WILD FLOWER WEDNESDAY OCT 2010

Scilla natalensis first came into our garden as something gleaned from the veldt (or the neighbours?) by old Phineas in his early days with us. He told us it was a wild plant – and he’d known the area all his life. He planted the first large bulbs in the top corner of what is today Trudie’s Garden – the closest plant in fact to our original trailer ‘cottage’. They are still, nearly 30 years later, our proudest stand. Here they are, photographed on the 12th of this month.

 When the pine trees across the dam were cut down, the arboretum was planted. In the first spring – or to be quite truthful: in that first year it was ‘first summer’ – scillas that had lain dormant, or at least unseen, beneath the pines for 25 years flowered tentatively. Over the next few years more and more appeared in the arboretum, soon developing to full strength.

This picture was taken one day less than four years before the above shot, and of the exact same plants. These dates are important, because moisture makes a huge difference to the flowering time and the size of the leaves at flowering (and the size they grow to later in the season). Being in the cultivated garden, and more specifically amongst roses, these scillas are watered copiously. The next photo, taken in the arboretum in a dry year more than two weeks later shows that the flower is as impressive, but the leaves have hardly sprouted.

 The photo below was taken in our local Haenertsburg Grasslands, a totally wild area, in late September of 2007; there had been rain in late summer and also some welcome winter rain.

 Lastly a close-up to show the delicate colouring of this beautiful flower. This post is inspired by Gail of Clay and Limestone who started the tradition of Wild Flower Wednesday on the fourth Wednesday of every month. (Clicking on coloured script  on my blog will always take you through to the relevant links.)

 

WEEKLY PIC: OCTOBER10 WEEK1

I didn’t think that the first week of October was a rose week, but I am curious. At the very end of last autumn one of my garden helpers enthusiastically fertilised and watered the roses in Trudie’s Garden, then already all but dormant. I had a fit. There was some regrowth which of course got frosted. But the roses spent the winter dormant and well fed. This spring they are looking marvellous, growing away apace and already there are four open blooms. Other roses in the garden are looking positively sad in comparison to these. One often reads that plants planted in autumn become established before spring, their roots foraging away under the ground; could it be that dormant roses also benefit? Any comments?

 

WEEKLY PIC: FEB10 – WEEK 1

Time to take a look at the roses again. The second flush is at its peak. (Well, it should be; after a week of constant rain everything is looking more than a little sad, but the province’s large storage dams are filling up nicely and near Johannesburg there are floods, with the country’s 2nd largest dam at nearly 110%…) The above rose is, I think, ‘Pascali’, and proof that we DO need to look beyond ‘Iceberg’ when thinking of white roses. It grows in Trudie’s Garden, which is now just outside my front door.

I am taking a look at this garden and its future. The roses were planted there to give pleasure to my mother close to home. But the overall effect is very 1960’s – leggy HTs and floribundas without underplanting to speak of, and some of the roses will do very well with the cannas at the entrance as I described recently. So what is the future of this area? Fewer roses, underplanted? Removal of all or most roses, and turning it into a kitchen herb garden? It is, in many ways, the best spot for a herb garden…hmmm….

PS: This was going to be January week 5’s entry: electrical problems since Thursday put pay to that. On Saturday, in the midst of a huge Rotary fundraiser, I was negotiating the installation of a new transformer by the municipality today, whilst I’m away in Pretoria and Johannesburg. Such is the joy of being a property owner .

 

WEEKLY PIC: JAN10 – WEEK 4

Time, I think, to stop and smell the roses.  There are many, but they are concentrated in the Anniversary Garden (yellows and mauves) and in Trudie’s Garden, a mixed planting of mainly HTs.  This is David Austin’s The Squire, as beautiful a red rose as you could find.  Unfortunately he is so heavy when wet – as he often is here – that his shoulders look like those of an exhausted yeoman rather than  a proud squire’s.  I’m pleased I added him to Trudie’s Garden, where various shades of red predominate.

Besides – this week I moved into what we affectionately know as ‘The Plett’, the original caravan-house we put up in 1981 and from which our first gardening forays took place.  It lies on the opposite side of Trudie’s Garden from the main house and has been used as guest accommodation since my dad and I each built our houses in 1989.  But it is time to develop tourism to Sequoia Gardens, and my house – Stone Cottage – with its gorgeous setting is the obvious first step in the provision of accommodation.  I’m also renovating and enlarging a little building behind the canna bed to be called Croft Cottage.  It will, in due course, feature in photographs and a page on staying here!

 

WEEKLY PIC: OCTOBER WEEK 5

End of October – rose season! As the roses flush, spring is superseded by early summer and – usually – by now the rains have started. As I write this there is the promise of a thunderstorm, but so far we have measured only 24mm this month, all less than 4mm in a day. That means the roses are happy, as they don’t like too much water except at their feet; and therefore Trudie’s Garden features this week.

It seems it is still a time for tributes, as death rears its head among the roses. Trudie’s Garden is a collection of 30 plus roses donated to me by a friend who felt she was growing too old to do justice to her roses. I planted them outside the living room window from where my mother could enjoy them as she grew older. When Trudie passed away late last autumn, I picked the last rose of the season, scented and red, and took it to her daughter.

Amongst Trudie’s roses, mostly HTs, mostly red, were several bushes of one of my mom’s favourite roses: a huge and beautifully scented  salmon orange rose called Harmonie. I’ve just checked it, and that is in fact the international name. The name is German, the rose raised by Kordes in 1981. I always thought it was a local name as that is also the Afrikaans spelling; an excellent name for a rose with as much presence as the famous Peace. However in our family it has always been known as the Dobbie Rose, as my father’s partner’s wife, Dobbie, gave the first one to my mother as a gift many years ago, and she was thrilled to see that there were several Dobbie Roses among those that came from Trudie.

Recently, as my father was trying to contact Dobbie to let her know of my mother’s decline, her daughter phoned with the news that Dobbie had passed away. In my mom’s last days, already barely speaking and in great discomfort, I picked a Dobbie Rose, the first rose of the new season in Trudie’s Garden, and brought it in to my mother. She took it and inhaled the scent deeply, smiled, and dropped the rose to her chest. It stood by her bed through her last days. Tomorrow I am taking my dad back to their home in Johannesburg. The fading Dobbie Rose will remain on the bookcase in the living room, a tribute to three women who loved roses.