August impressions;

(From "Under a hotter Sun"  © Ts 1974)

Planting a vegetable garden, one is very much in the hands of the gods!

In autumn when the sun retreats its fierceness and spreads out a golden mellow light, is the time for new plantings.

Most vegetables do very well over winter. Some have a standstill in the coldest month like July and August. All year round vegetables are growing; harvested and planted again, it is an ongoing job.

Herbs do well, mostly all of them all year round. Basil seeds itself. Lavender and Rosemary bushes are planted in the vegetable garden for use and for beauty Italian and curly Parsley and in autumn Coriander self seeds. A big bush of Lemongrass its long sharp leaves gracefully weeping waiting to be used in cooking and for cool drinks

I had a very hard job to prepare the garden beds for my autumn and winter plantings. The soil had become hard and compact over the hottest summer month from the rain pelting down, compacting the soil. The unrelenting heat of the sun baked my poor garden beds so hard, it was ready to cut clay bricks from it.
After a lot of sweat and hard work the soil became crumbly again and spread with my coveted cow pads I had collected. Then came the easy and nice task of planting the tiny vegetable seedlings.
Lettuce, the snails liked the tender leaves just as much as we did. Cabbages and Broccoli, the beloved food of the larvae of the white butterfly. Beans were most of the time trouble free, if the weather was not to wet. Actually with everything I planted I was challenged by a myriad of insects, birds, possums everybody wanted a slice of my plantings.

Ready for action...

 Bell tower;

Hey. hang on I wanted to say, you are as busy as a bee...

Kurume azalea;

"Gardens... should be like lovely, well-shaped girls: all curves, secret corners, unexpected deviations, seductive surprises and then still more curves." - H.E. Bates,  'A Love of Flowers'

A quiet moment  in the garden;

A new addition, Zingiber peninsularis;

The old chook yard comes nicely along with the new plantings I did last autumn.

"Gardening is the purest of human pleasures." - Francis Bacon
(Are you absolutely sure about it Mr. Bacon?)Ts

The beautifully pleated leaf of the giant Heliconia.

 Flowering peach tree.

 Grevillia Caloundra Gem; great food plant for honey birds.

 "The most noteworthy thing about gardeners is that they are always optimistic, always enterprising, and never satisfied. They always look forward to doing something better than they have ever done before." - Vita Sackville-West,1892-1962

Camellias, winter's delights 

 Free sculpture; leaf of the huge Cuban Royal Palm.

"How fair is a garden amid the trials and passions of existence." - Benjamin Disraeli

 Azalea Rhodo X Dreamtime, a freely flowering bush.

Baskets, preferable to plastic ones.

Grevillia Sandra Gordon grows to medium shrub, great nectar provider.



Believe it or not:
"Nothing is more the child of art than a garden." - Sir Walter Scott

© Photos my garden/Text Ts  2013