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Garden update! Finally! Like, a month after I finished the last plantings!
New view from the studio :D The last bromeliad finally carked it, after suffering horribly through a 40+ degree day when I accidentally left the blind up and it roasted. Its roots fried and it never fully recovered, until it finally rotted from the inside out and I gave it the heave-ho. This new bromeliad won't suffer the same fate. The fern was reduced to about three leaves after that day, but it's recovered and is bushy and green again. Right outside the window in the hanging basket are two strawberries! With any luck, millipedes won't get them before they're ripe. I've never seen them around here, and the strawberries are in a basket, so CROSS FINGERS. And then onto...
MY FAVOURITE CORNER <3 <3 Wall of cyclamens and soon-to-be-lush corner of ferns and gorgeous leafy things. I have no idea what happened to that cyclamen right in the middle. The others are all happy as anything, within a day they'd all turned their stalks up to face the sunlight, and that one just went '...nope' and all its flowers flopped. It's still alive, but no flowers =( I'm in love with all those leafy things, too. They're going to be so stunning when they grow into themselves.
Pulling back a bit. Observe my incredibly floppy bluebells up the top. It'd been raining all day. One of them's half-flowered and another 10-ish have buds, so yay! Mum says they've never flowered for her XD The baby's tears are putting out little tendrils of growth, so the prospect of spring has me excited. That's when it'll really come together, when I have a thick beautiful mat of green.
My other favourite, and the other one I can see from my desk. Fuchsias up the top, more cyclamens in the middle, and beautiful leafy creatures in the bottom two. The one right of centre at the bottom didn't make it, sadly, but it was an experiment. It was sort of like the one on the right but with much darker leaves. The one above that, though, is an aluminium plant and I am SO proud of this purchase. Mostly they seem to be intended as terrarium plants, so you get them as tiny little things that are basically a stick with two or three leaves, and they cost, like, $5. That beautiful mass of leaves, already established and still happy after a month of living outside in August in the Hills, was I think $18. PERFECT. I also have a smaller one on the big pallet to the right (first outside pic, next to the one with pink leaves).
Turning backwards to see my happy wall of pansies, and the cyclamens standing out so BRIGHT and gorgeous, back towards the shaded area.
Service end, with the wonkiest of herb gardens XD I had to search everywhere to get those wooden crates. Pallets, easy, grab as many as you want/can fit in the car! Wooden boxes? Noooooo not parting with them. They cost a motsa, apparently. Finally managed to get these two from a local greengrocer, yay <3 Just planted some basil seeds in it yesterday, and everything else is reasonably happy, excepting the fact it's winter. You can see the stalks of lemongrass there, looking dead, but it did that last winter and then suddenly shot up 10cm over one week, so it'll be fine. The chives were so rootbound! Poor loves. No wonder they weren't happy. Plenty of space for them, now, so they'll thrive again I'm sure.
So that's that! All it needs now, aside from time to grow into itself, is table and chairs. Moving right along, front garden! Which I realise I've never actually taken a photo of. Here it is as taken by the land agent before I bought it. The bit of building on the right is unit 1, but the rest is all mine. Living room through the blinds, and bedroom right behind the tree. I have all those pot plants with the long stalks, not the leafier one on the left, though I still have its pot. Also that random column thing was not left behind (what even is it?).
So this Saturday, Mum and Dad are coming around to help chop down the tree! And I was hoping to get rid of the scoria on Sunday but turns out it's Fathers' Day, whoops. So next weekend, then.
The plan here is white pebbles with stripes of red river pebbles, which I went and collected a literal bucket-load of over the weekend. Where the boring tree/bush is now I'll put a lemon and a lime tree, then plant the succulents in more lines, which are looking far more fabulous now than they did in that photo, along with more succulents. So it'll be very geometric and designer-y. It'll be weird planting things in flat ground XD I don't doubt that Creepy Old Man will steal my lemons, but such is life. With any luck he won't know what to do with limes =/
New view from the studio :D The last bromeliad finally carked it, after suffering horribly through a 40+ degree day when I accidentally left the blind up and it roasted. Its roots fried and it never fully recovered, until it finally rotted from the inside out and I gave it the heave-ho. This new bromeliad won't suffer the same fate. The fern was reduced to about three leaves after that day, but it's recovered and is bushy and green again. Right outside the window in the hanging basket are two strawberries! With any luck, millipedes won't get them before they're ripe. I've never seen them around here, and the strawberries are in a basket, so CROSS FINGERS. And then onto...
MY FAVOURITE CORNER <3 <3 Wall of cyclamens and soon-to-be-lush corner of ferns and gorgeous leafy things. I have no idea what happened to that cyclamen right in the middle. The others are all happy as anything, within a day they'd all turned their stalks up to face the sunlight, and that one just went '...nope' and all its flowers flopped. It's still alive, but no flowers =( I'm in love with all those leafy things, too. They're going to be so stunning when they grow into themselves.
Pulling back a bit. Observe my incredibly floppy bluebells up the top. It'd been raining all day. One of them's half-flowered and another 10-ish have buds, so yay! Mum says they've never flowered for her XD The baby's tears are putting out little tendrils of growth, so the prospect of spring has me excited. That's when it'll really come together, when I have a thick beautiful mat of green.
My other favourite, and the other one I can see from my desk. Fuchsias up the top, more cyclamens in the middle, and beautiful leafy creatures in the bottom two. The one right of centre at the bottom didn't make it, sadly, but it was an experiment. It was sort of like the one on the right but with much darker leaves. The one above that, though, is an aluminium plant and I am SO proud of this purchase. Mostly they seem to be intended as terrarium plants, so you get them as tiny little things that are basically a stick with two or three leaves, and they cost, like, $5. That beautiful mass of leaves, already established and still happy after a month of living outside in August in the Hills, was I think $18. PERFECT. I also have a smaller one on the big pallet to the right (first outside pic, next to the one with pink leaves).
Turning backwards to see my happy wall of pansies, and the cyclamens standing out so BRIGHT and gorgeous, back towards the shaded area.
Service end, with the wonkiest of herb gardens XD I had to search everywhere to get those wooden crates. Pallets, easy, grab as many as you want/can fit in the car! Wooden boxes? Noooooo not parting with them. They cost a motsa, apparently. Finally managed to get these two from a local greengrocer, yay <3 Just planted some basil seeds in it yesterday, and everything else is reasonably happy, excepting the fact it's winter. You can see the stalks of lemongrass there, looking dead, but it did that last winter and then suddenly shot up 10cm over one week, so it'll be fine. The chives were so rootbound! Poor loves. No wonder they weren't happy. Plenty of space for them, now, so they'll thrive again I'm sure.
So that's that! All it needs now, aside from time to grow into itself, is table and chairs. Moving right along, front garden! Which I realise I've never actually taken a photo of. Here it is as taken by the land agent before I bought it. The bit of building on the right is unit 1, but the rest is all mine. Living room through the blinds, and bedroom right behind the tree. I have all those pot plants with the long stalks, not the leafier one on the left, though I still have its pot. Also that random column thing was not left behind (what even is it?).
So this Saturday, Mum and Dad are coming around to help chop down the tree! And I was hoping to get rid of the scoria on Sunday but turns out it's Fathers' Day, whoops. So next weekend, then.
The plan here is white pebbles with stripes of red river pebbles, which I went and collected a literal bucket-load of over the weekend. Where the boring tree/bush is now I'll put a lemon and a lime tree, then plant the succulents in more lines, which are looking far more fabulous now than they did in that photo, along with more succulents. So it'll be very geometric and designer-y. It'll be weird planting things in flat ground XD I don't doubt that Creepy Old Man will steal my lemons, but such is life. With any luck he won't know what to do with limes =/