grandiflora

Moving to.......

2007-03-14T21:18:00.000+11:00

Following the advice of anaglyph and linda,
(who started this blog with me) I am moving to http://gflora.wordpress.com
Do stop by!

The supermarket

2007-03-04T12:28:00.000+11:00

Saturday morning is not a good time to go the supermarket. There are lots of people and the contents of their trolleys (yes I'm a nosy parker and judgmental too) fill me with despair.

As a general rule, we avoid the supermarket. The co-op is our place to buy food and the like. More and more local stuff from farms, gardens and dry goods etc in bulk too. I love that. Bring your own bags and (glass )containers and your away. Unfortunately they do not carry items such as toilet paper, so the supermarket is unavoidable.

So back to the supermarket - over lit, smelling of plastic and strong chemicals. It is anxiety making. Our approach is like a sting operation -go to aisle #?, get the said items and quickly assess which checkout will offer a speedy exit. On this particular visit, something went wrong and we got stuck. Person ahead of us required a price check for a dog collar.

This gave us time to observe the usual trolleys piled with crap, over-processed foods (I use that term loosely), soft-drinks etc. We also spotted a new trend - the purported environmentally conscious trolley filled with unbleached toilet paper, no phosphate washing liquids, microfibre cloths but the 'food' products were all processed and instant-ish meals. Risotto mix - just add water, nuke 'em lasagna and so on. Care about watercourses? Sure, but where do they think the waste products of their 'food' consumption ends up?

Okay, this is probably not the sort of conversation you want to have in a checkout line and that combined with the fluro lighting caused something in us to SNAP! Once outside we turned to each other and said, "&$%^*&()() I can't stand it. Can't go there again"

I have now found a small company that sells recycled paper products, so with any luck the hell hole will be a distant memory. If that doesn't work, I've got a couple of options - one involves sending the bloke to do the buying, the other involves old phone books!

Return to scheduled programming

2007-02-19T23:51:00.000+11:00

Calendula Officinalis

The reliable activity that predicts rain

Banksia ?

Rasp Fern (Doodia aspera)

Line drying- the minutiae of life.

2007-02-19T13:21:00.000+11:00

In the Venetian way

My dear husband was strolling around our back garden/yard when he overheard a conversation between two of our neighbours. Neighbour 1 was hanging her clothes out, using a drying rack (to catch the wind and sun) on her deck to dry her clothes. Neighbour 2 seeing her doing this called out, "If you need to dry things, just bring them over, we have a dryer." Neighbourly + friendly? Neighbour 1 graciously thanked her but the tone of her voice suggested to my husband, that she found the notion as absurd as he did - summer, why the hell are you using a dryer?

Now, there was alot of "it's summer, it's warm, there's a light breeze - it doesn't put CO2 into the atmosphere" style ranting from my bloke when he came inside. I agreed but then voiced that some people (and in some instances, local by-laws and the like) don't like seeing the mechanics of living (or their neighbours' underwear) flapping in the breeze, obscuring views and so on. The response to that was "Yeah, but those same people go to Venice and take pictures of clothes drying across canals, thinking it's picturesque." Good point.

Line drying is good for you, your clothes and the environment* and in the Blue Mountains it's especially good- you dry your clothes amongst eucalyptus, acacias and pines etc. (I'm not a fan of the radiata pine but in their defence they do smell good). The scent of your laundry dried in such a way is to be appreciated and can't be replicated by any manufactured thing. It's up there with home grown carrots....we pulled one out yesterday. Sorry, no pictures. It was eaten in a flash.

*Every small bit counts and more importantly, helps prevent that terrible hopelessness.

Rain. Rain. Rain.

2007-02-12T14:40:00.000+11:00

It has been raining off and on for a couple of days even small amounts are truly appreciated - it is so dry. Today it's falling constantly and heavily - solid falls the weather people would say. I'd like to say it feels like it's the rain has set in, I hope I haven't jinxed it.

Although the rain is great, I'm worried if the weather turns too cool, too soon the tomatoes will not ripen. They need heat and I'm growing them in a marginal pocket that doesn't have the advantage of full sun. The ferns however are loving this weather. I'd swear that they throw up new growth overnight! Divided loyalties.

After the rain clears, I can feel some weeding coming on. The moist ground makes it so much easier to do.... and of course, weeding is preferable to studying for my law exams.

A rant.....plus some potatoes!

2007-02-08T08:58:00.000+11:00

Finally, someone bloody said it, we mine it here - coal that is- use it to produce cheap electricity in Australia but we also sell it around the globe. Then, our federal government (who amongst other laudable achievements refuses to ratify the Kyoto protocol) has the audacity to blame China and India, for burning the coal which we sold to them, that they use to process the other raw materials we sold them, to produce the crap that we buy and don' t need for being big time polluters. Ummm......? (entire Tim Flannery interview on Lateline )

What is further galling, is how the commodities boom that has buoyed the Australian economy and funded an untold amount of government largess (especially at election time) is spun as some sort of government achievement - they take the credit but assume none of the responsibility for their actions. The spending decisions of this federal government are a topic for another time!

Recently, in the NSW Land & Environment Court a ruling was made that as part of the assessment process for new mines, the greenhouse emissions that will be generated from extraction to final use need to be included in the environmental impact statement. It has to be accounted for. It goes somewhere and yes, the atmosphere is common to the whole planet - interconnected no less. The state government hasn't challenged the ruling yet but instead amended legislation to get around it - very quietly in the weeks before Xmas. They want to be seen to be green especially with an state election coming up - the environment is a hot topic!

Did I mention that I love potatoes? They are such glorious tubers and when you grow them yourself, you understand why the French call them "pomme de terre". They are crispy like apples. I found this great book about potatoes and now want to try out different varieties.

I harvested the crop two days ago and we got about 40- 60 kgs of spuds. My hopes for a more bountiful harvest were dashed when we go some 'unseasonal' heavy rain and hot weather in November and the plants started to produce lots of leaf. Heavy application of straw followed - don't know if it helped increase tuber production.

The nice thing, whilst digging out the potatoes, was noticing how the soil had improved, mainly due to the increase in earthworms (and some double digging / manure/ compost application) They are truly marvellous creatures.

Some reasons to......

2007-01-30T10:59:00.000+11:00

.......garden (organically). Eat locally and eat well. Remember that gardening IS a political act. All that and more can be found in the garden. Go forth - the weather's lovely.

Moreover......

2007-01-18T15:52:00.000+11:00

I'm just in love with that word. Not sure why. I've just submitted two assignments for my law course and included 'moreover' at appropriate times. I'm wondering, could you include it in conversation or does it just look good and function well as a written word?

Summer garden joy. I know that the weather has been weird but it means I've got a bumper crop of zucchini 'Black Beauty' (yum!) and little pumpkins 'Golden Nugget'(still growing). It's been so warm up here that I'm beginning to wish I'd planted eggplants.

I'll post some photos from the garden, early next week (once the husband + camera come back from visiting his family )

N.

Things are looking.......

2006-11-26T21:04:00.000+11:00

This David Austin rose Lilac Rose has always flowered well but now it has started producing these huge flowers. I have had it for several years but we moved it this last winter to a sunnier spot. It has never produced flowers this size!

The flowers start as a pale pink tight bud and as they open become more lilac hued. In fact, the colour is similar to that of a bridesmaid's dress my cousin chose for me (+ 3 others) to wear to her wedding but let's not go there!

The roses do have delicious honey-like scent - beautiful. It's showy and blousy (it's a double) before all the petals fall off. I love seeing the soft pinky lilac petals on the ground.

I have even managed to strike cuttings from this rose. The plant was doing well until a possum or wallaby ate the soft young leaves. It's now wrapped in a cone of chicken wire......hopefully it will recover enough to grow, if not flower.

I like Roger Phillips' web site. Lots of pictures of roses and some information. Good for identifying them. He has a similar one on mushrooms and other guides should be available soon.

Garlic- does it keep fires away?

2006-11-21T06:03:00.000+11:00

I dug these up over the weekend. Got quite alot done but it was strange gardening while bushfires were burning about 5kms north of my house. The sky, particularly since Saturday night, has been full of smoke from backburning operations that were started to contain the fire, the sunlight was a golden 70's Kodak orange and fine ash occassionally would rain down. All of this was happening whilst I gardened away! We weren't (aren't) under any immediate or real threat but it was an odd experience. Nero-esque!

Garlic tops flopped and leaves started to yellow so I pulled them up. I had hoped for bigger heads of garlic but at least the heads have separated into little cloves, rather than the original cloves just getting bigger. This made room for some tomato plants that I've grown from seed (started indoors) - Brandywine + Tigerella....I can't tell which is which....will have to wait until they fruit. Better labelling next time.

The Front Garden

2006-10-24T16:44:00.000+10:00

I can take no credit for these gum (eucalyptus) trees that surround my house....they were already here. The front garden was a mess of holly, cherry laurel, radiata pine and monbretia when we bought the house. These are all classified as weeds in the Blue Mountains due to their invasive nature and ability to strangle the bush.

Our main task has been to remove the invaders ( has taken years) and re-generate with local native species. Some have been planted while some have come up on their own as the weeds were removed. I have no ability to simulate the wonder of nature so the front garden is a bushy, informal garden that attempts to sit within the landscape - but it's a garden!

We don't water the front garden at all which is why local indigenous species have been used. More planting needs to be done - it's on the list!

Okay - this is native mint but not the local kind. It's Prosanthera Rotundifolia not
P. lasianthos which has white flowers. I planted it when we first arrived and I still like it's showy purple flowers. When you crush the leaves, they smell minty.

The front path.

Spring.....here we go!

2006-10-12T19:09:00.000+10:00

Spring is here and I have resumed my gardening with vigour. Here is a picture of the lovely hellebores which have never failed to thrill me for most of winter and don't they look super with the tulip. Why do tulips never fail to seduce me? I always say that I'm not going to bother with them and then they look like this! I love this red - why can't I find a lipstick in this shade?

Will post more from the front garden (plants indigenous to the Upper Blue Mountains) and the back vegetable garden....gotta work out the digital camera. Nada

Weather

2006-08-10T09:09:00.000+10:00

I've been thinking about global warming and climate change.....it's too big
an issue to deal with here plus I am not a scientist......but I have noticed
the definite changes in my area's weather.

It's winter here and cold - not Antarctic - but cold nonetheless. It's also
been wet quite wet which is unusual for a Blackheath winter. Winter is
usually dry and we receive most of our rainfall in the summer
months.....something to do with being a cool climate rainforest area. I
love that it is usually misty in the summer evenings and at Xmas time I can
only find my way home via the light displays on some houses. No comment on
Xmas lights in general!

Odd? Yes. Alarming? Maybe. Long time locals - not me I've only lived here
for 8 years- make comments about the summers being hotter and the winters
wetter. Interesting observations and one of the skills you develop when you
set yourself to gardening. The weather took on greater importance or was it
that my awareness of it became more acute? My serious ( I use that term
loosely) gardening began with my move from the city to the country......a
familiar story and so started a changing relationship with the world around

Here are some some Blackheath links - check out my town......
http://www.blackheathweather.com/
http://www.blackheathphilosophy.com.au/moreblackheathphotos.html

Chicanery!

2006-07-04T16:05:00.000+10:00

Linda writes...A month ago I decided to pull the gardenias out of our oh too shady courtyard garden - they were the first new things I planted there (oh optimism!) and although we have had a few blooms each year it just seemed unfair. And I found the perfect place for them - the nearest chicane in our street. It gets much more sun and had been recently denuded of its strelitzias (something to do with traffic and being able to see around corners). Now the chicane has 5 new gardenias, a bunch of spring bulbs, a lot of fertiliser (nice and organic of course) and some rosemary. Not as much rosemary as we planted as already someone has nicked a plant, but rosemary nevertheless. We are officially guerilla gardeners! (well with council permission).

Solitary citrus...

2006-05-25T09:11:00.000+10:00

Nada writes...

My garden is steep. It slopes eastward and is surrounded by or is in amongst quite a few tall gum (eucalyptus) trees. It's quite shady so it's somewhat of a folly to grow citrus there. We made our choices....lemon (essential), mandarin and a grapefruit. Placed them in sunny spots and hoped for the best. We've had some lemons, no grapefruit which has since been moved and seems alot happier now and a few mandarins. We have been somewhat haphazard with the watering, so although the mandarin set a reasonable amount of fruit this year....most of it fell off, what was left was attacked by birds......so here, we have our last surviving and ripening mandarin. Isn't it a picture! I'm really looking forward to eating it.

Gardening Tools for the Collective Unconscious

2006-05-05T09:13:00.000+10:00

At the Collectors' Plant Fair in Bilpin a couple of weeks ago, we came across Richard Bird and Lynne Walker, The Old Mole Tool Company people. Richard produced tools from a special briefcase that were more than a thousand years old for me to hold, and even a flint used by a nice Neanderthal chap. It was like being in a museum where you could open the cases and touch everything! There were a number of lovely things available for purchase and one in particular caught James' eye - our mate Karl Jung has been doing a spot of secateur design, Dead Ringers style. An archetypal pair of secateurs you might say. Of course there are some who argue that it may not be the same Herr Jung, but I can feel it in me waters that it is...

Plastic Fantastic?

2006-05-03T13:33:00.000+10:00

Plastic Bags. Ubiquitous. Dangerous. Menace to the environment. Useful. Light. There is an ambivalence towards these items at best, at worst - well, people want them outlawed. Really it's not the fault of the bag. It’s not the fault of the polymer. It's more our attitude to plastic bags and the function that we assign to them. They are treated as this disposable, easily dispensed thing. Want one, have another...no really!

Don't get me wrong, I've got all manner of natural fibre carry bags that I use for my shopping. I, very proudly, have refused plastic bags for years - some would even say, smugly! I recognize the real threat they pose to wildlife, landfill etc., but what about if we still maintained our vigilance against them but tilted our attitude slightly?

Do this. When you somehow find a plastic bag in your possession (ok you didn't take the shopping basket/bags to the shop and other shoppers gave you disapproving stares for your apparent lack of environmental concern ) - don't use it as a rubbish bin liner, USE IT. Then, if need be WASH IT and RE-USE it Seriously, hang it on the line to dry. Let it flap in the breeze and soak up the sun. Use it again and again. It's still a material resource and shouldn't be wasted. When you do this, as I did recently, your entire attitude to them changes. I still don’t want a drawer full of them but the ones I do have, I’ve started to wash and re-use. They will fall apart with re-use, but they last for ages....some newer plastic bags are made of corn starch and are meant to be compostable.....I haven’t tried that...I’m on the minimise, use, reuse, wash, reuse scheme. I am not alone on the plastic bag washing, read “Living the Good Life” and check out this family’s web site.

Sure, I know that plastics are problematic. All aren't totally recyclable, they don't decompose, they off-gas, can have a xeno-oestrogenic effect – simply, they hang around. Plastics are by-products of our reliance on fossil fuels, chemicals and an attitude that everything is infinite, there is more to be had. Even plastic recycling is less than perfect, with the component materials often preventing higher re-use recycling due to contamination + costs. For example, recycled plastics instead of being used for a higher end use, say like bottles, are made into items like speed bumps/humps and once they wear out they go to landfill. Plastic then is still a landfill problem because we haven’t worked out how to increase the plastic recycling so that it produces input quality materials every time. So you recycle a bottle and it’s made into a bottle over and over again. The book “Cradle to Cradle” is made of a polymer that is designed to be like paper and can be recycled over and over again to produce books. Reading this book began to change my attitude to materials, with me realizing all resources should be used responsibly and sustainably. The writers are world leaders on sustainability.

Plastic is a complex material and we need to change the way we deal with it if it’s not to be the scourge it has become. It will take effort, not unlike gardening........and yes I prefer a woollen jumper to an acrylic one.

The Tulip Memorial

2006-04-12T15:05:00.000+10:00

I, Linda, just finished reading Anna Pavord's The Tulip, courtesy of Nada - gorgeously illustrated book detailing the history of, you guessed it, the tulip (which incidentally, was apocryphally misnamed by Belgian bloke Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq in the 16th Century - Oggy pointed to a Turkish chap's turban and asked him the name of the flower tucked in it - said chap answered "tulband" which means 'turban' and we've been stuck with the name ever since. (In Turkish, the tulip was a 'lale'). The Turks thought tulips should look like this:

Oh fickle fashion! The Dutch decided they loved the crazy flamed and feathered tulips that looked like this...

...and they paid a fortune for them - who needs a mansion in Amsterdam when you can have a single tulip bulb? "What?" I hear you say. "Tulips don't look like that!" And you'd be right. The reason tulips did look like these (with hundreds of variations) is a virus spread by aphids. Not that anyone discovered that until about 1920, when the tulip fashion had changed again and no one cared anymore. Nowadays nearly all tulip growers eliminate these so-called "broken" tulips from their crops (did you know that HALF of Holland's land mass is dedicated to the growing of tulips?) and so it seems does everyone else.

Determined to procure some flaming beauties for myself, I scoured the Internet and came across the delightful people from Old House Gardens. This is what they told me;

Hi Linda,

I'm glad that you enjoyed Anna's book. If you're interested in knowing more about Tulipomania you might be interested in Mike Dash's "Tulipomania" as well. Anna is mostly correct. Broken tulips are no longer commercially available. However, we still carry the broken tulips, and so do two other companies in the world. All broken tulips that are currently being sold are all from the historic collections at the Hortus Bulborum in the Netherlands which is a historic botanic garden in the Netherlands. The tulip breaking virus is still in their stock of broken tulips, but it is somewhat segregated from the main production fields of flowers that is the Netherlands top agricultural pursuit.
http://www.oldhousegardens.com/hortus.asp
http://www.hortus-bulborum.nl/

Broken tulips (English Florist tulips) are also still wildly popular with the Wakefield and North of England Tulip Society in England. They have small supplies which they will share with friends and other interested parties, they are just not commercially available.
http://www.tulipsociety.co.uk/

I hope this gives you a little more hope that these precious flowers still exist, however, they are going to be almost impossible to get to you in Australia. I hope that you can take a little solace in knowing that they are still being grown. If you ever get the chance to visit the Netherlands in April, be sure to take some time to visit the Hortus Bulborum.

Sincerely,

Rachel Murphy
Old House Gardens.

Nada, however, seems to have discovered that lovely virus in Australia...

Ahh...the tulips. I bought a few when I moved to my house in the Blue Mountains. Cool climate - perfect tulip country. A few coloured ones..bit of this, bit of that. Gardening with no real plan. Some in pots, others in the ground. They were a very welcome sight after the grey winter - even attracting some bees. Something curious happened. One yellow tulip had a flame of red. A crack. It looked good. I liked it. When they died down I lifted them and stored them to plant out the following autumn.

Being a novice gardener, I began to read gardening books. A lot of gardening books. I read Michael Pollan's "The Botany of Desire" which lead me to Anna Pavord. After reading that I became tulip obsessed. I learnt about the broken tulip and hoped that my yellow tulip was indeed such an item. I ordered more tulips for the autumn...planted out the collection and waited. There were more of them....they looked beautiful but were infected. A crisis ensued. Should I mark them? Should they be separated? Was it fair to keep planting them out among the healthy bulbs, knowing they would infect the others? What was I to do? Look to Nietzsche for answers?

I did mark them out but I'd decided to keep them, to plant them in pots, where they could still be enjoyed. An imperfect solution but the lure of their beauty, the element of chance, the thrill....I began to understand the Dutch tulip madness.

The foliage of the tulips died down, I dutifully performed the lifting and storing, being mindful to keep the infected ones seperated and put them in assorted thick paper bags. I stored them on a shelf under the house.

Now where we live, borders the National Park...there is native fauna.....possums regularly get in under my house - they scamper about, hiss and breathe in a very creepy way. We don't usually mind but come tulip planting time, the following year, I began to revise my feelings about the possums. These creatures had eaten all the bulbs.....and left their droppings as a calling card. It was a tasty feast for them. Gardening was revealing itself to be full of these conundrums. Leisure activity. Ha!

So these pictures are all that's left of those first tulips. I finally got over it and did order some other tulips but have never had the "crack"/ break" since. I live in hope....

The watering can of our dreams

2006-04-03T11:54:00.000+10:00

I (Nada) was looking for a new watering can. I was fed up with various models that I owned and didn't deliver the goods. What was I after? A watering can that could produce a gentle fine spray, that looked good, that was easy to use and lug around my rather steep block but most importantly, one that had a rose that didn't fall off. I wanted to wave goodbye to washed out seeds, traumatised seedlings..........you get the picture!

Enter Gardening Australia and Jerry Coleby-Williams.

He did a story about cuttings in February 2005 and used a watering can that seemed to work. It was beautiful and I had to have it.
So I emailed the show, thinking that it was a prop and they would be able to tell me where they bought it from. Ha! It's our woefully under funded public broadcaster and it wasn't a prop for the show but JCW's very own watering can..........here's the response from the man himself.

Dear Nada,

Thanks for your discerning query - you're not the first to ask either! My can is a Haws watering can. Haws is an English firm who make the best watering cans for nursery work. You can get them painted green, but I find the paint splits and peels in time so I always stick to the galvanised ones. They're not cheap - the Finance Manager at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney always complained about the price, but I insisted that the nursery staff exclusively use them. They feel good and they handle very well. The oval brass rose is designed for watering delicate seedlings in trays without flooding or washing them out of the soil and it can be used for routine watering. You simply adjust the droplet size by facing the rose either up or down. Look after your can and rose and they will last a lifetime. I got the one you saw from a specialist firm called Sage Horticultural in 1992 and it cost $135. Contact: Sage Horticultural, 121 Herald Street, Cheltenham, Vic, 3192; Ph: (03) 9553 3777; Fax: (03) 9555 3013

Good luck and happy gardening,

Jerry.

He was right! It was expensive and it would be sometime before I could claim the title “Proud owner of”. Ooooh, I really, really had to have it!

And of course, because Nada and I (Linda) agree on everything, I had to get one too. When the thought of Christmas and its presenty bits arrived in my head it was greeted by this..watering can! And so I suggested to James that perhaps such an item might be essential for our petit jardin. And of course, Nada being the queen of researchers, it had to be THAT watering can. Unfortunately mine arrived before hers, which was controversial. For months Nada had talked about the Haws beauty and now I had one. She didn't. Controversial.

That all changed in the fullness of time, though, and an appropriately few moments later, she did have hers.

IRRIGATE!!!! IRRIGATE!!!!! It works a treat and is indispensible, now that Sydney is under Level 3 watering restrictions.

In the beginning......

2006-03-16T10:32:00.001+11:00

This doesn't look like Blandifordia grandiflora unless you own a microscope. But Blandifordia grandiflora, more commonly known as Christmas Bells, is a lovely Australian plant....not that either of us have it in our gardens. But we like it and it is after all our local grandiflora.