasn't available.

Echinacea in the front garden. How brilliantly architectural are these flowers! I grew some more from seed this spring which are now planted in the birdbath bed and they are tough plants, they wilt somewhat with the hot sun and recover quickly with a drink or some cooler weather.

I had a visit from this wasp the other day - here it is on the INSIDE of the family room window screen. It's not one of the aggressive paper wasps, I think this one builds a mud nest. It was almost 3cm long and I didn't much appreciate it coming inside which it did again and again. I don't know if it was looking for somewhere to build a nest or if it was spider hunting. In the end, I got out the surface spray and it decided to go somewhere else!

It's a Bad Hair Day

Yesterday afternoon, being somewhat cooler than of late, I was able to be out on the back verandah and I gave the doggies a lovely summer hair cut!

Here's dear old Daisy a couple of weeks ago, looking all hairy like any good Westie should.

Here she is last night, looking like she's been caught under the lawn mower! She looks a little traumatised, doesn't she! But, as I have told her many times since the clippers came out, she will be much, much cooler.

Poor old thing, her thirteen and a quarter years seems to have caught up on her just recently. She is making no effort to come back up the back stairs, she can go down okay, but then barks and wails for me to come and carry her up. Hopefully it is just a temporary thing but I do have thoughts running through my head about how I can construct some sort of ramp for her.

I feel quite bad about being disrespectful yesterday to the Iceberg roses in the garden. They truly do flower forever and that should be enough, shouldn't it? Then I try to justify my apathy by saying 'but they've got NO perfume!' which really isn't entirely true. There's just something about their 'legs' I don't like. The lady who owned the house before us and who started the garden, had planted six standard white Icebergs along the front of the house.

She had also planted this rose, which I think is Angel Face, but I may very well be wrong. It has had a huge flush of flowers and now just has a few, and this is one of them. I love the wavy edge on the petals.

I wish there were more roses like this one and perhaps a few less white Icebergs.

Enough blogging - get working!

(ps - wasps are gone to God!)

So this is summer . . .

And my gardening mojo (if I ever pretended to have one!) has completely disappeared! We have had days in a row of 30+ degrees celsius and it absolutely, resolutely refuses to rain. I have been confined to the air conditioning and have gone ever so slightly deranged! :-<

So I gave myself a small slap and picked up the camera for a quick tour of the garden. Now, let's find some positive things to cheer ourselves up with!

Ambridge Rose at the front corner is being cheery with some nice blooms and the Christmas lily behind has put on quite a show. Sorry, lily, you're two weeks early! Will you still be blooming on Christmas Day - I would suspect not. So much for a vase of lilies on the Christmas table, but this is an expedition of positives so we won't go there!

Here is Crepuscule soldiering on bravely on the archway at the side gate. Some nights, when I'm sleeping fitfully, I hear in my head a voice from some other realm commanding "Deadhead! You must deadhead!" So I have tried with Crepuscule and maybe that explains why it is flowering on and others in the garden have very much gone on vacation!

Please note that whiz-bang new water feature! What a pity it isn't sitting level! Look, you can't have everything you want and this is a trip of positives.

Also note the brown-ness of the grass through the gate and on the far hill. The front lawn is completely brown and crisp, except of course for the weeds - why is that, that the grass dies but the weeds live on . . . and on . . . and on!

This is another lily I planted last year, called Triumphator. So pretty.

I must make a note to buy more of these. And maybe next year, I could get them flowering at the same time as the roses around them, Brother Cadfael, St Cecilia and Mme Isaac Periere, who have all had a flush of flowers and are now having a bit of a sleep.

Here is a flower on the Alliums I bought online this year. Look at that funny little flower bit on the top that grew longer than all the others - no glass ceiling for that girl, she was going to stand out if it was the last thing she did!

Okay, I know I've been derogatory to Iceberg roses in the past, especially white ones and even more especially standardised white ones - but this is a day of positives and I can truthfully say that neither hell nor high water (ooo, wouldn't that be nice!) nor hot, dry weather seems to halt the floriferousness of these roses. I've so wanted to use that word!

So, hooray for the positive attitude to floriferousness of the Iceberg! (That'll do now, you can't use 'floriferousness' in every sentence.)

Another shot of Ambridge Rose. At least, I think it's Ambridge - I'm just having a little moment of self doubt. I will have to check that out and make myself a label with the correct name.

In the meantime, whatever it is is looking very fler . . . . . . - it's got quite a lot of flowers on it, hasn't it?!

And lastly, Jean Galbraith. Just lovely flowers. It's growing right next to whatever that last one was which we will call Ambridge until such time as we find out differently, and between the two of them, there are flowers which range in colour from soft pink through all shades of apricot to almost clear yellow. What a clever gardener I am to think of that!

I'm so not - absolutely all of my gardening skills (??) were learned at the School of Plonk! And not the sort you drink either! It's where you buy a plant and you plonk it in the garden and hope for the best!

So I have somewhat cheered myself up with my little trip of positives. Now I am steeling myself for this evening when I must take a new can of Wasp Killer spray down to the swimming pool and use it on a wasps' nest which I discovered yesterday hanging on the underside of the pool edge. I discovered it when I found myself surrounded by a swarm of wasps all determined to give me a piece of their minds - or their tails! I had on a very bright pink dress and lucky for me, they seemed to be more attracted to the dress than to the end of my nose and I escaped without injury! So I have purchased the toxic spray which has a range of four metres - so I will have a four metre start when I spray and run like the clappers with the wasps in hot pursuit. Wish me luck!