22ND JANUARY, 2024

 

Hello all.

According to the callendar, we are well and truly into summer but you wouldn't think so seeing how cool and wet it has been. Mind you, I'm not complaining. I dislike the heat and I like the rain in my garden. I do, however, sympathise with those who like the heat and the pool/beach.

The crocosmia are in full bloom on the rockery at the front of the property. They tend to grow very long and, invariably, end up flat  on the ground. Then, as the flowers reach for the sun, they create these interesting curves. The agapanthus flowers are past their best so I removed the flowers and left the seed head. I prefer it this way as I wanted it to be subordinate to the crocosmia.

I have my sister-in-law, Betty, to thank for my pineapple lily plant (Eucomis Comosa). I grow it in a pot and have been watching as four flowers have emerged and grown until they were ready to cut. I used three of them in the arrangement, below, together with curled aspidistra leaves and hydrangeas in a spherical container made of onyx.

With the remaining flower I made another arrangement in a container with two openings. Again I used aspidistra leaves (mainly because they were there in the bucket) and squiggly grass. Try as I might, I could not capture the interesting curve of the flower in the photograph, so, I've included a side view as well.

Front view

Side view

All my hydrangea plants have been quite prolific this year and I have enjoyed using them. Those that are in deep shade have produced quite long stems and interesting curves. I wanted to take advantage of a couple of them.

Towards the end of the season of my strelitzia reginae, I leave all the spent flowers on the plant so that I can have a large number of them to create an arrangement such as the one below. Sam really likes this. He says they remind him of flamingos.

I enjoyed using leaves sprayed gold at Christmas and wanted to try them in a different way, hence my wall arrangement, below. There's a gymea leaf (doryanthes palmeri), a New Zealand leaf flax sprayed gold, dietes leaves and hydrangeas.

Our persimmon tree is laden with fruit and our grandson, Xavier can't wait for them to ripen. The photograph, below is of the perspex collar I put around the trunk of the tree in an effort to protect the fruit from possums and rats. It has a smooth, shiny surface so that little claws have nothing to latch onto and I smeared vaseline on it for good measure. I, also, trimmed all the surrounding branches that were touching the tree as they could have been used as scaffolding by the nasty vermin. Of course, these measures can't protect against birds and bats.  I'll let you know how my experiment goes.

There are quite large corderlynes next to the persimmon tree, which I trimmed back, as I mentioned above. As I was cutting them up to put in the compost I decided to spared a couple of them and arrange them instead.

Without access to the inside of the container and working only through the holes on the sides, it was quite challenging to secure the large branches in place. I asked Sam to hold the torch of his phone over one of the holes so I could see inside. I'm happy to say it is now very secure.

Bye for now,

Emily