Geraldine Garden Tours Part 2

On the night before Day 2 of the garden tours there was a terrific wind storm. It woke me in the night, violent gusts slamming the house, and in the morning there were leaves and flower buds strewn about. Out in the country the wind was even stronger, bringing branches down, and all the garden tour owners had been up since dawn cleaning up. Several were also without power, and I heard a story of one farm garden where the electric fences were out and a herd of cows wandered through!

So hats off to these gardeners who, after working so hard to prepare for the event and contending with the whims of nature, still generously put their own inconveniences aside and allowed people in.

A sheltered verandah in this country garden supports climbing roses, delphiniums and dahlias.

The large grounds were criss crossed with streams, diverted from the nearby river. A great way to irrigate, and the sounds of the little waterfalls were better than any water feature.

Another garden had its own secluded lake!

I love it when pencil conifers are used to frame an entryway.

A beautiful flowering cherry.

I like this idea - using a small hedge to frame a statue.

Here is the idea again. I'm trying to think of somewhere at home to carry this out.

This edging is the best idea I took away though! The look of woven willow, but using black irrigation hosepipe. I plan to replicate this in my potager as soon as possible!

This property also had a very impressive sunken greenhouse which they use for drying nuts.

That's it from my garden tours. As usual I've come away with lots of ideas and plans to make my garden better... I can't help but feel that it's a bit dull compared to all these lovely properties I just looked at. Perhaps I need a giant hare sculpture to liven it up!

Geraldine Garden Tours Part 1

 A couple of weeks ago I got to do some garden tours as part of the Geraldine Arts & Plants festival. I love garden tours that feature real people's gardens, not just show gardens, as I find them the most inspiring for ideas to use at home. Would you like to see what tickled my fancy this time?

I like this secluded patio, above, almost hidden behind the exuberant planting. 

 Here's another sweet little patio, tucked away at the end of a garden under a shade tree. The trimmed hedges finish the space off perfectly.

 I like this sheltered garden room. The heuchera makes a striking edging.

 Hand painted garden signs add whimsy (essential to every good garden).

 I love the pastel mix of these aquilegias.

 I've never seen ixias this colour before! They are extremely striking when backlit by the evening sun.

 Wooden sleepers create terraces next to the fence. This would be a good way to display tiny alpines, or create a rambling miniature garden!

 Spot the birdhouse... or maybe at this level it's a hedgehog house!

 I'm not a fan of flax. But this cream striped leaf is gorgeous...

 This house was not part of the official garden tour, but it's on a main street and has no fence so I stopped and had a look from the kerb. Such a beautiful cottage garden.

 Maybe one day my front garden will look like this!

I like how they've even planted the street light!

The gardeners we met were so friendly and nice. One man even gave me a tweedia seedling that he'd grown, which I was quite excited about as I haven't seen it for sale at the garden centres. I also went shopping at the markets and got some succulents, geraniums and a couple of peonies, so I'm inspired to add and improve my own garden! If only the weather would cooperate. Well, at least rain and cool temperatures mean good conditions for planting.

That's it for Part 1! I still have pictures from the second day of garden tours, so pop back in a couple of days to see those! Have any of the ideas here inspired you?

November flowers

Oh November, where have you gone? I looked forward to you all year and you've passed in the blink of an eye. The garden is peaking and I haven't had time to appreciate it. When I went out tonight to photograph the roses I realised most of them were overblown and browning off. Oh well, tomorrow night I'll get out and deadhead them and hopefully some more blooms won't be too far off.

I've bought two peonies recently and today my neighbour gave me one he was getting rid of. I am going to have to have a reshuffle to fit them in, especially as I've realised the spot I'd planned for them isn't sunny enough. I have one there and every spring it buds up, but the buds don't swell or develop and eventually fall off. So I will need to put them all somewhere sheltered with full sun. Fussy little buggers, aren't they... but the flowers are worth it!

Above, clockwise from top left: lambs ears and geraniums, staples in my spring garden; Ash Wednesday rose; unknown peony (but doesn't give me any trouble with flowering); snow in summer; sweet william; Queen Elizabeth rose; dusky pink foxglove; Claire rose; peony poppy; chive flowers; unknown white rose; Sexy Rexy rose.

Our spring weather has been quite volatile. Wind is the norm, if we're lucky it's just a brisk breeze but often it blows up into a gale. I came home from work last week to find my Queen Elizabeth rose blown right over and the wooden stake I'd tied it to snapped in half. I found an old fence post and hammered that in and that's held it up so far.

That's it from me tonight... I'm going to try and organise my garden tour photos so I can get a post done on that soon.

October flowers

 I've gotten a bit behind with my posting in the past couple of months but I've still been taking photos! We haven't had the best spring weather but luckily that hasn't stopped the flowers. I had a reasonably good crop of ranunculus (not all the bulbs delivered on their promise though) and the anemones were very impressive. I also planted some out some new plant including two kinds of viburnum which will be nice next spring when they've bushed out a bit.

Above, clockwise from top left: clematis montana, pink and white ranunculus, apple blossom, miniature blue anemone (a special treasure from the alpine plant show), pink rhododendron, snowball viburnum, pastel anemones (with petals looking like they've been brushed with watercolours), violets, viburnum Mariesii, yellow ranunculus, white ranunculus, red watercolour anemone.

 I used this vase to grow hyacinth bulbs in and it's also been good for showcasing smaller blooms. I just put a small glass bottle inside to hold the bloom. (The anemones last a long time in the vase, opening and closing with the daylight.)

 Cherry blossom makes a frothy background for this ranunculus.

I didn't have garden roses in October so I bought some from the supermarket to tide me over!

That was October in flowers - it feels so long ago now. November has been hectic so far but I hope to get a post together soon to show you what's in bloom right now in my garden. I also did some garden tours on the weekend and I have some gorgeous photos to share... soon I promise!

My kitchen shelfie

 Hello again. It's been a while and I didn't really intend to be absent from my blog for two months, but once I let things go it was difficult to get back into the swing of things. I'm still dealing with earthquake repairs to the property and the uncertainty has made it difficult to focus positively on the house and garden, so it's just been easier not to do anything! However, I did start to miss my blog and having a record to look back on, so here I am again.

 A recent email from Gardenista pointed me in the direction of Urban Jungle Bloggers, who do a monthly plant themed styling challenge. This month's theme is My Plant Shelfie. I love a good shelfie and it seemed like a good reason to rearrange the houseplants, which I needed to do for summer anyway. The cyclamens have been banished to a cool dark room and the succulents have come forth.

 On this shelf I have my favourite little handmade houses and an art print of lavender, held in a vintage floral frog. The little brass chair is made from the cage from a champagne bottle.

 This is a new addition, with rather cool, graphical silver and green spotted leaves. It has a bit of attitude, don't you think? The plant label says it's called Scilla or Ledebauria Socialis. It's a nice compact size to fit inside this ramekin.

 I love the silvery green and plum tones on this succulent. It's container is a cat food can wrapped with rope (thank you Pinterest).

 I really love the tarnish and patina on this silver-plated salt shaker. It contrasts most beautifully with the delicate green leaves on this plant. I've had the plant for years and I forget what it's called! It's pretty impossible to kill but the leaves do have an annoying habit of turning brown from the base of the plant outward. I'm thinking of replacing it... does anyone have any suggestions for a similar nice, delicate trailing plant?

Now I'm submitting this post for the challenge. I'm actually very late with it, almost at the deadline in fact but I'm calling it a win that I even got the post written at all :) Thanks to Igor at Happy Interior Blog and Judith at Joelix.com for the prompt!

September flowers

Spring is here, hooray! The weather hasn't been exactly quick to cooperate, but there's no denying the swiftly lightening mornings with slightly less chill to the air, not to mention the explosion of bird activity around dawn! It's finally time to do things in the garden like planting out shrubs, and preparing the potager for spring veges. There's also time to appreciate bulbs and blossoms, and to say goodbye to some winter performers whose season is almost over.

Clockwise from top left: vivid coral blossoms on peach Rose Chiffon, a hellebore setting seed, the first anemone of the season, almond blossom, a cheerful pansy, a pretty white and cream daffodil, gorgeous hycacinth, camellia Fairy Blush (still going strong and having bloomed since May!), the first lavender of the season, blue star flowers (ipheon uniflorum), the blue and pink flowers of pulmonaria, a gaudy but welcome daffodil.

How is your garden this season? Pop over to May Dreams Gardens to find links to gardens all around the world blooming in spring and autumn!

Macro phone photography

I've been having a play with some new lenses I got for my phone. There are 3 lenses, including fish eye and wide angle, but it's the macro that I've spent the most time with. Springtime blossoms are perfect for macros.

Above: a ruffled daffodil, fresh growth on lavender, peach blossom.

I got this set on Trade Me for about $25.00. There is a separate fish eye lens, and the macro and wide angle lenses screw into each other. When you use them both together it's wide angle, and if you remove the wide angle lens it's macro.

 They just clip over the phone camera, so can be used with any brand of phone or even tablets.

With the macro lens you need to be 1-2 cm away from your subject. It's amazing how much tiny detail it captures! It works much better than I thought a cheap lens would.

Above: fine hairs on an anemone petal, fuzzy hairs and raindrops on lambs ears, a teeny tiny unfurling leaf on the cercis tree. 

 Above: pollen-covered stamens in an almond blossom, leaf buds on an apple tree, the glistening petals of a hyacinth.

 One thing I quickly realised is that as well as magnifying detail, the lens magnifies any camera shake. It can be hard to hold it steady while getting in close to a subject which might also be blowing in the wind. I accidentally tore through the spider's web I was trying to capture!

Above: Cercis buds, torn spider web, a drop of water cupped in the tiny new leaves of a lupin seedling.

Just for comparison, here are the little seedlings in their punnet. 

Spring is here so there will be plenty of new leaves and flowers to photograph in the coming weeks. Pop back tomorrow to see what's been flowering in my garden this month!

Crochet dishcloths

 I recently made some crochet dishcloths. They were a bit of an experiment because I kind of had doubts, and wondered if they would be as effective as a proper shop-bought dishcloth. There is a great range of bench-wiping, dish-cleaning cloths available these days, but the problem is that I don't like most of the colours they come in. So I bought some cotton yarn, found some patterns on Pinterest and set to work.

 They were very quick, fun and easy to work up. Especially the pink one - I enjoyed that stitch, and it scalloped the edges all by itself! You can find the pattern here. For the striped one, I just did rows of single crochet, and alternated the colours a couple of times.

 So, do they work as well as a shop-bought super cleaning cloth? I think they do. Being cotton they are nice and absorbent, and the rough texture means they clean dishes well! They wipe up crumbs on the bench and subject themselves to being rinsed under the tap. To disinfect them I use the same method I use on all dishcloths - microwave them on High for 2 minutes then machine wash. They have stood up well to this treatment. 

I was worried they would shrink when submerged in a sink of hot water, but I found the opposite to be true - they are actually more prone to stretching as you wring them out and drape them over the tap or sink. That's ok though as cotton yarn doesn't have a lot of give so they don't get too much out of shape.

I love the way crochet dishcloths look and perform in my kitchen, so I'll be making more. What about you? Would you use a crochet dishcloth?

August snapshots

So it's the end of August already! I've been a bit slack with my blogging... it's that time of year when I'm sick of winter, drained of motivation and just waiting for the extra daylight hours to kick in again. There's still a month to go till daylight savings (I'm counting down) but today when I got home from work there was enough daylight for me to go out to the garden and harvest a leek and some broccoli. It's such a relief to be able to do that! That and other small things, like emptying the rubbish bin or fetching something from the garage, are just so much easier when it's daylight. So bring it on.

Here are some of my recent pictures from Instagram. (At first I thought Instagram was just another trend but now I'm really appreciating it as a quick and easy way to document daily moments...If you want to look me up on Instagram I'm here!)

Hellebores are still the flower of the moment but their time is nearly up. My favourite this year has been the picotee - white with a dark purple edge - which looks gorgeous glowing in the garden, in a vase, and floating in a teacup so you can better see its pretty little face. I also got a new hellebore - Tutu - and it was so potbound that the first thing I did was soak it in water, then slice down the middle to create two plants. They didn't flower much after that but I planted them out in the garden and they'll be away next year.

On the crochet front, I made a couple of dishcloths. I'll do a full post about them soon as they turned out well. The pink one above made a pretty scalloped pattern.

And last weekend I assembled a flat pack bookcase for my reading corner. I ended up with 20 dowels left over, which I eventually realised were supposed to help anchor the shelves to the walls, but I couldn't be bothered redoing the whole thing to put them in. They were completely missed out of the instructions which were hard to follow anyway - you know those line drawings which make it look like the whole thing assembles itself! Anyway, it feels very sturdy so I happily filled it with all my books. There is a little room for expansion but not very much, so I'll either have to have a purge or buy another bookcase. The book stack above is my latest library haul, this should be just enough to last me a month as long as none of them turn out to be duds (they haven't so far).

That's about it for the last week in winter! I probably shouldn't be in such a hurry to wish it gone, as there are plenty of jobs to get done, like cleaning the glasshouse, before the busyness of spring arrives. But actually I can't wait!

August flowers

Welcome to my garden for a small taste of what's blooming this August! I did wonder if I would find anything new to photograph at all, as it's definitely feeling like the tail end of the season now and anything still flowering is looking a bit tired. However there were a few surprises, like the jasmine I found trespassing over the fence into the neighbour's yard. When I pulled it back that particular part of the vine was covered with flowers! I am not sure why my flowering vines do this - no matter which side of the fence is sunniest, they always seem to push their way to the neighbour's side and flower there. Of course the neighbours don't mind at all, but I feel a bit put out. Plant - you flower for me, got it?

There are also small buds now to be seen on dormant plants like clematis, fruit trees and spring flowering shrubs. It won't be long now before everything bursts forth.

Clockwise from top left: snowdrop, a new hellebore called Tutu (see the frilly petals inside? And it was on sale so it's all right!), the first blossom on my almond tree (I hope the rest of them hold off till spring is a bit closer), polyanthus, ipheion uniflorum, camellia fairy blush (looking blossom-like in this picture, but it's been flowering since May), earlicheer daffodils, paper daisy, an opening bud of hellebore Pink Lady, the surprise jasmine, daphne (still smelling gorgeous), picotee hellebore.

Special mention goes to this picotee hellebore, mainly because I really like this photo. How is your garden blooming this month?