A Miracle is happening

Things are growing! Well, it’s not that miraculous to be honest, but still, it feels like one. I hadn’t appreciated just how satisfying it was going to feel to watch the garden grow.

So spring is here and already we’ve had a run of pretty intense Western Australian days: hot, glaring sun, dehydrating winds, low moody clouds that fail to deliver on the promise of rain. I’d forgotten what it’s like. When it hit the low thirties last week I ended up snoozing the afternoons away in an awful state of lethargy!

My partner’s burgeoning succulents collection handily positioned on the kitchen/lounge window sill, so even when I’m snoozing on the couch I can still look at nice plants.

The intense sun has begun to sort out the plants as well: the weak are perishing and the strong are thriving. So far the deaths are less than 10% but when they come it happens quickly. We lost a perfectly healthy looking astartea fasicularis in less than a week; three of the four gomopholobium scabra have gone west (and the one survivor is very touch and go)…

The one surviving (just) Gomopholobium scarbrum. The bricks are to protect it from an avalanche of wood chip we’re hoping will be delievered this week.

…and a large number anigozanthus flavidus at the front are hanging on the brink; to be fair I didn’t give them much of a start, I’d run out of compost at the time and just stuck them straight into sand.

The truly sad anigozanthus flavidus patch…peer closely to spot the green stalks in the foreground. There are twelve separate plants in there…

So this week I pulled back the mulch and “top dressed” (if that’s the expression?) them with some nice fresh compost and plenty of water. I’m hoping they pull through because the front continues to look a bit sparse. I’m not sure why…I suspect it’s a mixture of the two very large agonis flexuosas (WA peppermint tree…whoever gave them that name was clearly in a “peppermint-deprived” state) sucking up most of the moisture and the fact that I spend most of my time in the back. I’m so less fond of the front: I think it’s the traffic (which isn’t that heavy) and that I don’t sit and gaze longingly at it all the time.

The anigozanthus flavidus have a spectacular flower. Many in the neighbourhood are in full bloom and this one in the back garden is a “thriver” and is just coming into flower:

Anigozanthus flavidus flowering in the back garden

Another flowerer at the back is this billardiera ringens.

Billardiera ringens in full bloom. It’s a (supposedly) scrambling ground cover/climber that hasn’t been doing that well up till now. I’m trying to imagine what a scrambling mass of these flowers will look like…pretty spectacular.

And of the many robust plants, this acacia myrtifolia is one of my favourites:

Acacia myrtifolia in the front garden. This one has a lovely shape and looks os healthy. It’s got lots of fresh growth coming through.

And the pests are springing too! The eucalyptus forrestiana, which is one of the two big trees in the back and hence “structurally” important, is getting mauled by a small white caterpillar. I didn’t notice soon enough and the apical growth got chewed up. The tree still seems healthy and plenty of replacement shoots are coming through. It’s going to be interesting to see how the shape unfolds, the damage done now will, I assume, develop into a multi-branched mature tree. I’m not going to spray, so I’m doing regular “pest patrols” and squashing the bugs by hand.

Eucalyptus forrestiana, photo from above, it’s about half a meter tall. Notice the leaf damage and the brown areas on the growing tip…that’s a dead bud.

On the eucalyptus theme…this is E. erythrocorys. It’s a real baby and has only been in the ground two weeks. I put it in to fill the gap left when the agonis juniperina on the back fence had apparently died….I say “apparently” because it did a “rise from the dead” thing while I was away. Anyway, I moved the a. juniperina along the fence and put the e. erythrocorys in it’s place. The mature tree looks spectacular, so I’m very excited that it seems to be off to a good start with some new growth already. And the A. juniperina seems to be doing OK too.

I bought a hose last week, which was a huge relief as bucketing water round the garden was becoming somewhat arduous. The hose is awesome because it gives me an opportunity to crawl round the garden individually watering each plant, checking it’s mulch, inspecting for growth and insects, and having a little chat. I hadn’t appreciated how many types of spider there are (nor how enjoyable talking to plants is: they don’t answer back!). My favourite spiders so far are the albino ones living on the acacias near the back fence…they look a bit creepy!

Melaleuca incana…this is my “prize plant” in terms of growth. It’s rocketing away, and I don’t really know why. Maybe because it’s close to the tap and it gets any drips from the tap? (The rather ugly bit of carpet in the background is from the compost heap.)

[On a related, to the spiders, note I saw two snakes this week, not at home though. We’re caretaking a “dog hotel” and I disturbed a very large brown snake in one of the runs last week and came toe-to-nose with a small black beasty emerging from under a cat pen yesterday. They both gave me a bit of a start! Beautiful creatures, I love the way they move…especially when it’s away from me.]

I’ve also been getting into a bit of tip-pruning and “shaping”. I’m trying to shape this melaeuca incana.

“You will obey”…I’m trying to bend this melaleuca incana to my will. Talk about “living n harmony with nature”.

I’m not sure how it will respond to being shaped in this way, but the same technique works well with fruit trees, so why not Australian shrubs? I’m trying a similar thing with an agonis parviceps at the back as well.

Earlier in the week I was marvelling at the way this melaleuca scabra grows. It’s absolutely ripping along and I was noticing the way it seems to grow in clusters of about seven or eight branches from a node. Each branch seems to run for a bit and then shoots out another cluster of branches, one of which appears to become the lead…it’s a fascinating “growth habit”. I was trying work out how I could tip prune it for maximum density…in the end I decided to let it develop a bit further before interfering!

Melaleuca scabra…interesting growth habit, if that’s your thing.

Coming up next, it looks like we’re going to have another “mulching madness” spell. I rang up a tree contractor, the delightful Dean of Hamilton Tree Services, last week to see if I could get a load of mulch for nothing. Turns out he has a lot of requests in, however, he will drop round 18 meters cubed for $80…that is such an outrageous bargain I had problems standing still. Anyway, the load is due late this week or perhaps early next week…18 m3 is a huge amount of wood chip and should be enough for us to cover most of the back of the back garden. I think we’ll need one more load of that size to complete the mulching…or maybe two? We’ll see. It will be so nice to get wood chip down on the remainder of the garden, the “green waste” is gone now and the back is feeling a bit exposed to the sun, and it’s still only spring…!