Julie's Garden Grapevine

Ready for autumn inspection

My sister called last week to ask if she could bring her  friend Joyce up to look at my plot. Joyce is a keen and active gardener and reads  the Grapevine and would love a butcher’s hook.

I was both excited about having a new “green” visitor, then nervous about how the place would pass muster. Ok, this was a curious and trusted friend and she was sincerely interested in how my garden grew.  But on another level, I felt insecure about my gardening credentials. I operate on a gut instinct and so much of my work outside is a hit and miss approach, I get a rush of blood to the head and poke things in, often without doing the regulation prep, ph soil testing,  planning height and texture, sun position, colour, spacing etc.

I sort of sense a corner or a patch needs some bushiness, or stringiness, or white or bright dazzle and dredge up a memory of seeing something at someone else’s place or in a book or a glance from my car window and apply it to the contours of my place. Mostly it just works as I push and pull it into shape, but the why and wherefore  is hard to articulate with any sensible botanical vocabulary. So I hoped Joyce wouldn’t quiz me too much.

I also don’t imagine my garden is one to die for or  is heart-stoppingly gorgeous,  or even unusual. I hoped my sister hadn’t over-egged the pudding.

So I did a lot of last-minute metaphorical  ” sweeping under the rug”, stuff, just the same, cos we all like to look our best for visitors, don’t we?

Needn’t have worried. After charming compliments during a thorough “old lady” walk, touch, feel and smell around, the lovely Joyce helped me to see my plot with fresh eyes.  When you move among the familiar surrounds of your garden every day, it takes an outsider to observe it differently and define the effect it has.

For gardeners less botanically inclined, it actually isn’t about how horticulturally correct or how good the ratios and  balances in a garden are. It is about how it makes you feel as you walk around it.

Joyce said it felt warm and inviting and busy. Can’t ask for much more than that.

We traversed the paddocks,  solved some identification and pest issues along the way and enjoyed coffee at the front yard table under the poinciana.  Joyce even found what she called  wild greens, collards, growing  near the creek bank.

She gracefully said she picked up some great ideas about pot planting after seeing how many and varied I have,  and collected a heap of cordyline, iris and chrysanthemum cuttings to transplant at her place.

Importantly, she instructed me about helping do the the bees’ reproductive work in the garden, transferring the pollen on the passionfruit and pumpkin flowers by hand.

“See,” she said, holding one on top of the other.  Apparently , there aren’t enough bees around at my place right now, so you have to lend a hand.

Sex education in the garden. It really is all about the birds and the bees.

A CONFESSION

Some weeks back, I took some cuttings of Carphalea from my new neighbourhood bestie, Jeannie,  hoping to strike some new specimens for spring planting.

Success rate zero.  Happily, almost the same day I chucked the sad, dead twigs the cuttings had become, I discovered potted Carphaleas at the local Bunnings. So in I swooped and one is now planted at the back of the pool enclosure, right where I can see it from my kitchen sink window. I can already imagine the thrill of seeing its glorious crimson flowers as I look out in spring.  A flaming beauty by name, the carphalea is flaming hard to strike. You win some , you lose some.

A TIP

Watching Jane Edmanson talking to a gerbera grower on Gardening Australia programme this week enlightened me about extending the life of cut flowers. Put bleach in the vase water. It kills bacteria which affects the blooms.

I had heard of putting sugar in rose vases. But the bleach tip was a newie to me.

Any other ideas?

PICKINGS

Also recently harvested the first two ruby grapefruit from a tree I planted  four years ago. They tasted great. Won’t win any yield awards, though.

And one plump offering from the uninvited, but very determined guava tree. A bird dropping started this tree about 10 years ago. Hearing it was a drawcard for fruit flies, I have cut it back brutally and tried to kill it several times, but it returns Lazarus-like every year. Gotta give it 10 points for effort.

Enjoy the autumn in your garden

Several years ago, someone ( I forget who) started a conversation about our third place.

The “third place,”is the spot where we go that isn’t home or work when we want to hang out and feel connected with other people.

People nominated places like bookshops, art galleries, libraries and theatre spaces, churches, neighbourhood bars, places that nurtured their spirit, satisfied their desire to learn about things, engage, belong, to feel welcome and valued.

As publicist for ABC Gardening Australia, I am lucky enough to blend my work with one of my favourite pastimes and have the flexibility to sometimes work from home. So calculating my third place was a bit  tricky.

I do feel connected to my workplace because it’s where I engage with people with creativity, stimulating ideas and curiosity, so what was a third place going to be for me?

The rooftop terrace at ABC where there’s a newly planted herb and veg garden with the best views in town, that’s where.

The 10m x 1.5m garden, three levels up, looking over the city from South Bank, went in just a week or so ago and is thriving with herbs like basil, coriander, rosemary, several varieties of mint, chillies, lettuces, mizuma, and a stack of other edible munchies that the staff can pick and eat or take home.

Its installation was a wonder to behold. Jerry Coleby-Williams from Gardening Australia had earlier advised what varieties to go for and he came along on installation day to oversee. He  and I watched with envy while the land

scapers under supervisor Sebastian’s eagle eye, vacuumed up the soil and compost materials through a giant hose, and laid it out over and around water-retaining materials, ( a bit like florists sponge)  and  irrigation pipes. What we wouldn’t give for an efficient suctioning scooper like that when shifting heavy loads around our places!  And watching big beefy landscape labourers’ hands, usually dealing with bulky concreting projects,  tenderly handling,  planting and tucking in the delicate feathery seedlings, was kind of sweet.

Been a little quiet on the grapevine lately, which is not me at all, but doing gardening sometimes takes priority over talking gardening, right?

Having to bury our recently departed and dearly loved  puss took me into a corner of our large front yard I had not been for some weeks and I was puzzled to see a large tree in what appeared to be full pink bloom.

But this was my old and dignified parrot tree and its flowers were a vibrant red?.

Myopia is a particular curse outdoors, so on went my specs and a closer inspection revealed it had been overrun by a rampant antignon  - or coral vine, as it is more commonly known. This vine has very pretty, dainty hot pink flowers springing from a mass of interesting heart-shaped, veiny leaves and curly tendrils, but a determined and difficult little mother to keep in its place. It is a native of Mexico and a true Speedy Gonzales, it’s fast-growing and will reach 15m up a host tree or support  in a matter of weeks.

My garden specimen must have come from a bird dropping. Recent wet weather and my inattention to that corner allowed it to thrive and climb unhindered for about six metres and spread likewise.

The antignon is ideal if you have a fence you want covered and it can also be grown over an archway or a tree for something different. .

Mine formed a dazzling vista but left unchecked it would have strangled the tree and surrounding vegetation, so a hacking operation went underway.

It is vine on a mission, indeed. I remember it growing wildly up the battens at the side of our childhood home and I swear if we dawdled or stopped on the path alongside, its tendrils stretching out like triffid arms, would wrap around us almost as we stood there. It also used to house large and scary brown grasshoppers that seemed to make no dent on its foliage, but would jump out and frighten the bejesus out of  anyone brushing past. I learnt to take that path in about three bounds. My best training of all for the school sprint team.

The upside of the discovery was pretty cut flowers for all the vases I could find. As Aristotle said: ” In all things of nature, there is something of the marvellous”.

CRYSTAL GAZING

There’s hardly any gardening possible these days, with rain, showers, downpours being the order of  things for weeks now. When there is a break in the weather, the ground is so soggy and slippery and the mossies swarm, it’s not really a fun place to be. The one pleasure is watching everything grow almost before your eyes and being thankful for the planting that went in before this monsoonal patch started. So it’s an interior life I live more these days, back to books and planning and dreaming for the drier season.

And speaking of indoors, friend Liz wondered here last week if some messy evidence around the fruit bowl meant there could be rats visiting her kitchen bench at night. She feared a pile of garden rubbish might be their breeding ground.

I think I now know what’s to blame for your night time raid, Liz.

It’s a possum – or a few of them .

The penny dropped after one treated our fireplace as a drop-in centre this week, sliding down the chimney, rustling around the woodchips and nearly giving our cat heart failure. I hover between admiring its sweet cuteness and resenting its intrusive audacity.

Its the first such creature we have had here in the bush. Yes, truly.

Brisbane is awash with possums, dancing noisily across rooftops, sliding into crawl spaces in ceilings, clattering around the guttering, peeing on verandahs and chewing away at vegetables, herb gardens and pot plants. Life has been very merry in the city for this wildlife over the past few years, so their numbers increased due to a combination of more edible gardens, proliferation of greenery and  available food  - albeit some of it meant for domestic pets like cats and dogs.

But we here in the possum-free outer burbs have had no such problem. Our plants were left alone. We could grow as much in pots as we liked without losing them to these cute, but malicious marauders.

Now the first possum to breach the battlements at our house has arrived and I am nervous. Nervous because he ( and I am guessing the sex here) climbed successfully over the fire guard and danced his messy way around the lounge room, leaving ashy footprints all over the CDs,  lampshade and books, knocked over a stack of ornaments and tellingly, munched into two ripe bananas on the kitchen bench. And like Goldilocks, having sampled the food and the furniture, he seems to like it here and is reluctant to leave.

Will it be soon that he discovers the plants and pots on the decks are way easier to access for a feed without having to base jump into the fireplace.
Who are we gonna call? Possum busters???

CUTTING IT

I was born to snip. All my dolls got haircuts before they had a change of clothes and I took a pair of scissors to the head of any younger sibling who stood still long enough. Now my tool of choice is the secateurs and I am never happier than clipping and cutting around the plot. And these days, EVERYTHING needs a big trim. Branches, weighed down with rainwater, wild shoots, leggy annuals, unruly shrubs …. they’re all in my firing line.  But what I really need now is a mulcher to turn all this offcut into useful garden food.  Hmmmm, only 268 shopping days til Christmas.

LITTLE TREASURE 

 I wrote last week about the newly discovered carphalea shrub a dear lady from my neighbourhood, named Jeannie Little, told me about.  I took my trusty secateurs to Jeannie’s in the meanwhile and came home with several bunches of gorgeous carphalea blooms and a stack of  other cuttings of red, yellow and purple salvias and 

Coleus are always a startling contrast to garden greenery

pretty coleus she generously gave me. I have honeyedthe ends ( acts as a hormonal stumulant I have been told) of the carphalea cuttings and potted them. Carphaleas are not easy to strike, I have been warned, but I am hoping all this rain will fool them into thinking they are in the tropics where they thrive and that they will prosper and grow. ( Jeannie said she discovered them growing in the main street of Cairns, in the tropical north of Queensland )

I will keep you posted.

And lastly, I’d like to share this marvellous vision of a city greened over.

Dare we dream?

If you ever want for friendship, join a garden club. Go the website of The Garden Clubs of Australia, www.gardenclubs.org.au.,  an umbrella organisation of affiliated clubs, with kindred spirits for gardeners waiting to meet you and share their knowledge and fun.

Could this be the way of our cities' future?

What a pearler of a weekend;  crisp, clean sunshine, dazzling blue sky, breezes that carry the smell of murrayas and mint-scented geraniums, full moon rising at dusk and casting bright moonlight over all. It’s heaven pottering in the garden right now.  And I have learned two new things.

1. Making hay while the sun shines is the pits.After our paddocks were slashed, so much raking and gathering hay – and sneezing and scratching. But, discovered there is such a person as a baler, who will come and parcel up the grass and maybe even pay us by the bale? Yay.

Hay baler in action after the slash

2. The most interesting garden information comes from unlikely and unexpected sources.At a local art gallery exhibition I met a charming lady with the unlikely name of Jeannie Little ( a different but no less real “dahling”) . It turns out Jeannie and I are practically neighbours. She lives just a couple of kilometres from me, has been there 40 years, and is a passionate gardener. Her pride and joy are three stunning carphalea kirondron shrubs, presently in gorgeous flower. It’s known as the flaming beauty for its brilliant crimson bracts, within which is its small white flower – a bit like the way bougainvillea flower.

Carphalea flower close up

And, learning they are an evergreen and flower for months, from early summer to late winter, my interest peaked. Carphaleas are a native of Madagascar,

grow to a max of three metres, love the heat and humidity and respond well to a brisk haircut. Best of all, they are easy to propogate from cuttings.So I am off to Jeannie’s place pronto, with my secateurs.

.

SET UP FOR HERB HEARTACHE AGAIN

A trip to the market this morning and I fell again for the old ruse of buying coriander seedlings. I must have tried growing this herb a dozen times with no success over the years . But March madness and the assurance by the stallholder that’s it’s a good season to put it in, seduced me into buying more.  No big deal if they too fail. I am out of pocket 60c. Gotta love the market’s seed sellers. I’ll keep you posted about whether I am cutting this aromatic plant for salads and soups in a month or so – or if I’m back buying it off the fruiterer’s shelf.

I did resist however, buying any more vegetable seedlings. I have eggplants, heirloom tomatoes, mesclun, fancy lettuce, dill, bok choy and rocket under way in the patch right now. They were battered and flooded last weekend with a very heavy downfall, but seem to be none the worse for it.

And,  good news, the grasshoppers have finally left the sage and thyme alone and they are flourishing.

And to Liz, who is wondering if her garden rubbish pile could be breeding rats ( see comment) I suspect not if there are no food scraps therein. What say you?

I disagree with the claim that there is no detectable seasonal shift, ‘though. The minute March hits, I can sense an autumnal change in the air here and something about the cooler, gentler conditions changes me too. I get a surge of energy and start getting into all the heavy duty garden jobs that the heat of summer has me too lethargic for – the big slash and burn, the pullout and replant, the rock shifting, weed ripping,  mega-hour tasks that see me go a whole day without stopping to eat, drink, pee or look around.

At the finish, a delicious physical exhaustion sets in, but my mind has been revitalised with uninterrupted churning. Sometimes it’s on the job at hand. Other times, it’s from a mental freewheeling that the mundane, repetitive action of weeding and clearing allows.In my head I have written books, rehearsed conversations, redesigned my house, my wardrobe,my job,  planned holidays, meals and new careers while my hands have been shifting manure, mulching, weeding and edging. Sometimes the song ” Turn, Turn Turn” runs through my head …”to everything ….. there is a season … a time to build up, a time to break down ..”

Autumn has a different sound, too. In our neighbourhood, it’s the reverberation of chainsaws, whipper snippers, chop chop chopping of shears, clippers snipping, crunching and breaking. After the wet summer and the verdant – actually, rampant – growth, we are all out slashing and hacking at the overload. Don’t want to curse the rain, mindful of only a few years ago when we were catching drips in buckets in the shower, but feel for those poor residents down south forced to evacuate their flooded homes. Enough please.

When I look at how quickly and vigorously the vegetation bursts forth from the heat and damp, it reminds me how rapidly and surely the earth reclaims its own. We have only a perilous hold on our civilised patch of dirt. Turn our backs for

Jean's ginger surprise

a moment and nature marches indiscriminately over our rockeries, manicured gardens, lawns, shorn paddocks and sculptured landscaping.

But I love the surprises the soaking brings. Jean posts a comment about a burnt and apparently ruined ginger plant she had counted out for all money, and which sprang back to life in glorious flower, revived in the damp ground she transplanted it. It even multiplied! (That’s it pictured at right) Don’t say mother nature is not generous .

And I love the longer flowering the summer deluges have brought about. My tibouchina and plumbago are brighter and bluer than I can remember. The bromeliads are all out in splendour, poking their pretty red heads out from under the jacaranda, frangipani, around the pool and across the front fenceline.

Is it a tribute to our PM Julia?

Fantastic how synchronised they all are, regardless of where in the garden they’re planted! Their social networking doesn’t ever need updating.

IN THE PINK

It hasn’t been all removal this week. I did put in a couple of pink eremophilas in the front bed I look at first thing each day. Good hardy, sun loving, winter-flowering reliables and all the better for a brisk pruning each year, they tend to dislike humidity, but the couple of varieties I bought from my local market supplier ( Pink Passion and Magic Blush) are assuredly more tolerant of our conditions. Let’s see.

COLLEEN’S CLEVERNESS

And I could not resist sharing this lovely and different flower arrangement by my very artistic friend Colleen. She picked her pink oleanders and put them under the vase’s water.  How stunning is that!

Happy rearranging.

Nigel (no friends) the roo

I made a wrong call when I said this patch I play in was mine.  Certainly I pay the mortgage and the rates and mow, trim and tender it. But who really calls the tune in this garden is the wildlife. It is very obvious when I take my eye off things for even a short while, that it’s largely the grasshoppers that munch freely on anything they can land on. All the care and attention in the world on herbs and vegetables comes to nought when deluges of rain kept me  indoors for a few days. I ventured out on the first fine morning and discover what the little hoppers haven’t  eaten through, the continuing rain has waterlogged and rotted. Mother Nature is no polite visitor. She rarely makes appointments and often outstays her welcome.

This garden is also casa insecta for the aphids that swarm all over the roses without so much as a bye your leave, the toads that play and procreate freely among the ferns and invade the compost bins. The caterpillars crawl between the lettuce leaves and make filmy webby cubbies in the lemon and lime trees. The bandicoots and rabbits dig up the beetroots and radishes. Try stopping these little varmin with a Keep Out or a No Trespassing sign. As if !

It’s a constant reminder that we co-exist here on this earth and the sooner we accept  and go with the flow, the happier we’ll be. It doesn’t mean total surrender to the elements and creatures that worm away your garden industry. But be prepared to give up a part of your produce, labour or space to the creatures in your patch. The permaculture peeps say you should allow one third of any crop for the birds and the vegie rustlers and bet on keeping two thirds.

Three cheers for the welcome invaders to the garden; the bees and butterflies that pollinate the flowers and fruit trees and vines; the birds that eat the lawn grubs and maggots, cockroaches and beetles, and that trill, chirrup, screech or honk  from the treetops. But they live by their rules , not ours.

And who’s to give marching orders to the herds of kangaroos that bound through as if on some ancient radar signal that their ancestors followed across the fences  and through the paddocks?. They congregate and lounge under the large paddock fig like old men at a picnic. Try tell them it’s not their place to play in, that they have to go round or go back.  One little lame roo, right,  who has been ostracised from the pack has decided ours is a safe and welcome haven. Perhaps retreating from some kind of roo rage, he’s left the herd and made the house yard his own, alternating between lying in the shade under the golden penda tree or slumbering under the cotton palm. He has staked his claim on the front lawn and gives a distinct guttoral warning sound if I try to reclaim the territory. This critter’s not for turning.

So ownership is a fleeting notion in a garden.

APARTMENT ASSIGNMENT

Emma and her Cambrook gardeners have a challenge . Send in any ideas and suggestions for their task below, by clicking on comments.

She writes: “We’re long time fans, first time writers and hope you may impart your inspirational gardening advice to transform an open space into a private oasis for owners at our apartment block! We have a grassed area that is shaded, north facing about 5m x 7m. We intend to screen it off with some mature plumbago hedging then put in some plants to create a shaded, secret garden. Advice on where we might find some mature plumbagos and what plants might suit that space is much appreciated. We are also looking at buying some hardy ground cover for our main garden, which is north-easterly facing.  Currently there is a mix of sygium australis, agaves and cycads. And last but not least, do you have any great recommendations for material to create a small path about 3m long to the clothes line area!”

I’d use stepping stones ( ie pavers) for the pathway and plant herbs like basil or marjoram between them.  They form a pretty carpet and smell delicious when you tread on them. My suggestions for hardy ground cover are gazanias and  santivalia and pratia. All  All are robust and attractive .

CHILLI JAM

Leafy Greens from Cooroy has a green thumb and an artistic eye, going by the picture she sent of  her glut of pretty red bell chillies. She can’t use all her bounty at once and is looking for ideas to preserve.

I froze about 150 of these about two years ago, placing them in those little containers that dips come in. I am still using them, most recently last night in a curry. They thaw in a matter of minutes and are right as rain for cooking and have retained their bite. Meanwhile gardening guru Annette McFarlane says putting chillies in oil is a cinch.

ROSE TO THE TASK

And I take back the whinge I had last week about roses being difficult for me to grow. Yesterday, my white rose bush produced two splendid blooms that were dazzling after the rain and stark against the lush green foliage of surrounding vegetation. Don’t know why I planted white roses. They are only effective as a contrast to their colourful sisters . But seeing any rose open in my garden makes me weak at the knees. They would look nothing indoors in a vase, so I left them on the bush for everyone to see and enjoy.

Thanks Mother Nature.

After receiving a delightful yarn from Brisbane friend Beez ( see comments) — about her 80-year-old neighbour giving her some “Zillie lily” cuttings whose ancestors she had taken from her Zillmere State School garden 70 odd years ago — I pondered how much of my garden was begged and borrowed from friends and family.

Beez said she felt privileged to be the recipient and historian of this lily descendant, subsequently uprooted by her elderly neighbour from her mother’s garden when she married 60 years ago, and planted in her first home plot, which she still tends today with her octogenarian husband. ( The Zillies have a botanical name but am waiting to have it verified. Watch this space )

Every picture tells a story. Every garden transplant has a sentimental trail that spurs living memories of its origins..

My four frangipani trees  come from snapped branches of our former home in Brisbane, a tree under which our babies slept and played; a climbing white bleeding heart vine that flowers and trails around the pool fence  was struck from part of a bouquet given to my daughter on her 18th birthday; my sun jewels and bromeliads started in another friend’s yard; our towering and spreading  paddock fig tree was a potted house-warming gift when we moved here 23 years ago; the gorgeous leopard tree that is home to our bird dynasty, came from an uncle who was going into a retirement village and didn’t want to plant his free council tree at a property he was selling.