The backlog shuffle

 

Blooming now

You know the proverbial saying, of getting it done before Christmas comes? Well this Christmas cactus tells me, I'm knocking on the door now. These beautiful blooms emerge around the festive season. So I'm coming good with a promise I made, at the beginning of the year. Something about an update on life. 

Spring back

 

Early September, 2022

In Australia, it's early Spring. If you live near the Toowoomba region, you know it's Carnival of Flowers time. The annual celebration for the Garden City. This year though, Spring represents a whole new way of life for me. It's the place of regrowth, from a rather harsh prune in my personal life, last year. Come have a wander around my garden, and catch up for a spell.

Blooming hardy

Roughly nine months ago, I wrote a post about Carbon Pathways. It's where we cut down a Casurina tree, to rejurvenate an orange, in need of some light and free mulch.

August 2016 - Casurina tree, left

In that post, I explained how we used all of the tree, to mulch various fruit trees, and some roses. I didn't take any photos of the roses at the time, because they looked really pitiful.

We cut the roses right back, as instructed by the nursery we purchased them from. It's meant to stimulate branching and new growth, which we wanted. It's actually meant to be a rose hedge. Maybe one day, it will be?

September 2016

This photo was taken a month after mulching, with the leaves of the Casurina tree. We also used the trunk as a border. This position in the garden, is incredibly harsh. It cops the hot western sun, is on clay and really doesn't receive a lot of attention from us. Certainly not with additional nutrients.

The keys factors to success has been, purchasing the hardiest rose our local nursery could recommend. It's a rose resistant to blackspot, and a lot of the diseases which infect roses, grown in a hot and humid climate. But the second key to success, has been the kind of mulching material we selected.

Aged wood, and woody mulching material, provides the perfect environment for mycelium to grow. Mycelium helps plants take up water and nutrients better, and for longer. Without that structure in the topsoil, everything would be lost via gravity, to the subsoil. So the kind of mulch you choose for your environment, is important too.

September 2017

Still a month after mulching, and the new shoots are really taking off. The front rose is a rugosa rose - closest relative to the wild rose. The original hardy variety. The others in the rear, are a Tiger Rose. Back when we purchased them, they were just known as a Tiger Rose, but now they breed different varieties, with variations on the "Tiger" name.

I'm sure all the Tiger roses, must posses the same tough, disease resistant qualities though. I have not been disappointed with buying these roses. Not one bit. If you have a harsh environment, most traditional roses wouldn't like - look for the wild roses, or any new varieties, sharing the same genes.

April 2017

Four months, after the initial mulching now, and the roses are filing out more. It's autumn, and our roses survived the intense heatwave, we endured last summer. With no additional water or nutrients added by us - other than mulch.

The needle like leaves, of the decaying casurina foliage, was still present, but patches of soil, began to appear though it more. In the above photo, I merely weeded the grasses and weeds, which popped-up in the rose bed and around it, then laid them on the thinner spots of mulch.

I don't worry about unwanted seeds going into the bed. Anything which does pop up, just gets pulled for mulch on the garden bed again. The more I've been doing this, the fewer weeds there are. Plus they are really easy to pull. Although I have to avoid the thorns of the roses!

April 2017

Given this location is such an inhospitable environment, and we just experienced one of the hottest and prolonged summers I've been here (max 45C or 113F), it's remarkable to see how strong and healthy the new growth was, as we entered autumn. It's like we all breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Which highlights, the correct plant choices and mulches, makes it's possible to keep plants alive through extremes. We have that Casurina tree to thank, and why I'm an advocate for growing companion plants in your garden. The kind which can be used as a windbreak, shade enhancer (but not too much shade) and can afford to be sacrificed at the right time, so others, can continue living.

April 2017

That incredible gift to the landscape, hasn't finished giving either. Just as I'd hoped it would, the Casurina tree started re-shooting, from the stump which remained. Being hardy, is an excellent feature to have at our place. I'm looking to get more of these beneficial trees, as a form of long term mulching supply, and even hedging.

We let this Casurina get to a tree size, requiring a chainsaw to cut down. However, a regular pruning should keep it's growth in-check. So you'll still get woody material for mulching, you'll just use a set of pruners more regularly, instead of a chainsaw, several years in.

A word of caution though, if left to grow to it's full potential, it can get to be a big tree. So unless you plan to keep it's growth in-check manually, I would avoid introducing it into a small garden.

May 2017

This is what the rose bed looked like, earlier this month. Healthy, bushy roses, smothered in blooms. This arrangement, is actually positioned on our property boundary. We wanted it to be a living fence, however, I'm not quite sure if we got our spacing right.

Maybe it just needs to fill out some more?

In the distance

I was really chuffed to see our neighbours planted a pair of Jacaranda trees, near our rose boundary. I was a little concerned at first, they might shade out the roses - but really, they'll be benefiting them. They will help shade the hot afternoon sun, while still getting access to sunlight, for the rest of the day.

And Jacaranda trees, don't tend to have thick foliage either. So a nice, dappled shade. I'm imagining the bright purple flowers of the Jacaranda trees, contrasting against the hot pink, and white - later turning yellow, of the roses. I'm so glad our neighbours put these trees in.

Blooming hardy

I don't believe you should have to go without roses, in a challenging environment. These magnificent blooms, subsist on natural rainfall alone. And it can be such a long time between drinks, too. Just select a hardy cultivar, and the kind of mulching material that will attract mycelium to the soil. Also, don't forget a companion plant of some variety.

You might not always want to go out and buy mulch for your roses. I find straw breaks down too quickly in our climate. So a companion plant with some woody material, that takes longer to break down is beneficial. I can recommend the Casurina tree, but for smaller places, the humble wormwood too.

The benefit of having roses, are beauty, delicious fragrance, bee food, habitat for predatory insects near our vegetable garden, a living fence, but also connection with our neighbours. Whenever they pull into their long driveway, and check the mail, they get to see roses. That connection, possibly encouraged them to see what was possible, so planted their own trees with attractive blooms.

 White turns yellow, as the blooms mature

So now we've created a community of biological lifeforms, for a more alluring  outlook, than just brown grass. I'm sure this area will only get more beautiful, as long as we continue to apply the right mulch.

If you want to get this rose, I can highly recommend the Brindabella Nursery in Highfields, if you're a local. They have really healthy stock, and know how to select the right rose, for your environment. But I also think they can be mail ordered to other States. Wild roses, like the rugosa rose, tend to be available, in most locations (here and abroad) too.

I'm looking forward to the rose hips, that will develop into winter. They are full of vitamin C. But that's only if the kangaroos don't eat them all, first!

A cut of beauty

I was doing some pruning in the yard yesterday. I love to prune, because it means I get free mulch to lay on top of the soil. There was one particular plant I pruned yesterday, before realising, I didn't want to use the foliage as mulch.

It was way too pretty for that...

My white rice flowers, aren't exactly spectacular as a bloom, but en mass, they look quite beautiful. And they don't require much moisture to grow or flower. So my kind of plant!

I couldn't have them all on their own, in the vase however, so added some African daisies, a few sprigs of rosemary (with blue flowers) and a few grevillea flowers. Their spiral shaped pattern, is particularly beautiful to me, and a perfect offset against the delicate rice flower blooms.

I reckon I scored a beaut bouquet, for inside the house, just taking the time to plant, prune and mulch. A renewable source of beauty. Plus, these particular plants have the reputation for longevity, once cut too. So it should be around for at least a week or more.

I'm pretty happy with that. Finding the right plants to grow in our conditions, mean we can finally have cut flowers inside the house.

Random happenings

I've been doing so many random things lately, its difficult to write separate posts about them all. I've been lucky to snap a few pictures here and there, but nothing to really demonstrate the full story of each activity.

So this is my post about random happenings. I'll start in the kitchen, where I've been spending a lot of time lately.

Recycled jars

I've been making some apple cider vinegar. Which is just taking your apple peels and cores, putting them in a jar with water, and a couple of dessert spoons of sugar. After placing a breathable cover over the top, I let them sit for a few weeks. What's left afterwards, gets strained and decanted.

You can see the progressive steps in the above photo. We ate a couple of apples which I put in a smaller jar (most recent). I also made apple and rubarb (a week earlier) which used more apples, so a larger jar was required. Then the largest jar of all, is where I add all the strained liquid together (when ready) to age, at the bottom of my pantry.

Beetroot pulp

I had fun making a beetroot cake recently too. It was so rich and delicious, I got a migraine headache after eating it. I'm tweaking the recipe to use less sugar. This had melted chocolate in the cake, enough brown sugar to match the weight of the beetroot, and then it had a chocolate gnash icing.

Everyone loved it, but waaaay too sweet for my kanoodle to handle. So its back to the drawing board to experiment. My eager taste testers, await round two!

Dishwasher

This would have to be my most memorable part of the kitchen adventures. It's when my toddler attempted to stack the dishwasher, after licking the cake beaters. All on his own initiative too, with absolutely no prompting from us. It simply had to be photographed. He completely missed the utensils holder, but got the gist of where dirty dishes go, when you're finished with them. He's such a little helper.

He even helps carry the groceries inside, and will cry if you unpack them, without being able to hand you every single item from the bags himself.

Hidden

To the garden now, and when I was watering my container plants the other morning, I found a camouflaged visitor. The little green tree frog, stayed for several days and enjoyed it when I sprayed the plant with a fine mist of water.

I was a little disappointed when he left his usual post, but he probably had other froggy stuff to do in the garden. Like avoid being eaten by the predators. It's spring and everyone's being eaten for the next generation to flourish!

In flower

I was also very surprised to find my Flanders Poppies in flower recently too. The kangaroos (or hares) had munched them down, again and again. When the spring rains made the grass grow again, I guess they left the poppies alone. To see them flower was thrilling, and I plan to save the seed.

They generally self-seed themselves every year, without my help, but I've noticed only two poppy plants this year. So its time to intervene. I know there are all sorts of delightful poppies you can get nowadays, but I love the simplicity and sentimentality, of the traditional Flanders poppy.

Technical stuff

And I bet you're wondering what this is all about? Anyone who has found their DVD player's, door open, with a toddler standing nearby - knows this tale all too well. Every time I put a DVD in the player afterwards, the door would close, then open again, never registering the DVD at all. Open - close. Open - close.

Google is a wonderful thing. I did some research and pulled my player apart, looking for something (anything) that my toddler could have stuck inside.

Top cover of DVD player

Does this look like a foreign object to you? At first I thought the round metal piece, was part of the normal assembly - probably knocked out of place when my toddler opened the door, as the DVD was playing. It looked like it fitted perfectly! Why else would they place a huge magnet there, if not to hold this metal piece in place?

After realsing it still didn't work, when repositioning the metal disk - I asked myself, perhaps it didn't belong? Sure enough, once I removed it, the DVD played perfectly again! I suddenly remembered, my son had removed the bolt and washer from the safety gate earlier, which we place in front of the gadgets, under the TV.

Great how that gate has worked out, isn't it? Really keeps the toddler at bay.

So it was a WASHER from the safety gate, not meant to be in the DVD player at all. Once I got over the frustration of having to pull the thing apart, I thought how cute, he tried to put a round thing in the DVD player, just like we do.

Image source

Green card is motherboard 

In other news, my daughter broke her reconditioned laptop we bought last year. Thanks to google I managed to pull it apart too, and conclude it wasn't anything I could fix. It turned out to be the memory, which can normally be changed. Our friendly tech guy informed us, however, our model must be the only one ASUS made, with fused-in memory to the motherboard.

Model Asus X551CA-SX029H, for those who want to know, what to avoid. Because a google search showed nothing of the issue, and our tech guy had never seen it before either.

At $400 to replace the entire motherboard, however, its bye-bye laptop.

 Toshiba with Windows

I was able to save my mum's old laptop however, from a Windows meltdown. Or corrupt files, in other words. This is why I prefer to use Linux free software, as an operating system. Which happens to be related to something we learned from our tech guy recently too. There's a new (to us) Linux based operating system, called ArtistX.

It's designed for all those budding artists who manipulate images (including CAD) and video for a living - but using completely free software. I'll have to check it out.

So in my random happenings lately, I cooked and preserved some stuff, pulled apart and fixed other things, spent money finding out something else was cooked, and found some surprises in my garden and free online resources.

Makes for a rather full month! Bye-bye September, and the first month of spring.

The happy accident

I struggle with growing flowers. I don't  know why. Perhaps lack of experience? Or perhaps because they're too fussy? Either way, I don't really strive to incorporate flowers in my garden as anything more than the side-effect of plants I can manage to get to survive in our conditions.

So I was pleasantly surprised when Chrysanthemums found their way into my garden. And quite by accident too! I couldn't have planned it better if I tried. In fact, I did try! My husband bought me a bouquet of flowers, and when I initially trimmed them to put in the vase, I tried to strike the prunings. Unfortunately, they proceeded to rot in the medium I planted them in. The rest of the flowers sat for weeks in the vase, with just the perfect amount of water underneath a tiny bud. When I went to toss the spent bouquet in the compost, I saw these tiny little roots begging for me to plant them.

So I did, and it grew!

Not only did it grow, but it thrived! They received insufficient water, and had to compete with weeds in poor soil too. These propagated Chrysanthemums played the underdog for quite a while. The tall stems, fell over and sprawled across the ground, but the buds still turned their heads to the sunlight. And when they bloomed, they did it en mass.

I know why people try to plant flowers now. They seem to smile at you, when you walk into the garden. They call you over to have a natter, all the time shinning a neon sign that says - haven't I just made your day, and don't you want to plant more of me?

Flowers may not speak English, by they certainly have the visual display and aromas, down pat. They know how to attract attention, and get emotional creatures such as us, to spread them around the place. Not to mention the bees which go crazy over their blooms. I had both native bees and European varieties, taking a keen interest.

If  you want a bloomer that can handle some neglect, consider the Chrysanthemum. I don't have any experience with the double blooms in ground, but the single blooms have proven they're hardy enough to stay. You will find they grow tall and lanky, and they may require some support. I just let mine flop over, and when all the buds flowered, it looked like a carpet of pink.

Do you have a favourite, no fuss flower, that will grow in your conditions?