The Great Unkillables

This is the flower of a Canna Lily. They are one of the plants that I refer to as 'The Great Unkillables', so to anyone who isnt accustomed to my slang, this is a plant that is incredibly hard to kill provided you ensure they have enough water to establish them, occasional watering and maintenance (eg, pruning the dead shoots). Admittedly they wont look very pleasant if they barely get any water or care, the edges of the leaves will burn, they wont grow much higher than your knee and will generally look terrible. If they receive general care, they can get quite tall (Ive seen some in very damp spots reach up to 2m high), flower prolifically and spread like nobodies business. When they get too thick, take to them with a shovel and dig them up to thin them out. They generally wont mind. The plant grows from rhizomes under the grounds surface. The rhizomes have several growing points, so the plant forms a large clumping habit. They come in quite an assortment of tropical colours. The flowers range from pink, red, orange, yellow and mixtures there of. The leaves can also come in a variety of colours from green to dark plum. You can also find varieties with stripey variegation on their leaves in an assortment of colours from bright red or bright yellow, that is mixed with a shade of light green or dark green. They are a plant that is extremely good at giving your garden a tropical flavour and can be extremely rewarding with very little care. Just a word of caution, they will grow quite thick and spread quickly if they are growing in very damp conditions. Also apologies for the photo quality, still saving for a new phone.

Wishing Our Lives Away.

Today is too hot, crazy hot. We mowed lawns and it was hot. So hot infact, that when the mowing was done, I went and stood under the hose for a good 20min. I was dry again within an hour. So, I figured that seeing as its too hot, I would post a photo from winter. This is from winter 2011, I think. We dont often get rains like this. The lake is filled from a river that runs down from the hills (unfortunately I dont know the name of the river), down into Sanctuary Lake, then into the lake in Minnawarra. In summer we have to fill the lake from the bores (as its a retic lake and would dry up otherwise) and stop when it is full and doesnt flow over the rocks. In winter, when there is a big deluge of rain this happens. It is impressive to see and I do miss it. Its funny, we spend most of winter wishing for summer to come along and when it gets here, we wish for the cool embrace of winter again. We are never content are we?

Well There You Go

These are the curled fronds of a tree fern in one of the main parks. I can still remember when I was studying horticulture and I discovered that Tree Ferns (Cyathea cooperi and Cyathea australis) were Australian species of the plant. I guess growing up in Western Australia, I sometimes forget that parts of the country are quite tropical. So, naturally, the plants would be very different to the scrub that grows round Perth. Surprisingly enough tree ferns grow quite well in Perth, just make sure they are in a darn good location (part/dappled shade with improved soil, NOT SAND!). The main thing you have to watch with tree ferns is they grow. Ive seen them grow up to nearly 2 stories tall next to a south facing side of a building. Admittedly it was a very old plant, but the point to note is it explains this in the plants namesake. TREE fern, ie; tree like growth. They get quite tall and the fronds can spread across up to about 2m if theyre really happy where they are. So please when planting make sure they have room to grow, coz if you have to get rid of one they are easy to chop down but removing the stump is a royal bastard of a job.

Butterfly Like Flowers

This is something I believed that everyone knew, turns out it isnt as common knowledge as I first thought. Hydranges have flowers that can change colour from pink to blue and back again. The flower is indicative of the pH in the soil. If it is pink, then the soil is slightly acidic. If the flower is blue then the soil is alkaline. If the flowers are a mix like the ones in the picture, then your dealing with an inbetween, or close to neutral. For some reason people love blue flowers, so they buy a lovely blue hydrangea, then get really stroppy when it flowers the next year and the flowers are pink. Just adjust the pH and the flowers will revert back. Another word of caution that I thought was another obvious common knowledge thing. The name Hydrangea should even give it away, they are VERY thirsty plants. Dont grow them in barren sand, in the full sun. They will burn and die very quickly. Grow them in part/dappled shade, in damp soil (so lots of organic matter) and spray occasionally with copper to discourage fungal diseases (as they are very prone to mildew). They will look a bit sick during the winter months, dont fret they just do this. Prune them back to buds at the beginning of spring and for all that is good and wholesome, MULCH THEM!

Memories

I apologise for the image quality, still hanging out to get a new phone. I got really excited when I spotted this creeper in the staff garden the other day. Its a pretty innocuous looking creeper, nothing special, lots of bright green hear shaped leaves. I didnt think anything of it til I saw it flower, ITS A DUTCHMAN'S PIPE!!!!! Oh my frickety god! I havent seen one in years! They arent a plant that you see very often, even though its quite a vigorous climber. Its namesake is obvious when you see the flower shape, it certainly is one of the more unusual shaped blossoms that Ive come across. The species means alot to me as its a plant I remember from my childhood. My stepfather grew one and would always proudly proclaim it to anyone who would listen. Embarrassing as it was at the time, it just makes me smile now.

Geek Hide And Seek

Please stop questioning my sanity, yes I am posting up a picture of a long dead tree stump. There is a story behind this stump. It use to house a little Geocache. I discovered it by accident about a year ago during the rubbish run. Geocaching is a game that I call Geek Hide and Seek, as you require technology to find the treasure. I have never done it myself, but I know a little about it. One of the relatives I stayed with while I was on holiday in the UK did this as a hobby. In its simplest version you log onto one of the geocaching websites and get a series of co-ordinates, you plug these into a gps and then try to find the cache. So its like a treasure hunt I guess. There are other versions, such as one that requires you to find clues, or locate the co-ordinates from numbers on signs, plaques, etc in the local area. Ultimately you try to find the cache and leave a little note in the logbook and sometimes swap an item for one of the treasures inside. I dont know what sort this one was, but it has since been removed (hence the reason I can now post a picture of it online). I enjoyed it because if we were having a lazy day, I could stop on the rubbish run and read the little entries in the logbook (its surprising how many overseas visitors put entries into the book) and watch the toys change in the little container. I really do miss it sometimes.

Display

Ive been working at the counsil for about 18 months now. We replace the annuals up to 4 times a year (Depending on the mood of my boss at any given time. Sometimes he wants them changed alot, sometimes we can get away with it). A trick Ive learnt when planting the annual beds. Always try to have a bright colour on hand, such as white or yellow. When you plant a mass of colours, the whites and yellows break up the colour of the bed and brighten up the display a lot. Another trick, feed the darn things! Annual beds are typically phased out of counsils and public displays now days due to their high demand for water and fertilizer. Annuals are only meant to live for a season, sometimes if you look after them, they can last longer but typically a year is a good innings for plants such as these. So because they have to grow and breed in such a short time, they need alot of water and fertilizer. Trick is not to let them dry out too much and to give them liquid fertilizer once ever 2-3 weeks. Liquid fertilizers are an easy to access source of nutrients for these plants and you would be surprised the difference makes when you feed them this. They can certainly put on such lovely displays when they are done right :)

Let It Snow

Some funny person thought it would be hilarious to decimate a beanbag in the skate park. The result, well, it looked like snow but only in strategic places where the wind cant quite catch it. It was really effective as it would swirl the beans and it really did look like snow. I make this comparison  yet I have never seen snow in my life. We had no way of sucking the stuff up (no industrial vac or a bag to attach to the blower to turn it into a sucker), I had to get the grain scoop and pick up the worst of it, then blow the rest of it away. Picking it up was a cow of a job, however blowing it away with the back pack blower is so very delightful. I do believed I giggled like a little school girl.

The Gardener Tree

A friend of mine has lent me a phone until I can get a new one. So some of the newer photos, wont be as up to standard as they have been in the past. Still trying to work out the quirks of the camera mode.

This little guy scared the absolute bejimmenies out of me today. I was raking in the skate park and out of the corner of my eye I saw a bit of branch stuck on my shoulder. I thought it was a little strange a branch getting caught there as I hadnt been leaning against anything, but brushed at it and kept raking. Then two large legs appeared infront of my face. I thought I had somehow wound up with a big spider on me and let out, quite possibly, the girliest shriek I have ever made. I also realise now, that my first instinct was to duck. Which is a little bit silly as it was on my shoulder, so it wasnt like ducking was really going to help me much. When I realised that it was a 15cm long praying mantis, I was much relieved. The only way I can think of how he wound up on me was, I was raking out a garden bed and must have disturbed him. He must have thought my leg was the base of a nice big safe tree and proceeded to climb. I couldnt feel him climb as we have to wear long pants, so he proceeded to climb until he reached what he thought was the highest and safest place in the 'tree'. The biggest challenge for me was to figure out how to get him off me without hurting him as he crawled round to the back of my shoulder blade and batting him off would not have ended well. Eventually I just lent next to a big tree (a real tree, not another gardener) and after a couple of minutes he climbed onto the bark and began a journey to the canopy. Good luck mantis. Thanks for the memories.

Looking Pretty

I apologise for the lateness of getting these photos up. Have had too many distractions of late. At any rate, these photos are from last month. We had to prep the parks for Remembrance Day. So the week leading up to it was alot of raking and pruning so the garden beds look lovely. Then management dropped a bomb on us, they wanted the parks hand mowed with the rotary mowers to pick up the leaves and make it look uniform. They didnt want to use the ride on mowers as they dont have catchers. Normally it wouldnt have phased me as they planned to do it on what was normally my RDO, however due to a shut down over christmas, I had to work my RDO day. They also decided on the day that we had to rotary mow the lawn at the Kelmscott Memorial. As you can see from the photos, the place really did look amazing and was all beautiful for the ceremony. However it wasnt the most pleasant job at the time.

Ground Work

If I had to try to single out a favourite scented flower, Gardenias would be very up there on my list. I love to pick the flowers and put them in my hair, the heat from my head intensifies the perfume and I get to have the smell linger around me all day. That was one of the things I learnt in floristry, when making a floral head piece, dont choose delicate flowers as the head produces alot of heat and delicate flowers will wilt very quickly.

Gardenias are surprisingly easy plants to grow, but they have a very bad habit of looking yellow and sick because most people dont do their prep work first. Its easy, enrich the ground with some cow manure (its slightly more acidic than sheep manure, but only slightly) or compost. They dont like to grow in dry sandy soils, so enrich it I tells ya! They yellow very easily when water stressed, so mulch the plant and apply a wetting agent if the soil is water repellent.  They dont like being in full shade (they wont flower and will grow very sparse and leggy), they dont like very hot sun. They will grow quite happily in part/dappled shade and full sun. Simple. Oh and, they also also like slightly acidic soil, same as camellias and azaleas. An easy way to kill two birds with one stone is to mulch them with pine needles. Pine trees are notoriously bad for the soil, they suck out so much moisture and acidify the soil really badly. This is why I like reading books as opposed to ereaders, kindles or whatever else theyre called, I like pine trees to die for my reading pleasures. But I digress, pine needles break down into the soil,  keep the moisture in and slightly acidify the soil as they break down. Finally a use for pine. I realise this sounds like alot of work but if you do your research right, then growing gardenias can be very rewarding. They flower profusely when happy and the smell from them is absolutely divine.

Stung

A friend of mine once told me that Ive somehow become a connoisseur of stings because I was able to tell the difference between an ant sting, a bee sting and a wasp sting.. Please dont think that I go round purposely getting stung by various insects just to have this very mild super power, I have worked in gardening long enough to have suffered the more painful side of these insects. Its kinda  hard to describe how I know the difference, its something to do with the intensity of the pain and the number of times I get stung. If Im stung once and it bloody well hurts, is almost always a bee, when that happens then I run for antihistamines. Yay for allergies. If its not as an intense but itchy pain, then Ive been done by an ant and for some reason flying ants love to fall down my top and get stuck in my bra, then it becomes a race to get the bastard out without flashing the general public. Bull Dog Ants are another story, I havent been stung by one of those in my career (touch wood) and only as a child. I can remember it hurts alot but a different type of pain to a bee sting, so Im excluding them in this story, sorry science. Wasp stings tend to be as intense with pain as bee stings, however they have the ability to keep stinging til their venom runs out. This makes it very not fun. I had a paper wasp crawl up the back of my shirt once and sting me about 7 times from the top of my trousers to about 10cm up my back (it clearly couldnt figure out how to get out of my shirt), and you could tell the difference from the first sting (the largest) to the final (it was a little larger than a pin head). 

If you ever need to get rid of a paper wasp nest, then do so on a cold morning. The colder the weather, the more sluggish the insects are. However if you have little choice but to remove it on a warm day, then distance is your friend. Either spray it from a good meter or so back from the nest, or bat it off what ever it is on with a broom handle. When the nest falls on the floor, the adults will be angry, but will leave within a day or so. Do NOT try to bat out a nest if it is in a tight spot (like under fence capping, etc) or if the nest will land anywhere near you, unless you wish to be stung of course.

Some useless information for you, the paper wasp in this photo has a cattarpillar in its mouth. This is not for the wasp, paper wasps drink nectar. Their larvae, however, require a source of protein to grow. So the wasps catch the cattarpillars, chew them up and feed them to the growing larvae. I have also heard that paper wasps are a natural predator of fruit flies, but I have had trouble researching this so I cant verify how true it is. 

I also want to apologise for the length of this blog. I dont normally like to make them this long, however my phone broke so I am currently unable to take photos at work until I save up and buy a new one. So right now Im working with stock photos that I have taken over time but havent had chance to upload. So please bear with me, trying to get as much in with limited photos :) will let you know when I can get a new phone.

Ambiance

That lovely piece of ambiance that is the fountain in the lake has a couple of small stories attached to it. First of all, they are a nuisance to fix if they are broken. However, as I am a lowly gardener this is not my problem and I get great enjoyment watching the retic boys sail out there in the little boat to fish it up and check it. Oh the amusement. So far I havent seen one fall in, so the boys definitely have their sea legs. The second little tale involves the wild life. Now fountains need a break too, its pointless to run them when there is almost nobody in the park. So the fountain is run on a timer that switches it off for the night time and turns it back on around 7-8am. On the lake there is one very determined little bird, a Coot. Coots build nests preferably on the water, so usually on a large branch or something poking out of the surface and they add to it with reeds and sticks til it reaches a suitable height. This particular coot has been working tirelessly all season (and last season) to build a nest on the fountain platform. So it keeps building ups sticks while the fountain is turned off and gets a rough nest shape, then the fountain turns on and blows half of it sky high (the other half seems to sit nicely on the corner of the platform). The amusing part is the bird continues to add sticks and such while the fountain is spraying water skyward and knocking the nest out of place. It usually gives up around 9-10am, then tries again the next morning. 10 points for determination little coot, -1 for common sense though.

Deliciously Fake

The ornamental ginger at work has come into bloom. The flowers looks so waxy and fake, but in a good way. Until I started gardening I never knew that you could get ornamental ginger. There is a whole range of plants that are available as ornamentals, so no fruit just pretty looking plant and they pretty much all start with the word Ornamental. The main ones that I can think of off the top of my head include Ornamental Ginger, Ornamental Plum and Ornamental Pear. The ginger in this photo is quite a large plant, forming large clumps of individual plants that can grow up to 2m high. If they get too dense, you can cut them back to ground level and the rhizomes will reshoot back into another mass. Its a great plant if you are going for a tropical look and when it bursts into bloom like this, how could you possibly be disappointed?