I’m near enough to be able to hear it, but today it was exceptionally quiet at 5am.The wind, which has been shrivelling gardens and fraying tempers for weeks had dropped. Even the cats were eating their breakfast quietly! I stood on the front deck, listening to the quiet soughing of the tide.
And then I brewed some coffee and came in to do some work…
Ye gods and little fishes! A month since my last post! How can this be???
Well, I do have a better-than-usual excuse. We’ve been renovating! Oh! The excitement! The thrill of seeing glossy new floor paint, almost dry enough to move the furniture back. But not quite dry enough for a cat to walk on…
So, I’ll spare you the dreary details and show you some of the things that have survived the blustery wind.
Terminalia,the closest we get to fiery “autumn colours.”
Dendrobium crumenatum Also called pigeon orchid. A sweet little thing, only flowers after rain and blooms don’t last long, but such a sweetie!
Phaius australis, a native Swamp Orchid. It flowered for weeks and this is the best picture I managed, as it neared the end of its show!
I have several jasmines in the garden and have to say this one, Trachelospermum jasminoides is a cracker. Here, it’s growing from a shrub tub below the back deck and this year has extended several metres along the rail.I will have to give it a very severe “haircut” when it finishes flowering, but for now…we love it.
Trachelospermum jasminoides
Maybe I’ll get back to this sad old blog a little more frequently. But don’t hold your breath, m’dears!
I love the English, not just because more than half of the red stuff that keeps me moving is English, But for the zany humour.
So when Ellen’s post popped up I had to filch it!
Dashing in to the office before I have to dash off to The Big City. But I shall need a fortifying breakfast first…my car goes in for service (and, actually, that sort-of bothers me as it’s a new car. What can possibly need “servicing”?) and I’ll have an entire morning fill.
While I was tinkering over at the Dark Side, Jon remarked that it was a bit like watching “Tomorrow’s World” with all sorts of experiments taking place.Live.Before the very eyes. Hmm…
Back after lunch m’dears.
Well, that was a harrowing morning! Competing radios, blasting from, it seemed, every shop doorway. I sat in the library, reading for a while until a very noisy dispute broke out in the creche area.Little kids could shatter glass.
But my car was ready to go by the time I walked back down the street and the harrowing morning is behind me.
One of the (many) jasmines, a Trachelospermum jasminoides, scrambling up a tamarind tree. And if you look closely you can see a thick stem just behind the flower. That’s a vanilla orchid, also racing up the tamarind’s trunk.
One of many flower buds on a Syzygium wilsonii. I stopped counting after twenty-something!
And some cheerful sunflowers I bought when I collected Sporran from the vet where she’d been for some dental work.
I’m not sure, some days, where I am.Or even what day it is. Time’s a funny old thing when we no longer slavishly follow him/her.
You’ll notice I give the gender option.Well, best cover all bets these days! But people have always referred to time as a masculine figure, though nobody ever told me why. Old Father Time, usually depicted in books as a wizened old man, possibly with a shouldered scythe, or putting his faith a dodgy-looking knobbled stick. But always masculine. Why? It could have been Old Mother Time.
Skirted or trousered, the old bugger leads me a merry dance!
I have been skipping about doing what passes for a happy dance all week. This is why.
The first flowers on the native swamp orchid,Phaius austalis opened last week.Two beautiful, tall stems, packed with blooms!
One or two other things in the garden are , what’s the phrase that tidy girl uses? Oh! They spark joy. Yes. Another plant that makes me happy is Iboza. Well, only the oldies still call it that. It was all over the map for years, but finally (I hope!) is now known as Tetradenia riparia. Iboza is the name given it by the Zulu people. Before I ever saw it, I smelled it and it took me back to my Granny’s garden. If you know flowering currants, you’ll know the scent of Iboza. That’s it, in my new header, up there.
Months ago, I took a few cuttings and poked them into one of the herb boxes on the back deck. And then we had some weird, unseasonal weather and the cuttings went bananas. At the time when I’d planned to get them into the garden along the back fence they put forth flower buds. Masses of flower buds.
Computer problems. Again. If I can find this tomorrow, I’ll be back …
Tomorrow has become today. All kinds of busyness here so I’ll just show you a few more pretty things before I have to dash off again.
pigeon pea
Brugmansia. There were NINE blooms.
Thunbergia laurifoliaBrugmansia. Not sure why this was white, but it became the apricot shade of the others after 3 days. Perhaps something to do with the weird weather Or some magician playing with his wand??
WordPress is annoying me to the point of frustration. I suppose if I spent more time here I’d become used to all its little changes. But I don’t so I haven’t.
I’m sorry for my vast readership if they are struggling to read this. But the vast readership should try things from this side of the veil!
I am decamping and you can now find me on what some people call The Dark Side. Ooh! And to kick it all off I’ve posted a little guessing game. I am still the same old dinahmow, but you can find me here. https://bearsinshorts.blogspot.com I hope you’ll stay with me. Like Pooh and Piglet, we’ll ALWAYS be friends.
…Or, not sure where you are, but writing down the adventures might be a good idea.
Right, then! First up, I thought that, since we are (that’s all of us, right? Not just one daft old bat who doesn’t know a sexton from something that sort-of sounds like one. C’mon, you slackers! Get your astrolabes out. No, Muriel. MURIEL!) doing maps this month I’d change my header.
And then, when I came to upload my map…I noticed that there does seem to be a similarity.
But, to save you having to click back to the previous post, I said that I might manage to retrieve the map that got so much use in my childhood. Of course, the original is long gone.But I have re-drawn the inky bits of an old copy for you.
map of the island
Remember that spelling list? I don’t think “cannibal” was included! And the burn marks? I think we might have been lighting our camp fire…Or maybe the pirates fired at us! By the gods! They were a devilish crew! Blood-thirsty yells upsetting high-strung thoroughbreds and wilting Nan’s pansies.
But I remembered the fun of the game well enough to include similar maps inbirthday and Christmas presents for a whole new generation of kids.
…which is why we have maps. Yes! This is coming to you from the dark and danger-fraught depths of…where, exactly?
Well, a long time ago, in a cupboard under the stairs (accessible only from behind the big dining table when said table was moved for carpet-cleaning) a little girl ( for the purposes of this exercise we’ll call her “Dinah”) found an old chocolate box, stuffed full of what most adults would call “rubbish!”
Children and adults have vastly differing ideas of “rubbish.” The little girl carried her box of treasure (see? vastly differing.) out to the tack room at the stables and carefully laid out the contents.
3 chipped cats-eye marbles and one steelie. A circle of cardboard with split pin “hands” in the centre. Seven old, foreign postage stamps with strange writing the girl could not read. A tattered old notebook with lists of words. (Probably an aide de memoir for swatting before a spelling test.) A small green and gold satin rosette and a race card with the name of one horse heavily circled and underlined: scribble,scribble, something “ly” scribble, scribble”W” scribble,scribble “ood.”
And underneath the old notebook, a faded, torn and badly creased sheet of paper. A map!
Georgie-Pie came in for some harness and peered over her shoulder.”What’s all this?”
Dinah said it was all hidden in the cupboard behind the carpet sweeper. “Probably something one of the kids has forgotten about. Take it down to Nan and see if she knows.” He picked up the harness and, heading towards one of the stalls, called back to her.”Want to drive?”
Map and marbles forgotten in a trice, she raced after Georgie-Pie, eager for a ride in the sulky.
