Gardening...

My beloved Mr E took me to Bunnings on Saturday afternoon to purchase a couple of gorgeous Azaleas. One for him to take cuttings off for new bonsai (his hobby) and one for me to tend with loving care and delight over. My last one died a dreadful death in the drought ridden summer heat last year, but I shall do all I can to save the new one.

We're only a week away from Spring now and the weather is already heating up again, remembering that during the entire three months of our tropical winter I wore a cardigan three times. Winter here is very mild and we live in t-shirts and thongs (thongs are flip flops for my American friends) all year round. It's also been dry a long time (we're in drought) and the yard around the house shows it. 

On Sunday Mr E raked up dead leaves, trimmed trees, and chopped up our endless supply of fallen palm fronds...

This home is surrounded by over 40 palm trees and as pretty as they are to look at they take a lot of work each weekend because palm fronds, very large palm fronds, fall every day. We don't have a mulcher so my dear love has to cut them all up by hand with secateurs whilst wearing leather gloves.

Some fronds are 12-14 feet in length...

The tall palms out front are weighted with gorgeous chandeliers of seed at the moment. 

These start off green, turn to white, and then if we get some rainfall they burst into brilliant red balls of fruit which bring a variety of bird life to feast upon. Last year there was no rain and they shriveled before getting past the white stage. 

The forecast is for a very heavy wet season this summer and autumn so we may have flourishing bird life in the trees again...

Once he'd finished the yard work (and washed my car - told you he's amazing, right?!) my beloved decided he'd re-pot all my plants on the deck. I admit that since I had pneumonia a lot of those potted plants, as well as the deck area, have been sorely neglected. So while he re-potted the plants I scrubbed the deck and the tables.

The plant on my little round table is a Geisha Girl. It has beautiful purple flowers and I'm hoping it blooms again in spring because it's one plant I've not killed (perhaps it likes me?)...

We juice a lot of pineapples each week so occasionally I plant one of the tops and now I have a half dozen growing very well indeed! I have success with the oddest things.

Our French neighbour, Arnaud, is a marine biologist with a passion for gardening. He gave me this Desert Rose when it had just two leaves and was barely an inch high. I promised I'd care for it, and fortunately for me it's a succulent (like pineapples) so it's thriving in our dry and warm winter. 

Mr E will re-pot it in a larger container next weekend...

My favourite succulents are the ones that flower.

The two Zygo Cactus (Schlumbergera) plants I bought earlier in the year are also flourishing, probably due to their tolerance of our climate and because I've been neglectful with watering. 

Mr E re-potted them as well and now they're happy in our front entrance where they get sunshine all day.

After tending to all my plants and clearing the garden of debris, my sweet man chilled out with his bonsai strikings. He makes up his special mix in the wheelbarrow and then using a single large plant he creates half a dozen or more bonsai.

There's a lot more involved but he's the expert and I'm not so I won't even try to explain all the other steps he takes to create tiny plants.

Last year he chose to bonsai Ixora plants and now we have some real sweeties but this year he'll hopefully give me some tiny azaleas to display in  our 'one day home of our own'. 

That's the other thing we did this weekend (and last weekend and the weekend before...) - we've been out in the country looking for a home. We hope this time next year to be tending our very own garden, and not that of another rental home.

God willing, as my Nana would say. 

Hope you have a lovely week, I truly do.

hugs

Reclaiming and letting go...

Eight days ago we handed Charlie-the-dog back to his owner. 

We've been his caregivers for eight months while his master was deployed to the Middle East and over that time we got quite attached to him and he to us - but never could we have imagined such a joyous reunion between a dog and his master as the one we saw when Charlie and R were reunited. 

Charlie whimpered, barked, and cried with joy, R cried with joy, Mr E and I wiped away our own tears and found we could not speak. When we drove away our hearts sang with praise for the love R and Charlie share, even though we felt a hole in our own hearts at no longer having him. 

As soon as he'd arrived to stay with us Charlie had taken up complete residence on our back deck so it was no longer a place where Mr E and I could sit and share coffee, read or relax at the end of the day. 

Now with Charlie back in his own home once again, and cradling our loss of this lovable fellow, we decided to put all our efforts this weekend into reclaiming the deck and spending time on our individual gardening pursuits - Mr E with his bonsai, and me with a few new herbs and flowers.

We've also been part of a Dengue Fever Elimination trial in our town which meant the past four months our home has hosted a mosquito release container - believe me when I say you could not move outside without walking through a wall of mozzies!  Last week the container was removed and though we still have a lot of the stinging blighters around they are far fewer day by day...

...so returning to what little bit of gardening we can achieve in this rental home was a blessing. 

Mr E's first attempt at propagating azaleas for bonsai a couple of months ago has been quite successful with new shoots appearing on his cuttings. They've been in an artificial 'greenhouse' for about 8 weeks now so they're almost ready to be planted in ceramic bonsai pots very soon...

On Saturday he began the propagation process over again with another azalea plant...

...a white one this time.

Meanwhile I refreshed my old pots and filled some new ones with herbs and flowers. The basil I'd sprouted from the seeds of last spring's harvest, and I purchased small punnets of of parsley, thyme, rosemary and mint at Bunnings for potting.

There's so much green from all the palm trees here that I thought I'd nurture some colour in pots - things like succulents, lavender and petunias are now on our front steps. I planted some petunias in an old tea pot without any base holes using a drainage idea that seems to be working for now...

 Kalanchoe...

 French lavender and a petunia seedling in the tea pot...

Last year when Mr E took me up to Cooktown I saw the most gorgeous purple flowering shrub and hoped to find it someday so I could have it in my garden. On our wandering through the Bunnings garden centre on Saturday afternoon I found it! 

Geisha Girl (Duranta Repens) now sits on the back deck where I can admire it while sipping my morning coffee...

I placed more pots of petunias on the deck as well as a few of the herbs...

...and planted plenty of coriander seeds around the aloe vera that grows in an old styrofoam box under the palm trees. More coriander seeds (we eats loads of coriander) were planted in a second foam box which also holds a broken stem from the Kalanchoe that's been planted in an empty tomato can. You never know, it might just strike if I look after it...

Final step was to scrub down our white cane chairs, buy some bright new seat cushions, and carry our round garden table up the stairs to the deck. I added a vanilla citronella candle and my much-loved-$1-from-the-op-shop-chicken-table-topper before Bob-the-dog settled comfortably beside the table on his hessian mat as though we'd been doing this for years...

From the deck we can see the mango tree which is already laden with new fruit. This time next month we'll be able to pluck some of these lovelies - though they are very early this year due to our region having it's driest wet season in history ...

My friend Heather told me there's a saying up here that if the mango trees flower early it will be a bumper wet season. I hope so. We really need rain...

As you can see, in the front yard there is no grass at all. In fact it's so dry (and hot, even now in our tropical winter) that our bird bath split in half...

...and our pineapple plant will not bear fruit.

But with plenty of regular and patient hand watering the Mock Orange tree I showed you back here is still soldiering on and has new growth...

 The sun was going down so I quickly dug out a project of mine from 2012 that I'd never used and made notes on all the things we'd planted during the day...

"My Garden" journal...

Mr E and I ended the day sharing a glass of French red and a platter of nibblies out on our deck watching the sun set...

We still miss Charlie, but life goes on. Moving forward, even by reclaiming the deck and planting some flowers, was the best thing to do, and now we have a place to take in the view every sunrise and sunset.

The Slow Day...

Mr E had a day off work this week.

It was a slow day. The kind you crave for, the kind you can't plan for, but the kind that surprises you with pleasure when it arrives.

The skies were overcast, the air warm, the street quiet.

So we made our coffee and went outside.

Mr E has been studying bonsai for a while now and his fig tree is coming along wonderfully, so he recently bought some plants to take cuttings from in order to bonsai them when roots are established.

After a week of preparing soil and a propagation mix he began with an azalea...

 

Six good cuttings prepared, and six to eight weeks of waiting while they establish roots...

The original azalea bush was given the bonsai treatment too - tap root removed and others trimmed, all flowers and buds cut away, replanted for now until he gets some more bonsai pots...

Next week he'll take cuttings from the Ixora and go through this process again...

Meanwhile I gave Bob-the-dog a bath...

...before settling on the steps near Private Charlie to read the new issue of Slow magazine.

Whilst Mr E worked on his bonsai I read aloud snippets of interesting articles to him, and after being inspired by a very touching one about the emotional healing from soups made and shared with love, we decided a nice pot of minestrone soup later in the week would be a good idea (I made it last night - yum, and very soothing) ...

Not wanting to see the discarded azalea blooms thrown away, I took them upstairs and lay them in a pretty bowl on a bed of moist paper towels. Azalea flowers don't like to get wet, so I was hoping this experiment might keep them bright for a day or so....

...and three days later they are still smiling at me from our dining table.

Slow days.

Unexpected.

Gratefully accepted.

Have a blessed weekend, and may it hold your very own slow day.