spring | Time to ACT

Spring is arriving finally. It feels late this year but as a google remember notice informed me, it is exactly the same time as last year.

Remember this?

Well, that was taken on the 6th October 2019. This one was taken just 2 days ago.

As you can see, there is not much difference! It is a similar story all around the garden.

The apple tree in the garden is almost in full flower

A few flowers on a soft fruit similar to a nectarine or peach. I actually don’t know because it has leaf curl and has yet tomanage to set fruit.
Maybe this year?.

The lawn is a carpet of yellow yet again. The flowers are Cape Daisies. An invasive species that turns the whole mountain side yellow when it flowers.

The mountain side alongside lake George.

I’ll try for a better photo tomorrow when I get to leave the house again.

The veg plot has almost been reclaimed from the very wild rocket which has flowered all winter long giving one of our nectar feeding birds a source of nectar. Both of us have seen the Eastern Spinebill hovering in front of the flowers gathering nectar.

Raspberry canes and parsley have gone in.

The rhubarb has settled in nicely. In the background is the wild rocket and behind it the fig trees just starting to leaf.

My lavendar is flowering well after a long dry summer. There to the left is a different variety and has yet to recover from the attention of a chicken landing on it. Sadly they happen to love lavendar. It is the smell. They love rolling in it!

After a visit to IKEA recently, I came home with 2 new orchids. Both are settling in well and flowering beautifully.

Spring is well and truly happening. My wonderful yellow rose is trying to flower.

The bottlebrush is just showing the first flowers, but I think the main display is a few weeks off.

The lawn has flowered magnificently much to Stuart’s dismay! Known as Cape Daisies, they make up much of the lawn.

And my lavenders are in full bloom. The grape vine is a mass of leaves and buds.

The apple, apricot, pear, quince and still unidentified soft fruit with a hard stone (most likely peach or nectarines) have all had their sudden flurry of flowers and are now starting to leaf (or grow more in one case, out leafs before it flowers).

The Jasmine is probably no more than a week away from full flower, but already smells heavenly at night when it is still. The family of weebills are raising yet another brood in it again but this year have made no attempt to hide the nest.

We’ve moved some of the agapanthus from deep under a pine tree where it was really struggling from lack of water, to under the 2 main bedroom windows. It still gets little to no water but it is where we empty our grey water to and where I’ll be planting courgettes and squashes very soon. We keep on getting warmer and warmer spells but each weekend it drops again back to frosts overnight. So, this week started with the fire lit on Monday morning because it had been only 3°C overnight, but by Tuesday it was 26°C and yesterday was 33°C. The forecast is for another 3°C again on Monday morning, so we’re not yet out of the woods or no longer needing it when it comes to planting out my seedlings into the veg plot or to no longer requiring a fire!

The only thing that is definite is that water is going to be a very precious resource this year. We’ve had very little rain through Autumn, Winter or the start of Spring and the water table is very low.

I’ve found a lovely unknown and unidentified flower at the bottom of the garden, hiding behind both quince trees.

All I know is that it is a succulent so I may try to transfer some of it to the stone circle in the front lawn.

We’ve been having some interesting weather but usually without rain. It’s happened elsewhere as in these 2 pictures taken a day apart on my daily walk to the letterbox.