garden ramble: rain and plantings

Looks cold...

Rain. Rain, rain and more rain. Yes finally — it’s raining! And proper big wet stuff, stuff that’s last longer than the usually fleeting moment, where you think ‘oh, it’s raini—’ and it stops before you even finish the thought. No, for the past week, we have had bucket loads, rain gauges full of the stuff. I even found myself thinking quite a blasphemous thought one night, as I brushed my teeth and listened to the pounding on the roof: oooh it could stop a bit now; I don’t want my garlic to rot.

Because the garlic is, like the rain, seemingly unstoppable. I’d barely poked the cloves in the ground and they were poking back up again! There are 33 of the 35 leafy garlic shoots standing proud and upright (except for the one I trod on last weekend). Such a strong crop, so I have high hopes of a good bounty later in the year. As long as they don’t rot with all this strange rain.

I’ve also put in six sprouting broccoli plants. I love broccoli, and a couple of years ago I grew the purple sprouting variety, which was so pretty. This is normal green stuff, but will be just as delicious. Grow little seedlings!

The passionfruit vine is also very vigorous, and is still producing flowers and fruit, which I have pegged so they’re easier to spot amongst the lush greenery. All I need to do now is watch for frost warnings, so I can go out and swaddle my tender baby. I’m not sure at what age I stop wrapping the vines up, but I’m not taking any risks. Hopefully frost is a little while off, though after a very warm autumn, we hit the cold — or it hit us — with a bang; we’ve already had two big dumpings of snow on the mountain. Tassie weather is so changeable, and always a source of speculation and conversation.

Autumn colour for Jem in Brisbane

Moving out of the vegie garden and into the ornamental side of things, dad planted my four new grevillea plants. I hope these will grow into trees and bushes that provide colour for me, and nectar and spiky habitat for birds.

The varieties are copper rocket, which promises hot pink flowers (one of my favourite colours) throughout the year; and flora mason and semperflorens, with softer coloured pink and apricot flowers, again with a long flowering season. It’s easy to have flowers for birds and bees in the spring and summer, but having some food to attract and nourish them in the cooler months can be a challenge. Though this big blue salvia is proving me very wrong:

Finally I leave you with some winter colour, and an example of Mother Nature doing her best to prove that concrete driveways are no match for a determined lion’s plant. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.