My Winter Garden

I thought I’d take a stroll with you around my garden today.  The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day, all my family were outside so I thought I would join them with my trusty camera.

It’s winter here in Australia.  I live in a fruit growing town, and everywhere you look the almond, apricot and peach trees are all about to burst into bud, but not quite yet.  Mostly, things are cold, dormant.  There is a lack of colour, the trees have no leaves – it seems very grey.

But as I was walking round my garden, I was amazed at how much colour there actually is, when you take the time to have a really good look.  It’s not big, flashy splashes of colour, the buds are small and delicate, but they are there all the same.

Come walk with me.

Our house was built about five years ago, and was completed at the same time as my second baby was born.  Because everyone knows the best time to move house is when you have a week old baby.  It’s just the done thing.  What really makes it better is to have your baby by Caesarean.  Which does not hurt at all, just between you and me.  Oh no, not at all. 

I got out of packing boxes and house cleaning pretty easily.

Our garden was landscaped not long after we moved in.  My husband is a finance man, and he firmly believes that the gardening should be a part of the cost of the house when you go for the loan.  He’s right, I think.  If it had been left to us, we would be still living knee deep in weeds.  So we paid someone to do it, and they planted a whole lot of lovely shrubby things in our front yard.

This shrub – I don’t know its name – was heaving with bees and caterpillars. I wish you could hear the front garden, just humming with bees. 

This one (I think) is a diosma.  That’s not a native, I don’t think.  I’m not really up there with plant names, so I do feel pretty good that I can actually name one.  It’s only just now starting to bloom, the colours are just starting to show through.  This one is a pale white – we also have a million pink ones. 

A much more flowery diosma.  I could have taken shot after shot of these.  I think our landscaper liked them, or else he got a cheap deal on them.  We do have many.

Every good Australian knows this one.  It’s a bottlebrush.  The technical name is Callistemon (apparently – thanks Mr. Google).  This is a tiny one, the flowers are only about two inches long.  We do have a row of larger ones, that look for all the world like a real bottle brush but that one, along with the native wattles, have already flowered this year.

Bog standard purple shrub that went from being an inside plant to an outside one (all our inside plants end up stuck in the garden – my husband can’t help himself).  I don’t know its name, it isn’t very noteworthy but I thought I’d show you anyway.

If you told me this one’s name, I’d know it.  But it escapes me now.  It starts off with a mass of teeny tiny pink buds, and then one by one they turn into this big mass of lovely flowers.  This one is a humming plant too – totally covered in bees though they wouldn’t sit still long enough for me to take their photos.

Big mass of flowers slowly coming out and showing their faces.  This would look so pretty in a vase, but you only need to look at it the wrong way and it drops all its petals and buds everywhere.  Some plants are just better staying on the bush.

I’ve had to split my posts because blogger cracked a major mental.  So see you on the other side!…….