Winter in my Garden

Down Under we are topsy-turvy and I still am amazed after 4 years that flowering of plants is right through the year and even at different times. Now I can hear you think, ‘they would follow your seasons… duh!’ This does not hold much water as it probably is more to do with temperatures and rainfall. So let me just start with winter – a good weather and time of year as any to start this journey in my garden.

The tree at the end of the garden with large seed pods  from one of the creepers. With so many of them about it is hard to say which one these belong to as this is the first year we have seen them.

Winter begins on 1^st of June and around that time I found some buds showing up on the daffodils and snowdrops. This is a different variety of daffs than I have seen before and must have been planted by the previous tenant. For the first year I had no leaves even to indicate there were these blubs in the ground. 

The daffodils actually show up as clusters on a single branch. 

The snowdrops are in a small patch round the back next to the water boiler and were a pleasant surprise.

We did get a few roses growing in the single bush by the kitchen window. The opening of the buds catalogued by my husband is included here.

In the front garden there is a bush / creeper. Well I was not sure what it was as it sent out these long branches that reached up to the roof pretty fast and I had to keep cutting them back. The first year there were no flowers, so I had no idea what the plant was. The next year there were one or two small yellow flowers and looked like roses. This year, after good pruning of last 3 years, there was a explosion of beautiful pale yellow almost creamy roses and it turns out to be a rose creeper that could cover the walls if I leave it to grow. But then I do not think it would flower so well.

Another surprise was the nistercium plant. There is a small plant growing next to the thorny pink rose bush and in the past I have had a few nicely orange and yellow flowers show up. But strangely this year, most likely due to large amounts of rain through summer and autumn, I believe, there has been an explosion of this plant. It had sent out creepers all around and flowered like crazy. The leaves growing large also like the lily pad leaves. 

The blue flower in here is from another plant. There was a nicely branching plant I saw at the edge of someone's garden. I picked a small branch to pot to grow this succulent type of plant and I got these pretty delicate blue flowers.

The other one that sends vines all around the garden, across the fence and on to the neighbour’s and our garage is the morning glory. 

The white flowers are fromanotehr creeper and I have yet to find out what it is!

There are also a couple of bulbs of spectacular orange-flowered amaryllid. There are some pretty delicate purple / blue flowers that I am sure are a kind of weed.

The grass is green and full of clover especially when the sun warms up the ground after heavy rains. The rain and odd hailstorm are wonderful to watch.

The winter time is when we get our harvest of limes. There tree has huge thorns and was badly in need of a prune. Having cut it back for the last 3 years we got a decent harvest of about 15 limes this year.

Finally, also this winter we discovered out resident blue tongued lizard. Seems to be living under the house and comes out to bask in the winter sunshine.