Gardening
I've been spending a bit more time working in my garden lately.I actually moved into the house I now live at over two years ago, and attempted to personalise the garden a bit then, but due to time, marriage and other pressures I didn't get a lot done, and what I did do died in the drought. I haven't been too concerned about it: this house has been here for 20 years so there's a well-established Queensland garden here. For those that don't know, I'm in the temperate/subtropical border, so I can grow tropical plants (with some care) and English-style plants (if I'm careful where I put them). One of the parameters I used when looking for a place was that it wasn't too humid to grow roses without excessive Black spot sprays and it can be done here, if I'm careful with placement.
I was just about to put in some banana palms until my friend from Singapore told me of some of the ghostly tales attributed to the plants there, which are just terrific, if not a wee bit spooky. :-)
I used to grow veggies a lot, although not terribly successfully, again mostly due to drought. I was going to put one in this winter but my dam pump (yes, I mean dam pump, not damn pump LOL) went *pftht* and I'm not using the tank water for veggies--winters are dry up here and I had to get water trucked in as it was. However, my tanks are full, my pump is fixed, and the rainy season is upon us (read: storms :-D) and so I'm putting in new plants and looking to establish the veggies again.
I tend to mix veggies, flowers and herbs as well as using "formal" (well, at least separate) beds for things that need some space, like corn and pumpkins and watermelons. if you're careful, and good at it, and choose the right varieties of seeds, you can grow almost 2 tonnes of food for $20 worth of seeds. Of course, I'm not necessarily careful or good at it, but I'm getting there.
The thing that amazes me up here is that, because of the rainfall and soil temps, you can almost watch stuff grow. In Canberra (with its English-like winters), you put a tomato seedling in, wait 2 months, keep it protected from frosts or start them early in heated sauna thingies, and wait... and wait.... and wait... and if a late November (equivalent to June-ish in the NH) frost doesn't kill them you might get a tomato by Christmas. Here, you drop the tomatoes that aren't fit to eat anymore to the chooks, and if they miss a seed, you have an edible tomato within a month! No exaggeration. Boggles the mind.
Makes mowing the grass a pain though.
Anyhow, last weekend I put in some Scented Pelargoniums. "Pelargonium" is the family that geraniums come from (you know, those plants that everyone's grandma grows in pots on the verandah). These are species pelagoniums taht have a scent (and taste!) in their leaves. They are varied, from rose, lemon rose, and apple through to nutmeg, cinnamon, chocolate and peppermint. And edible, so you can put, say, a few rose-scented leaves in the base of a cake tin and the taste goes into the cake (Turkish Delight-like) or use the lemon ones in iced tea, etc. Varied in shape and flowers as well.
I also threw in some species strawberries (including a yellow variety that the birds won't eat) and some lettuce seeds, and a sweet violet variety (I left 20 differnt sweet violets varieties back in Canberra). All under the frangipanis, a gorgeous-smelling plant I could never grow down south. And there's a Jacaranda tree in full flower as well--they have a beautiful purple miasma, and again, a tree that didn't grow in Canberra. The difference is, up here, you lose the Autumn colour but, hey, you can't have everything.
posted by Heather @ 10:07 am
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