Methinks...

Since beauty is transient...

...maybe enjoy it while you can?

Queen of the night

My cactus orchid (Epiphyllum oxypetalum) seems to be happy in this warm, north-facing spot. It's well protected from midday sun by a pergola that's currently overloaded with the fading purple flowers of a sandpaper vine (Petrea volubilis). But though it's hung here through several seasons, until last night I'd never actually seen the cactus orchid's flowers open. I've only seen the long ivory-coloured buds turn to dead flowers (see the top ones) and later bulb-like fruits emerge (green at first, turning to red later). 

The reason why, of course, is because the flowers open at night - Queen of the Night is another name for the plant. So if I wanted to see this plant's night-blooming flowers, I'd have to get out there in the dark. And sure enough, last night over the course of just a few hours from sundown to bedtime, the funnel-shaped flowers emerged and fully extended their petals and other parts toward the moon. 

Alas, the sweet smell and glowing ivory colour is probably all in vain. Whatever insect, bat or other creature it would have appealed to in its Central American homeland isn't hanging around here in south-east Queensland. I don't know how long it stayed open, but by morning the flowers had closed. At least I got to enjoy them for once.

Springtime puffs of white

This white hydrangea is always the first hydrangea to come into flower in Spring. My garden has more than a dozen beautiful hydrangeas, but only one that is white. When I bought the house it was midwinter and these plants had been given their winter trim so they were not much to look at. I actually thought I might remove them once I'd moved in, since I associate them with cool climates and don't usually grow anything that I think is wrong for this climate. For example, I know I'd never be able to grow them as beautifully as I did in Tasmania. 

Luckily, I didn't move into this house until early summer, months later, because I went overseas on assignment right after I signed the contract. When I finally did move in, I was blown away by the beauty of the hydrangeas in full flower. Most of them are planted along a south-facing wall, and get no sun at all in the hottest months and only weak morning sun in winter. They are also planted up close to the house, and the roof's overhanging eaves shelter them from getting too drenched in our tropical summer downpours. Hydrangeas don't like hot sun or wet feet and mine are protected from both. 

Among the predominantly blue hydrangeas, few of which are yet in bloom, I have this one white-flowering one. I don't know if it flowers first because it's white or because it happens to get an hour or two of sun - the only hydrangea that does in Spring. 

White hydrangeas, as any gardener knows, always stay white. And they're prized for that, so my Garden Club friends are always pleased to get cuttings when I prune. Blue-flowering plants, on the other hand, will be blue, pink or some mixture of both, including shades of mauve, depending on soil ph. Red or pink blooms result from neutral or basic soil (pH 7 and above), whereas blue blooms indicate acidic soil condition (pH less than 7). Apparently the color is not determined by the pH itself, but by the amount of aluminium a plant can access in the soil - and that is what is determined by pH and phosphorus levels. 

In one of my first years here, my grand-child and I tried an experiment. My hydrangeas then were mainly blue (except for the white one, of course.) So Charlie and I gave every second blue-flowering plant a good dose of garden lime. That should have produced pink flowers. It wasn't a great success in the that year, but ever since then I have had a nice variety of colours, including different shades of blue and some mauve streaks. 

I like the blue ones best, though, so this year I'm going to give them a liquid fertiliser called Hydrangea Blue (which probably contains aluminium sulfate). That's on my shopping list for the next visit to Bunnings! However, I've already given them all a good dose of mushroom compost, which I suspect is a bit acidic. So anything could happen. 

These photos show the hydrangeas some years ago, before we tried making some turn pink. The two close-up photos feature a few of our pink results a couple of years later. It will be interesting to see what turns up this year!

I did it (but it almost did me!)

Here's where my troubles began! Well, recent back troubles anyway. I should have tried harder to find someone to take on the job of moving aside all the little stones covering this messy parking space alongside my garage. Previous owners used it to park their caravan; I used to keep my trailer there before I gave it away. For the past few years the car-size space has just been a throughway from the front of the house to the back garden - not used for much except a few pots of plants. 

The whole area consisted of river gravel laid down over sheets of black plastic. Trouble is, the layer of stones wasn't thick enough to prevent the weathering of the plastic, which had never been secured to the ground beneath. Round stones never settle on slippery plastic. And dirt from areas where the plastic lifted had mixed with stones - it was an unsightly mess. 

The only solution: move aside the stones, rip up the old plastic piece by piece, lay down and fasten in place proper weed matting, then clean the stones of accumulated dirt and put them down over the new matting, maybe topping up with extra stones to make a good thick covering.

I thought about leaving some areas of soil exposed for planting ground cover plants, since I don't use this area for vehicles. And on the very rare occasion when I might need to let a service vehicle through to the back yard for some reason, it's easy enough to dodge ground covers (or move pots). But as soon as I began the work, I realised that the whole area has a vigorous set of roots criss-crossing the ground, coming from the neighbour's very healthy row of small trees planted as a hedge along the fenceline on his side. So rather than compete with all the roots, it made sense to create a weed-free surface and plant things in large pots here and there. (The neighbour and I did remove the largest of these surface roots though, and so far at least his hedge plants haven't seemed to mind.)

I had contacted a few handymen to quote for this work, but I no one wanted to do it. (I should have realised then what a slog it would be.) No doubt a landscape company would have taken it on - but at what cost! And I could well imagine the mess they might make of it - they'd want to strip the whole area clean to start with, which meant moving all the stones and piling them up somewhere. But where? I would have stones scattered in nearby lawn for months. So I decided if I could get it done before the hotter weather arrived to make outdoor work too onerous, I would do the job myself. 

And so I did - section by section, one barrowload of stones at a time. It took me four weeks, working 4 or 5 days a week, 5 or 6 hours each day. About halfway through I began to think it was all just too difficult. And I made another attempt to employ someone to help. But I couldn't find anyone. So I pressed on. 

At the end of it all I did hire a nice young man with a truck (thank you, Airtasker!) to pick up, deliver and unload a trailer-load of additional stones to finish the job. 

I'm very happy with the result, but can hardly believe I got through it. It's taken weeks for my body to recover. Not surprised that I came down with a terrible bout of winter flu shortly after finishing. I think I had no reserved energy to fight off germs. But I've learned one thing: my days of heavy labour are over. This Amazon lady is hanging up the workboots. Only garden-variety stuff for me from here on. 

The grass is greener (or at least shorter)

I am struggling to work with this blog software after a long absence. Formatting seems more difficult than I remember. But I would like to get back to talking about my garden and other topics now and then - after years of silence (at least on this medium). So let's see how we go! 

Today I mowed the lawn, so that's what that expanse of green is celebrating. Since moving to this smaller property almost eight years ago, I've been paying someone else to mow and trim the lawn. But a few months ago, I decided I would try and do it myself. After all, I'd bought a battery-operated mower when I moved here but have rarely used it. For the first five or six years that made sense, as I was lucky to have resumed work as a consultant and was overseas for some months of each year. But I called a halt on work just before Covid - if I hadn't, Covid would have done it for me since Australia closed up tightly for more than a year. And even now, overseas travel is not as easy or carefree as it used to be. So really, there's no reason why I shouldn't care for the grass myself, since I'm caring for the rest of the garden. It's good exercise, it's better for my budget, and it prevents someone bringing in weed seeds and other things with their equipment. 

It's Spring here, however. It was autumn when I made the decision to take care of the lawn myself. Over autumn and winter, even though this is a subtropical climate, grass doesn't grow too fast. But as the weather warms up, the grass grows faster. Soon it will need to be cut at least once a fortnight and the weather will be too hot to do that for much of the day - for me, at least. So either I will have to start getting up earlier, or resign myself to mowing late in the afternoon, when I'd prefer to be sitting down with a whisky! So we shall see. 

For the moment, anyway, I'm managing it pretty well. But I don't have a whipper-snipper for trimming the edges. And I don't dare to buy one because I think I'd be too likely to do myself damage in trying to use it. I can ask my son-in-law to bring his whipper-snipper along the next time they come for a weekend visit - and he might do some trimming for me (as long as we agree he can go fishing the rest of the weekend!) Until then I will just have to do a bit of selective trimming by hand.  

Flower of the week

It's just a humble creeper - but boy can it creep!

I only remember buying two hoya plants (genus Asclepiad) in all the years I've lived here. But as the creepers grew, I would stick pieces here and there - usually in hanging pots.

I don't know what it is about these tough little guys with their leathery leaves that always fascinates me. I've never seen a bird feeding from the flowers, though I suppose insects must.

But once a year - in late Spring - they flower. And it's always such a pleasure to see where these appear.

'Wax flowers' is the common name - and as soon as you handle one of the multi-headed blooms you can see where the name comes from. The waxy flowerheads don't smell, they fall to pieces as soon as you pluck them so are no good for picking. But...

...appearing as they may do anywhere along the creeper's roaming stems, they're always a delight to behold, even if I know that after flowering is finished I'll have to disentangle some of the plants from places where they have no business going - e.g. under the gutters!












Let's hear it for tough wiry survivors.

No flowers yet on this one, even though it has colonised much of the pergola that it shares with a number of other plants and with frangipani (plumeria) just now coming into leaf.

A memory of friendship

This orchid opened this morning – a beacon of brightness on an otherwise bleak and wet winter day. The annual flowering of this plant always brings to mind John and Gillian Unicomb. They left the orchid behind as a thank-you gift more than ten years ago, after they'd had a holiday in our house during one of our absences overseas.

John and Allen were at high school together. Then both went on to a lifetime of work in the theatre – only working together once in their late 50s when John played an outstanding Willy Loman in a wonderful production of Death of a Salesman, directed by Allen. Gilly and I first met in Hobart in 1971. We were neighbours and had our babies together the next year.

Sadly, John died earlier this year. So the annual flowering of this orchid brings lovely memories of a very dear man – and of the power of friendships.

My winter garden

Here are just a few corners of my too-big garden - showing some of the plants that brighten my heart on these (relatively) cold winter mornings.

We call this the butterfly bush (with some ornamental ginger on the left). The white flowers only appear for a couple of weeks at this time of the year. For the rest of the year, it's a pretty unimpressive plant. I cut it right back to the base after flowering. Otherwise it would grow too leggy.

Outside Allen's office window is a little group of fishtail palms. There are at least four climbers living on it. The latest to take hold is this philodendron (at least, I think it's a philodendron - the climbing sort, not the tree type). 

My golden penda tree (below) is full of berries. In the warmer months it will be awash with gorgeous yellow blooms. It's a Queensland native, and  I know the birds visit the flowers for nectar, but I haven't yet seen any birds coming for the berries.

That's one of my smaller poinsettias. It puts on a good show every year, when the overhanging frangipani (or plumeria) has lost its leaves.














I have only a small collection of bromeliads - all in pots, so they won't get waterlogged during our summer downpours. I have placed them along a path that leads from the house to the studio. That way anyone staying out there can enjoy them - as can I when I use the studio.

Most of the bromeliads have grown 'pups' over the last season. I guess they're pretty happy in this spot, which faces north (the prime position for any plant), but has a number of large palms and other things providing some shelter on hottest days.

This year I've moved my herbs and a few greens up to the topmost terrace, right outside the living-room. Too often I would forget to pick these before dark - and then have to wander down to the unlit vegetable garden with just a torch to guide the way. So now they're conveniently located just off the front terrace, and well lit by the exterior lights on that side of the house.

Here you see rocket (behind a small border of ornamental plants). Herbs are on the other side of that little gardenia you can just see at the top right of the photo. The boxes have various oriental greens coming along - for stir-fries. A lime tree provides shelter from the hot western sun.

At the far end of this same terrace (below) is one of two teak rocking chairs that my mother loved to sit in during the year she spent with us.

Also in the photo below is a ponytail palm I inherited from Zoe. It needs more TLC than a working mum can provide. And on the plant stand behind the rocker you might catch a glimpse of my largest Christmas cactus. It's just coming into flower. (There are a few more of these amongst the bromeliads in the photo above.)

Finally, on the pergola outside my bedroom window, a delicately blue-coloured thunbergia is colonising part of the roof as well as the pergola. (This is also one of the climbers that's up in the fishtail palm.) Officially this is now a weed, and shouldn't be planted too close to bush areas, as it can get out of control. But here it's well contained by the parking circle on one side and paths on all other sides. I just have to climb up and cut it off the roof now and then, so it doesn't choke up my gutters. The lovely flowers are well worth that trouble.

Just another day in the garden

Today I got back into the garden after a week or so of doing no serious outdoor work. Come to think of it, I did plant out six different salvia plants yesterday that I bought recently at an Open Garden about 30km from here. In that garden many kinds of salvias were flourishing, so I bought a half dozen different varieties at the sale table and I'll try them out here. I have a dry hilly slope above my carport which already has a variety of small native trees and bushes well established, but on one part of that hill I've had to cut down a few of these because they were a danger to the overhead lines that carry electricity to my house from the street. So I'll try out some salvias in this area and see if any of them survive or maybe even flourish.

A little green memory prod

My garden contains a variety of plants, but none could be more exotic than the pitcher plant.

A quiet morning

The walking iris all flowered at the same time last week, but only for a day. Today they are flowering again, but they'll be finished tomorrow. Never mind. It's a glorious treat for 24 hours.

I sat here with my tea to absorb their delicate beauty (not yet on show when this picture was taken). But I could not stay for long.

"Let us go then you and I..." *

Oh dear. No posts since the end of May. Well, yes, Allen's been sick with a nasty bronchial infection. And then we've had more than six weeks of twice-weekly visits to the doctor for dressings on Allen's foot, where the removal of a small skin cancer left a deep hole that a skin graft didn't succeed in closing. Both those issues seem now to be on the mend, though not finished. Then there've been several visitors, including grandson Sam during his school holidays, my daughter and grand-daughter for a weekend and a very dear old friend for our traditional winter get-together to share glasses of wine while watching stages of Le Tour de France. (She flew home this morning. But will Cadel win again this year? Fingers crossed please.) None of that really excuses what has really been (yet more) laziness on my part, but...... 

I have been busy in the garden – more than ably assisted by a trusty handyman who is the person responsible for recent massive weed eradication (which was underway when I last posted), then heavy mulching of many garden areas and various other useful tasks. For my part I've been repotting bromeliads to make a nice little 'brom walk' between house and studio. I'm very pleased with the results. These plants were all gifts from our children or from one of the couples in our aphasia group, who have a massive collection. They all did well last year and so I've separated pups and replanted in the recommended friable mixture, with lots of gravel at the bottom of each pot for good drainage. By next year I hope to again double the number of plants.


You might remember in my last post I mentioned that my neighbour had come round and cut back a dozen or so lilly pillies growing on a hillside above our house. These small native evergreens had grown into tall little trees whose foliage was overhanging the carport and making a mess in the rainwater gutters.

Well all that area has now been well mulched, and the beautiful new growth on the lilly pilly trunks is coming in, the glossy little leaves all red or red-tinged – this new growth being one of the most pleasing features of these plants. Soon there'll again be enough cover to attract the whip birds that often patrol this patch of garden.


On the western side of the house the frangipani (or plumeria) that shade us from the heat of the summer's setting sun have just about finished dropping their leaves for the wintertime. But as beautiful as these trees are when clothed in their big summertime leaves and fragrant flowers, there's something just as lovely about the naked winter boughs, especially when seen on a cold and misty afternoon such as this one.

And speaking of mist, what magic it works on the various greens and blue-greens that seem to dominate at this time of year. Here on my front terraces, everything (rosemary, gardenias, lime tree, palms down near the pool and even the old washing copper that Walle drinks from) has taken on a different hue in the light of an unusually foggy late afternoon. I'm reminded of scenes from deserted temple gardens in northern Vietnam where we once spent a holiday during a cold, wet month much like this one.

None of this worries Walle, of course, who happily goes about his doggy business in any weather whatsoever. ("Now where did I bury that bone?") I got tired of having to wipe down his soggy legs and comb the grass seeds out of his shaggy coat, and so at his recent haircut I had him trimmed right back, much to the horror of the lovely and patient lady groomer who no doubt thinks labradoodles deserve more appreciative and long-suffering owners!

Walle himself doesn't mind, however. He's happily practising his sphinx pose, hoping for a slot on the next Christmas card. But I think I'll have to let him grow back a more shapely mane before then, as befits the breed.

Well this has been a grab-bag of goodies. But if it helps me get back the habit of reflecting on and sharing some of what makes life worth living up here in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, then I hope my friends will indulge me a little.

(* "Let us go then you and I / When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table..." No particular relevance to this post, but I found the opening lines of this poem well evoke the misty late afternoon light and mood that was around when I took most of these garden photos. Go here to read all of The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock.)

Tidying up – on a large scale

Candle banksia flower goes
from yellow to brown with age

I'm using Ms Gillard's carbon-tax top-up for age pensioners to hire someone to help me with the heavier work of reversing too many months of neglect in the garden. (Sorry, my US readers. It's too hard to explain at length what that phrase means. Let's just say we Social Security types are being reimbursed for some of charges that are likely to be heaped onto various good and services, under the pretext that our incoming Carbon Tax warrants these extra costs.) We haven't even received the Prime Minister's donation into our bank account yet and already I've spent it!

Anyway, for the past three weeks I've had 'my guy' in to do 4 or 5 hours of heavier garden tasks. One week he totally weeded and trimmed the hilly bank on the bottom side of the swimming pool terrace, then sprayed the remaining stalks of this very invasive climbing vine with a strong weedkiller. This is what a badly weed-covered section of garden looks like beforehand. The head of a 6ft tall pony tail palm had totally disappeared under these sticky vines, which had climbed up into surrounding palms too. Anyone know the name of this nasty weed? Anyway, for the moment we are rid of it, but I'll have to keep at it as new weed shoots sprout in the spring. We aren't likely to have caught every piece of this vine and its little beans, so some seeds will have been dispersed anew to start another year's crop.

Anyway, the following week Nev spread a thick layer of sugar cane mulch over that entire poolside hill, and also on the hill above the house and carport (picture below), where a few weeks ago neighbour Robbi had kindly trimmed back a half dozen lanky trees – mainly lilly pilly –  which had been overhanging the house's gutters. These are already showing sprouts of the lovely reddish-tinged new foliage that is such an appealing feature of this family of evergreen natives. But unfortunately for the possums, this year they won't be able to race through the boughs and leap onto the roof on this side.

It's just great to see that my agapanthus, which started out as just a few scattered bulbs, have now spread to line the outside edge of the pool fence thickly. These plants are soft enough not to be considered a violation of pool safety, as they can't provide a foothold for curious children trying to climb the fence. And the palms which Allen and I planted about 10 years ago are big enough to provide summer shade on this side of the pool – but they're positioned within the regulation distance from the top of the pool fence.

This week among other things Nev has cut right back all of the messy growth on another sloping terrace - this one between the house's back verandah and the poolside pump-house. That area's more stubborn weed stems have also been spot-sprayed. But there's more work to be done here. I haven't decided whether to keep the spiky mother-in-law's tongue (in the red oval) – I may move them to a large pot, as they look great clustered together that way. The mother-of-millions, however, is a weed (in the yellow oval) and definitely has to go. Next this area will be resprayed and mulched heavily prior to planting a collection of low-growing native shrubs (grevilleas mainly, to attract more birds).

I'm not usually a big sprayer, at least not in garden beds. I usually do the driveway, paths and fenceline a few times a year. But this year too many beds got away from me during Allen's illness, when I went months without having time or energy for any substantial gardening. Added to that we've just had the wettest spring, summer and autumn in a long, long time. And winter isn't proving as dry as usual either. In this climate weeds can grow six feet while your back is turned, and for me at least, there's no alternative to spraying for some persistent problem weeds.

While Nev has been tackling the big jobs, I've been doing my bit on smaller areas like this little triangular patch near the pool gate, where a pair of orange hibiscus gives a dazzling display all summer long. The third shrub here behind the hibiscus is not very evident in this photo, but it's a Brazilian cherry (Eugenia uniflora). I had planted one on the terrace above in the hope of doubling my supply of this wonderful jam-making fruit. Unfortunately, the new bush has borne very little fruit, unlike the original bush down in the paddock, which bears heavily for a long period every year (see the last two photos in this post from November 2010.) But it has spread a number of seedlings in the vicinity, including one in this triangular patch, behind the hibiscus. I've cut that right back and will probably take it out completely, as I strongly suspect this is a very invasive shrub in our environment. However, the reddish-brown tinge on its leaves are also very appealing, as you can see in that 2010 post.

Yesterday evening I finished up by repotting half a dozen bromeliads, and sinking these into the mulch on the little garden bed that borders the path to the studio. I hadn't yet done that when this photo was taken the day before, so I'll show those in a later post. What this photo celebrates, though, is the fact that all of the 'dirty palms' along this path are now tall enough so that the dead fronds are above eye-level! I would never have planted this variety of palm (Alexander palms). They were here when we bought the house in 1996 and by the time I realised I would like to be rid of them, their removal would have cost thousands. So I live with them and have tried to create a little rainforest beneath them. For those who aren't familiar with tropical greenery, the bottom fronds of all palms die off as new fronds form at the top of the growing plant. In so-called dirty palms, however, the dead fronds remain attached for a very long time until eventually they will come crashing down. Clean palms, however, such as those we planted around the pool, drop their dead fronds immediately. Hence they never have the messy look of dirty palms. But though I deplore the long dead fronds that dangle around the trunks of the Alexander palms for months, at least these palms are now tall enough so that the dead fronds are out of sight as you walk down the path. And I must admit, a wonderful collection of wildlife comes to feed on the palm flowers and fruit throughout the year. So I've come to accept this little ecosystem as one of the untidier by-products of a green living space.