spring garden ramble

 

I thought as we were poking about the vegie garden, you might like to have a look at the rest of my garden? Because spring has arrived - save the occassional frosty cold snap - and colour is re-emerging in my garden.

Actually let's stay in the back yard for a moment and admire my banksia rose, climbing over the back fence and gradually providing a screen from the neighbours and a magical sense of enclosure:

It's glorious right now, its lemony yellow blossoms a lovely backdrop to the vegie patch. I actually do not like yellow flowers (they remind me too much of weeds), but these delicate clouds are more than acceptable.

Closer to these house are these coral-red kalanchoes. They too go dormant over the winter but are really starting to glow right now. The spot I have this and another pot hanging from catches the late afternoon sun, which seems to make them really happy - this is the lushest this pot of colour has ever been. The other pot is hanging over a clump of pale lilac bluebells, and the contrast is delightful - and it reminds me of just how much I love and need colour, no matter what combination (for work this week I was required to wear a black shirt, which sucked the life out of me and made me feel drab and depressed. On Friday I rebelled and wore my hot pink cardigan with multi-coloured sequined spots and my brightest pink lipstick, and instantly felt like me again).

Before we head up to the front, let's detour inside and have a look at my potted orchids. They are on the kitchen table at the moment while I'm waiting for some roofing renovations to occur, but a benefit of this indoor hiatus is seeing their soft pastel prettiness everytime I go into the kitchen. I am smugly pleased to report that my orchids are apparently lusher than mum's; I don't get to claim those victories often!

So back outside and into the front. I try to accept that my garden is like an English garden over winter - it just shuts down. There is only so much green I can look at, so I am always happy when everything starts to pop back to life and wave its colourful vibrant flags. Dark pink boronia (with its heady fragrance), variegated pinks of the weigela tree, the desert-hot red and look-at-me orange of various gazanias, lush velvety reds of wallflowers, the pinks and lilacs and corals of the pelagoniums and stocks and sweet williams and ornamental kale and other pretties.

There is still much to happen - I'm waiting patiently for my two young lilac trees to reveal themselves fully, and the various penstamon cuttings show no sign yet of doing anything colourful. The petunia and lobelia seedlings are steadily growing, but are still a few weeks off buds and blooms. The next couple of months hold such promise.