Gordon's Garden Diary

12 Nov '07 12:48 am

Wow Gordon!! I just KNOW how you feel discovering lovely new babies STILL blooming in your Autumn garden!! It is the best ever anti-Autumn-blues tonic...

Here, strong winds and rain have started by the end of last week!! And they still go on!! In England and all the Northern Europe things are really tough...Two days ago the temperatures fell to 0C at night. But now they are soft again, about 10C. But, unfortunatelly, I can't go out to work . I hope I'll do it next week. See you!! Very Happy

12 Nov '07 5:19 am

I loved the scene with the aster "Lady in black" but what really intrigued me was the plant in the lower right corner. It has little pink flowers growing along green branches. Is that a heather? Very appealing as is the scene it is a part of. I'm not familiar with many of your flowers so I am getting schooled here, thank you. Schizostylus in particular doesn't ring any bells for me but what a beauty. And your Toad Lilly is another.

Thanks for the update!

12 Nov '07 7:49 am

Thanks for the wishes, Gord! I was thinking the other day of your querying my 'SA is 3rd world' statement. In many ways we are, in many ways we aren't... and in many ways we're becoming. In the 70s our local road (soon to feature in my 'going to work' post!) was rolled after every grading and gravelled every few years. Now it is inexpertly graded and left... and we all pray that the rain holds off for a week or two whilst we zoom allover it in the process of trying to compact it. For the last twenty years a 4x4 has been a must to get off the farm many days in the year. Bottomline: the country couldn't afford to continue to provide a few whites with good roads when many people could not reach home in a vehicle at all...

The negative of the new is the lack of expertise in so many fields these days: it is not a cost issue but a skills issue.

Let it not be forgot that Chris Barnard, recently (surprisingly) voted the greatest South African of all time, performed the world's first heart transplant operation at Grootte Schuur, the government hospital in Cape Town, in 1968. Today millions pay dearly for insurance schemes to make certain they DON'T end up in a government hospital like GS where conditions are often very third world...

Apartheid was above all an attempt to justify cutting the cookie in such a way that whites always got a 'first world' share, but blacks a 'third world' one. We can all do the arithmatic, and so you grit your teeth, make a joke and engage low range Smile

12 Nov '07 2:17 pm

Gordon, you have so many special plants in your garden. I too loved the vignette you have created around your aster "Lady in Black". I believe you must have actually planned that all out. So often when I try to compose a scene like that the plants just don't cooperate. I think it has more to do with the skill of the gardener than the plants. At any rate, I am very impressed.

12 Nov '07 6:59 pm

Hi, folks-

This post is mainly for Mark, who sent me the seeds. These are the newly-transplanted Euphorbia seedlings. I think they look pretty good, don't you? Now, if I can give them enough light through the winter, maybe they won't get too "leggy"!

It's storming again outside tonight! Evil or Very Mad

Cheers1

gordonf

13 Nov '07 4:54 am

Gordon you may need a new title. I think of this euphorbia as being very slow but look how big yours are already! Dang. It seems as though every year where the leaves are now about three branches will emerge. The following year each of those will branch again and so on. I guess it stands to reason that the first year needs to be a strong one if the branching is to occur much above ground as it indeed seems to do. Do you intend to grow it as a houseplant during the rainy season? Mine is committed to the ground but in a raised bed where the ground around its roots won't become too saturated. Last winter was unually cold for us and it didn't seem to object. I'm not really sure how hardy they are but assumed, since I bought it in San Diego and hadn't seen them around much up here, that they were not very frost-hardy. Best of luck with it.

13 Nov '07 4:57 am

I almost forgot to mention that it is deciduous. I think mine had already dropped its leaves this year. It seems to do that just before it branches and then leaves emerge from the new growth tips.

13 Nov '07 10:12 am

Fantastic euphorbia seedlings, Gordon. I agree with Mark, they're huge already! Shocked

Also love the Chinese lanterns behind: I've got myself some seeds of those and I'm going to try growing them next year - any tips?

13 Nov '07 4:40 pm

Hi, all!

Well, Mark, I plan to grow the euphorbias as house plants, but I MAY try one outside over a winter as an experiment. Of course, I'll put them outside for the summer to try to get them to bloom. I wonder how old they need to be for that? I've planted them in a mixture of regular potting and bonsai soil. Hopefully that will suit them!

And, Bambi, I didn't grow those Chinese Lanterns, although I do have seeds (just need a place for them). I understand that you have to contain them, rather like bamboos, as they spread wildly by underground shoots and then die off in the middle. Take care with them!!

We had a terrible storm last night with record rain and near record winds. The electricity was off here from 6:00 a.m. until around 4:00 p.m. but luckily it was another lovely sunny day today, so there was a lot of solar heat, as all the other heat was off all day. I went for a very long walk with the dogs and my friend, Ellen, and we saw 2 handsome buck elk on the trail. Even when the dogs took after them, they weren't too spooked and just ambled into the bush out of sight. The dogs stopped at the edge of the roadway, wondering what to do next, I think! By the way, there are still a lot of folks without power, as over 240,000 were out at the height of the outage!

All the best!

gordonf

27 Nov '07 2:41 pm

Hi, everyone!

We had our first snowfall this afternoon, so I took some pictures from my computer room window and door to show you. The first two are through the window in front of the computer desk and shows my main garden, with the bamboo bent low and the smoke tree not far behind! In one of the shots, you can see the huge snowflakes against the neighbour's mobile home.

The last picture is of the gate into my veg/nursery bed and was taken from the back door, just beside the computer desk. I had a choice of getting all of the roof in the picture or showing the door frame, so I chose to leave out the door frame!

Cheers!

gordonf

Gordon's Garden Diary

More Autumn delights!!

Wow Gordon, your garden is still going great guns.

Hearts and worlds apart

So many unique plants

Euphorbia Seedlings

Master of Seedlings

PS

Euphorbias & Chinese Lanterns

First Snow!