Colourful Monday

Blue is the sky on Monday morning 7.50 am, not a cloud in sight.

The autumn sky is a clear blue, the air is already a bit crisp....beautiful!

Coleus, self sown....


Spring green fern emerging...

Easy to grow Bromeliads, Neoregelia shows her deep pink colour now....

Night blooming Succulent, flowers on and off through summer and autumn. The photos must be taken early in the morning.

Yesterday I saw a myriad of these little yellow dancers. I could only catch one...

Bromeliad, this Billbergia flowers now. The flowers are short lived but very showy.

Bromeliad, this one I use to plant borders.

Neoregelia has settled in the root fork of a Paperbark.

This Bromeliad is called Orchid, probably for the colour.

Native Cassia is a bit of a weed, a beautiful weed! Even the leaves have subtle surroundings of gold.

Green Thoughts!

I garden in a warm climate. Before I gardened in Switzerland with long winters and short summers. Now with the help of blotanical I can follow many cold climate gardeners. I feel with them, their anticipation to see the first signs of life in their gardens emerging from the earth . Small pointy, green tips looking forward to embrace sun, wind and soft rain. Quickly they develop into amazing plants in shapes and colours, the best nature can produce. What a feast for the eyes. Everything goes well, spring is emerging in all corners, the birds are back from warmer regions where they have spend the winter. Suddenly a cold spell, it snows and everything is cold and white again. One would think, the laments are beginning. Wrong. Photos are posted from all over the world with amazing, beautiful scenes. Golden Daffodils wearing little white, knitted hats of snow. Crocus sitting in the snow proudly displaying their stripes and grandly dismissing their cold feet. Shrubs, trees and fields once more covered in a snowy blanket.That's what gardening is all about always making the best of any situation. Because every gardener knows setbacks happen but are quickly overcome by progress which the garden shows on its best days.
I remember two disasters in my warm climate gardens. I think it was in 1983. In spring I had planted many Hawaiian Hibiscus with their amazing range of colours and size of flowers. they were then my main theme in the garden. The following winter was extraordinarily cold. They all succumbed to the frost. I had to cut them down to the roots. A few recovered, but most of them died.
The most I fear in my warm climate garden is hail storms. I was lucky, I didn't have to many disasters. One I remember vividly. My vegetable garden was looking great, beans were nearly ready to harvest, melons grew fat and round. Everything looked healthy and growing well. One afternoon a storm was brewing. The sky took on that particular colour, a greenish-grey which I feared. The rain started and then I heard a few bumps on our tin roof . Suddenly like an explosion, hail, not small pellets, Golf balls or bigger pelted onto the roof. The noise was ear-splitting. It went on only for about 5 minutes. When I emerged from the house I saw a disaster zone. Trees were stripped of their leaves and my vegetable garden was flattened, nothing survived. Trees and shrubs recover in a short time, they grow new leaves and flowers. Where I garden now, since 20 years, I saw a few bad hailstorms brewing, but my garden was so far never touched.

Believe it or not:

Sweet flowers are slow and weeds make haste.

William Shakespeare