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.

Strelitzia reginae Seeds

I spent some time this morning to trim the Bird of Paradise plant (Strelitzia reginae) as it was getting too large. There were many dried spent flowers and I was amazed to see the black seeds that seemed to grow on fluffy bright orange beds. They just looked so alive while anything else of the flowers looked dead. The fluffy orange things are seed stems by the look of them. Very odd indeed.

Dendrobium nobile – Flower Buds

Finally, after a long wait, the spikes have revealed their small flower buds. They are green with splash of red. Still cannot imagine what the flowers will look like, green can turn into white. There will be four canes with blooms. I have applied a weak solution of orchid fertiliser for flowering season. It seems that this Dendrobium that I have knows exactly where to grow flowers and where to grow new growths. All the flowers are correctly growing along the canes while the new growths for future canes are growing from the bottom. I saw other people had keikis instead of flowers.

Bromeliad Guzmania ‘Mathilda’

Just bought this Guzmania ‘Mathilda’ this morning. The very pretty flower is quite unusual. The red flower bracts form a rounded rosette and the flowers are creamy colour.

 

Saving Dracaena – Rooting in Water Attempt

Few years ago I cut our tall Dracaena (corn plant) into three parts and replanted them in potting soil. They grew quite well.  Later on, I gave one (the top cutting) to a friend. Yesterday she gave me back the plant because it was not growing very well. The leaves were wilted and the cane looked crinkle.

Unhappy Dracaena, leaves are wilted.

Today, after I thoroughly watered the unhappy plant, I took it out of the pot to check the root system. I found that the roots were very dry and after being watered well, the soil mix was still dry. It seemed to me that the soil mix repelled water. Why this happened? Perhaps my friend left it dry quite a while. Very dry potting mix can become water repellent, in which the water cannot penetrate all the soil and just runs out of the pot holes. 

Anggrek Miltassia Shelob ‘Tolkien’ dan Psychopsis papilio

Anggrek Miltassia Shelob ‘Tolkien’:

Tepat setahun kemudian, anggrek hibrida jenis Miltassia ini berbunga kembali. Bentuknya seperti laba-laba dengan corak dan kombinasi warna yang aneh. Anggrek yang cukup mudah pemeliharaannya ini, diberi nama berdasarkan karakter laba-laba bernama Shelob didalam film The Lord of The Rings. Sedangkan Tolkien adalah nama penulis buku The Two Towers yang dibuat film The Lord of The Rings.

Fragrant White Flowers

Arabian Jasmine (Jasminum sambac, Melati):

At the moment, the Arabian Jasmine that is grown in a pot has many flowers. I think the temperate climate of Melbourne has made the flower size kind of smaller, but the fragrance is still the same, delightfully sweet. I picked a handful and now during the night, the amazing smell fills our living room. 

Garden Mid January 2018

So far we only had few days of hot spells this summer. In the last few days, the much welcome rains had made the garden fresh and alive. Took few shots of flowers in the garden. Hibiscus and second batch of roses add more colours of the garden.

Roses do better in mild weather. This summer, with much less hot days, they are blooming for the second time. One photo of a couple of standard roses was from son’s place.

Garden Mid Spring 2017

Not much to say really, except the racket noise of chainsaw and mulching truck two houses up the road. They are cutting down some gum trees to built new townhouses. So sad… but like usual, money will come first at the expense of trees and green environment. Sooner or later our suburb will turn into over crowded apartments and units with cars parked along the street. Perhaps it is the time in near future to sell up, pack up and move to the country…..

Dancing Lady orchid

Many Oncidium ‘Dancing Lady’ orchids are mainly yellow, but ours is kind of brown maroon with the lower half of the labellum is yellow. Perhaps it is Oncidium ‘Sharry Baby’ cross. The spike is short and compact. The negative is that blooms are crowded together, otherwise it is quite pretty. Quite easy to grow and so far, it always flowers every year.