Tulips, Daffodils, Freesias, Grape Hyacinths, Snowdrops, and more
This is one of the plum trees that grew from prunings used as pea sticks. It’s the earliest to flower and has early red round fruit so I think it’s a Billington. It’s underplanted with daffodils Nona, Annaliese, and Funky Monkey which is the one with the little orange cup. In the background is Narcissus Early Cheer and the evergreen miniature comfrey Hidcote. This creates a dense ground cover with pretty blue and pink flowers.
Coming back after 3 weeks away,the daffodils are just starting to come out and the tulips were ready to be moved into a sunny spot to flower, so I think all I missed was 3 weeks of rain and cold. The tulips which were either red or dark purple last year seem to have made a few yellow or yellow and red ones this year. I pulled most of the flower stems off before they could set seed, so I’m confused. I suppose this must mean that some of the little bulbs were from seeds rather than clones? Or more likely some of the mixed batch I planted in the garden several years ago made their way back into the fridge with the potted ones.
The grass is a bit long and the weeds have grown and the citrus has continued to ripen.
And the rats had moved into the hut and had a party, leading to lots of laundry and cleaning of drawers. For some reason they chewed off a large chunk of the rubber seal at the bottom of the door of the little fridge. The fridge was open and empty so I’m not sure what the point of this was.
Several of the pumpkins (winter squash) which looked perfect on top are going mouldy on the bottom, and the rats have eaten through the skin of another one, so it’s time to make another batch of pumpkin ‘soup’ for the freezer – what we make is more like pumpkin mash which can be made into soup with the addition of milk or stock.
These were self sown from the compost last year, they popped up with the tomato seedlings and I let them grow around the tomatoes. Not ideal for either of them really, I was continually battling back the pumpkin and pushing it off the tomatoes. In the end however the pumpkins did grudgingly take off over the lawn and down the bank and did much better than the year before, probably by stealing food and water from the tomatoes. In fact I’m surprised there were any seeds in the compost to grow from they did so badly the year before. They seem to have stayed true to the type which I think was Ironbark, as I see I have a half used seed pack of these.
Wow we expected rain in the early morning – but it was heavy noisy rain on the tin roof in the loft from 3 am to around 6 am when it started to taper off. We had received 63 mm when I checked around 7 am.
It rained on and off all day. The total rain since last night was 71 mm, so 110 since last Monday am.
I took cuttings of scented pelargoniums and penstemon Hidcote Pink, and planted daffodils, coral bells, and liriope under the plum by the hut. Daffodils were mostly pink and white and orange – Funky monkey, Nona, Hot pink, and Annalise. I also transplanted Stock and some lettuce and silverbeet and weeded around the self sown peas growing from the pea haulms I put around the tomatoes (these will probably be Carouby).
The Tip Dahlias are flowering brilliantly. I spotted a couple of big clumps of these at the rubbish tip and brought one of them home – the other one went to the woman running the tip that day. I expected they must be some really ugly horribly invasive dahlia, or why would someone bother to dig them out and take them to the tip? But they are beautiful, deep purpley red with bit of green at the centre as they open, changing to yellow as they mature.
Absent Gardener 