Alocasia ‘Pink Dragon’

The bloom is quite small compared to the size of the foliage. At first I thought it was a new leaf growing, to my delight it turned to be a cute little flower. Another flower bud is growing near it, another surprise.

I keep this Alocasia ‘Pink Dragon’ indoor near a bright west facing window. It gets a lot of sunshine in the afternoon. Once in a while it gets light seaweed fertilizer.

Not Much Of a Garden

Our new place has a small garden at the front with a nice Dracaena tree. The back and side yards are more of blank canvases. There are an ornamental olive tree and a couple of lemon trees. Near the fence there is a clump of Alocasia, I am not so sure what variety it is, but as the leaves are ponting up, I know that it is not Colocasia. I like the large thick shiny foliage

I have no idea why some people cover their land with plastic and spread pebbles on it. For a while weeds will not grow, but eventually weeds will always win. This has become my main problem to deal with the garden. I cannot mow the weeds and they are too much to dig them up. So I trim the annoying weeds with a grass trimmer. Some of the pebbles will fly away, but they are small sizes and scorias are not heavy, they are quite light and porous. We haven’t had time nor budget to do makeover and to get rid of the problem-some layer of scoria pebbles. This method of landscaping is bad for soil, as it will get compacted and hard under the plastic layers.

Front garden is tiny, and it also has scorias on it. Among the layer of reddish brown scoria pebbles, there are scatters of small sea shells. It is quite odd to think why people put old sea shells on the ground.

I have trimmed both the lemon and the ornamental olive trees. I decided that it is an ornamental olive as it did not bear fruit after heavy flowering. I could only find a couple tiny fruits, but I like the tree. It looks nice and compact.

Alocasia. I am not so sure what kind of variety, it could be Conjevoi Lily which is native to Brisbane (Queensland area) and New South Wales.

Pineapple

After about 5 years later the pineapple top that I planted finally is growing a fruit. Pineapple (Ananas comosus) is from the Bromeliad family. It is still small as big as an egg. Hopefully it will grow big enough to eat. What a surprise, I thought the plant was going to die, as some of the leaves seem to dry out.

Beautiful Calathea

Indoor plant lovers will not miss to have Calathea plants in their collection. Though some say that it is not easy to grow, once you have the right condition, it will be easy to grow. Calatheas come in many shapes, sizes and colours.

Adenium the Desert Rose

Aechmea recurvata

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Our friend Viv gave me this plant and it was given to her by our other friend Ratih. Sadly, Ratih is no longer with us, so this plant somehow brings a fond memory of her.

Lovely Daisies

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Few months ago when I was looking for flowering plants to grow at my son’s garden, I saw the most beautiful Daisy plants. African daisies (Osteospermum) with amazingly pretty shades of colours. So many that it was very hard to choose. Marguerite daisies (Argyranthemum frutescens) that are bred in Australia are called Federation daisies, and they are more compact and rounded.

Keripik Pisang Plantain

Tadi pagi lihat pisang plantain di toko di South Springvale. Pisang untuk olahan yang rasanya lebih mirip kentang ini bentuknya besar dan montok. Kali ini harganya murah hanya $2.50 per kilo, jadi beli 4 dan pilih yang tidak terlalu besar.

Dividing and Repotting Calathea

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It was the time for the Calathea lancifolia (Rattlesnake) plant had to be taken out of the pot, to be divided and replanted. It had grown too big and over crowded.

Grevillea ‘Firework’

The old fence at our son place will be replaced soon. The overgrown weeping bottlebrush (Callistemon), Rhododendron and Abelia have been severely pruned to make the job easier for the fencing people to do the job. Whoever planted these bushes (previous owner of the house) had made an unusual selection of plants by mixing a native bottlebrush with the non native species, but they all seem to be happy together. One of the plants that does not need trimming is the Daphne odora. After pruning the bottlebrush very hard, now there is an big gap between this native plant and the Daphne. I decided to buy another native, Grevillea ‘Firework’ to accompany the bottlebrush and to even up the spaces between those plants along the fence. We will regularly prune them to maintain compact and tidy shapes.

Grevillea ‘Firework’ is low and semi spreading hybrid that grows to around 1.2 m in width and height, but can be shaped regularly to keep it smaller and compact. The small clump of flowers are bright red and yellow, nectar eating birds will be attracted by these unusual blooms. It will bloom almost all year round from autumn to spring.