Africanaussie

Yesterday we had almost an entire 24 hours without rain so I sprayed myself liberally with mosquito repellent and went out into the garden and chopped and hacked my way through the jungle.  This will allow more light into the ground and plants and hopefully there will be less damp areas for the mozzies to hang out and breed in.  I also would like it to dry out enough to mulch up the leaves.  The rex begonia love this weather. I really chopped away a lot of hanging branches here to let the light in and scraped up some lovely mulch from the path to put between the bromeliads.  There are still lots of lovely strands of lady slipper orchids hanging down into the path. I was photographing the hanging lady slipper orchids and look at this funny face I captured! Underneath the fan palms the beehive gingers are going crazy - I will get into this area next and clean it out a bit. I hope everyone else has had a wonderful relaxing time with family and friends an...

The hot and humid wet season seems to suit the tropical flowers much better than  it suites me. I still gaze in awe at the fact that the Anthirium is one of my most carefree plants.   From one plant gifted by a friend years ago when I was first starting my garden, I now have a forest!  I have also passed on multiple plants to other gardeners, so it is a gift that keeps on giving.   There is also a forest of red ginger - so reliable. Way in the back corner are one of my favourite tropical heleconias - the sexy pink lady.  Once each stem has flowered it will die, so I need to get out there and cut back the dead stalks. That way the flowers can be the centre of the show again. Theese beehive gingers seem to be playing peek a boo against the side fence.  They are tucked away behind the fan palms. This has been one of the driest wet seasons I have ever known.  Last week there was a cyclone to the northwest of us and...

Last night we had a little rain, and it was lovely to walk around this morning and see how the garden had drunk it all up.  We have stage two water restrictions at the moment - unheard of at this time of year here in the wet tropics......  The grass is brown and dry and crunchy underfoot.  The wet season is taking its time arriving, it is muggy and hot as we wait. The kookaburra like to sit on the fence post surveying where their next meal will be coming from.  With this dry weather my poor dear hubby is on a conintual quest to mulch up all the leaves.  All my bins are full, and yet they continue to drop.  The evodia tree is in bloom - so pretty as the flowers from along the branches.  This tree hosts the ulysses butterfly and lots of other nectar feeding birds.  Look at the flowers close-up - arent they awesome?  They start out like little pink origami boxes, and then the white loops arrive and pop!  they open up! The la...

In the tropics everything grows so well, that sometimes I have to think about a certain plants aggressive nature.  I like to be able to see that all the plants are surviving ok, but still have a full tropical look to the garden. I am often torn about removing certain plants that have become too aggressive for my small garden. A plant at the back has huge leaves, rounded, and very firm, and I love the way they scratch against each other in the wind.  I planted two of them - one against the fence and the other at the back, next to the sexy pink lady. Hubby loves the feeling that we live in the middle of a lush tropical rainforest.  I worry that the plants are crowding each other out. Is there too much now in that corner? The difficulty is that some of those plants will go dormant in the dry season.   I see more turmeric has come up, so have to be careful I do not create bare patches..  I have that in the...

Once the rains start in, everything seems to grow overnight.  I would love to get out and cut some things back, and do some digging, but no - I am being very careful with my back, and just observing the garden from  the safety of the swing.  One of the first plants to herald the arrival of the rains are the bromeliads - The tips of this one turn a bright pink - like a painted fingernail... My neigbour told me that bromeliads with spikes like more sun...   I have heard this one referred to as the hurricane bromeliad, so they are right on time. This is  the cyclone season as it is called in the Southern hemisphere. From this dingy rosette of green leaves a gorgeous flower pops up, and the best thing is that they stick around for weeks.  another plant showing its colours is the red anthirium - it is a tiny plant, and I got a little pup from my neighbour ages ago - suddenly it has a lovely flower.  Lovely ...

Lots of things spring to life in my garden once the wet season starts.  My ginger bed is erupting with little green spikes and I know under the ground lovely juicy ginger tubers are forming.  The sweet potato bed is doing the same, and  turmeric  is popping up in a couple of places, where I knew I had planted them.  The torch ginger and this lovely beehive ginger is flowering, although the leaves never totally die back during the dry season.  My neighbor gave me a plant with a beautiful flower at the end of the last wet season.  She said it had died and I tried to tell her it was ok but just going dormant.  No, she wanted me to have it, insisting I was the one with the green thumb.  Here it is rising up in all its glory six months later.  Behind it is kampheria, another plant that completely disappears during the dry season.  This one I know is...

"You are my sunshine,.......... you are my sunshine" has been playing through my head this weekend.  We have been having a few days where the sun is shining during the day although it still rains at night.   The garden is loving it, and look!  a butterfly hatched!  I only found out after the fact, so didn't see it emerging, but there are three empty chrysalis cases.  One has still not hatched, so hope I can catch that one in the act. It is weird that this one has so much white on the wings - maybe this is a female and the other one might have been a male? http://africanaussie.blogspot.com/search/label/orchard%20swallowtail%20butterfly I saw an image like this labelled a female on wikipedia.  In other news around the garden: The cats whiskers are always lovely, and I thought this one looking at its own reflection in the birdbath as a few petals dropped off was rather a nice image. The beehive ginger flower has collapsed under the weig...

The red gingers are so reliable - they never seem to stop flowering - a bit less in the dry season, but now they are approaching their prime.  You can see my neighbours garden behind this and they have a couple of the same plants, so it makes my garden look bigger since you can't see the distinction.  This is a feature in my garden to make it seem bigger than it actually is! The anthiriums too seem very happy and just keep flowering continually.   The miniature white caladiums look pretty as a border plant.   and I see some new shoots at the base of the beehive ginger - I think I must remove the extra leaves and add compost.  Soon we will have some beehive inforesences, and the best thing is that they last for months. Yes the wet season is on its way!

I am slowly realising that the wet season in the tropics is a totally different season to anywhere else. I joined the Yates challenge and planted some bean seeds, but not one came up. Regular vegetable just do not do well here. I got my free packet of carrot seeds in the mail this week and will give them a try. I haven't tried them before but who knows, they might like all the rain. My gem squash was doing quite well, and then it seemed to take on a new lease of life and start running rampant in the vegetable garden - oh no!  wait a minute! this is a different vine and the gem squash has totally died off again.  Succumbed to powdery mildew yet again! I think this is a jap pumpkin vine.  Instead of the beans against the fence I have planted long tropical snake beans, jicama (yam bean) and ginger.  Right in the corner my sweet potatoes are starting up again.   So in a little while this fence will be covered in greenery, and I have learnt a lesso...