Tag: Garden

Gardening diary

18 March

Planted long overdue primroses.

Trimmed Sedum and Hydrangeas.

Potted carnations cuttings

19 March

Watered all indoor plants.

Fed liquid feed to most outdoor plants – roses, clematis, Acer, chrysanthemums, campanulas, etc.

Did top dressing with solid feed for all Hydrangeas.

Topped up wood chip mulch.

20 March

Planted saxifrage on leaf much. Trying to create a carpet.

Planted a few other ground cover plants to preempt the weeds

De-weeded the front flower bed (weed = ever spreading Japanese anemone)

The newly planted primroses and a white campanula that I hope spreads a bit.
The newly planted primroses and a white campanula that I hope spreads a bit.

Garden update

Today…

Two new leaves in one of the hardy geranium cuttings. It’s made it! 🙂

First flowers bloomed in the new viola. Violet and yellow beauties 🙂

Moved the last three yellow begonias and the Dianthus from flower bed to tubs. The snails have been busy butchering them 🙁

The white mustard has flowered beautifully. It was nearly dead in January; now it’s dense and getting whiter all the time 🙂

A rose I’ve been trying to revive/keep-alive for at least 3 years, produced its first bud in many years. It’s a beautiful light pink bud. Rewarding me for the effort, clearly 🙂

Earlier…

Moved all the orange and one yellow begonia from flower bed to one big pot. Two of them were near death, all were suffering. One still might not survive. Damned slugs, snails and earwigs!

The petunias and bidens in the window basket produced their first flowers. Bidens are pretty yellow, petunias surprised with a Burgundy red/pink with veins 🙂

The geraniums are blooming big time! All of them—7 surviving from last year and 8 from this. Loads of beautiful red flowers everywhere 🙂

The three campanulas are all nicely settled in, blooming and growing. Hardy, self-seeding, and beautiful blue and violet flowers. They’re amongst my favourite plants this year.

The lobelias in the other window basket are like one huge (South Indian politician sized) garland of blue and violet.

After mowing the lawn every two weeks, I haven’t mowed it in 4 weeks now. It’s still now growing. We really need some good rain 🙁

They live!

We have a lot of lovely rose plants in our backyard. The flower beds in the front are largely empty. In early November, Paul and I planted a few rose cuttings from the back yard roses in the front yard flower beds. He advised me there was very low likelihood that any of them will survive or take root.

I read somewhere that roses like acidic soil; mixing coffee grounds in the soil around them is good for them. So I’ve been doing that occasionally.

Today when I went to distribute some coffee grounds around the roses, I noticed a few fresh leaves sprouting out of a few of those cuttings.

They’re alive! They may even take root! We may have successfully added new plants (without buying them) to the yard!

I’m happy :)

Welcome Autumn

Today is Autumn equinox, the traditional start of Autumn up here. The weather makers seem to be well informed of the dates.

We had beautifully sunny weather all of last week. Then yesterday it rained on most of our run. Now there’s a forecast of rain for this whole week.

It’s getting chilly in the night. I’ll take out one of my duvets this week.

It’s getting darker in the mornings. I can keep the south-facing window in front of my desk open all morning—seeing the slowly shades turn from black to dark blue black, then through various shades black and blue, into bright blue. Or if it’s cloudy, into a dull light blueish grey.

The leaves had already started turning colour. It’ll still be a month or more before the autumnal colours really shine but the shades are already visible occasionally.

The garden has noticed as well. There aren’t as many apples on the tree as before. The petunias are almost gone. Berries are fully ripe, which means they’ll soon start turning black and dry. The begonias are still thriving but the geraniums have reduced flowering. And the grass in the backyard never fully loses the moistness from the morning dew.

One of the good bits about autumn—apart from the beautiful colours and dark mornings—is that it’s my favourite running weather again. I don’t need to care about the warm and hot days. It’s the season of running in cool fresh air, with an occasional shower and often lots of mud. The runs will be harder—summer’s hard ground provides better support than the muddy or boggy autumnal trails. But the runs will also be far more pleasant. Continue reading Welcome Autumn