Abba doesn’t have a patch on this

Meet Philodendron ‘Xanadu’, one of the few plants that’s survived and even flourished under recent neglect.  It’s a plant often used by landscapers in these parts, and after traipsing through garden after garden one day and seeing the same plant used again and again I decided there must be something to this small green monster.  There is.  It’s a dwarf variety of the more common giant philodendrons that seem to grow in every Durban garden, so it’s great for pots but can also look quite good as a sort of bed edging.  It should also stand up to mild frost and in time lends itself to being divided. Not bad, is it?  Sort of subtropical only without a lot of that off-putting-piranha-crait-insects-that-burrow-under-your-skin-don’t-walk-barefoot sense of unease one can find in woolly subtropical gardens. Mine grows in a heavy square sink rescued from a school science lab where, I have to say, I think it looks rather fine.

Garden and Gnome

A big clear out earlier this week caused me to rediscover this nameless fellow which a colleague gave to me a few years ago.  He’s rather battleworn, missing half a leg and a few fingers (who knows what office toys get up to when everyone goes home) and I can’t say I’m fond dust traps such as these, but as I held him above the ‘throw’ pile for a few moments something caused me to hold back. Is it the beard, the alcoholic’s nose, the jaunty blue cap?  I’m not sure.  In the office we all believed him to be a gnome but looking at him in his new environment (on the basil bucket at home) I’m beginning to wonder if he isn’t one of the Seven Dwarfs. Could he be a garden gnome with an identitfy crisis?  In which case, should I send him for counselling?

Toasted.

So it seems my ugly bug post rang some bells. Vivh and I received this mail from our friend Toast, a well-travelled bloke and bug aficionado:

Here are two pictures for your blog. The one is of a locust plague on the move whilst in the pedestrian stage. It was taken in April between Vanwyksvlei and Kenhardt in the Great Karoo. The best thing about the locusts is the sound they make. This ominous moving munching crunching sound of mandibles on the move. The other is of a koringkriek – I traveled around the Northern Cape and North West Province and they were everywhere. Sometimes, after good summer rains, they just erupt in number. Wherever you drove, you couldn’t help but drive over them. They’re cannibals and then come to eat their own dead on the road, which means next car kills four in one shot and so on. They’re slow moving and not scary at all, though sometimes they wander up your leg and you only feel them once they reach your sock which gives you quite a fright

Above: Cannibal insect death machines.
Below: Something out of the Old Testament.

Horrible, aren’t they?

Classified.

Single, white amateur gardener-lady seeks garden-related activity for the weekend. Finds herself with time to kill, since bulbs are all in the ground, roses cannot be pruned till August and self-imposed-TV-diet has left weekends an empty wasteland of books and internet, with outdoors time curtailed. Greater Johannesburg area, fans of blue roses needn’t offer advice.

The photo is totally unrelated, but I like mad-looking bugs…

Pic: slopjop on Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0

June-nearly-July

I was looking at our pages today and felt they really needed some colour, so I’ve dug out a picture I took at the aloe and Cape honeysuckle (Tecoma capensis) maze at Baynesfield outside Pietermaritzburg about this time last year.  I think the aloes are A. arborescens and they’re in flower all over the place right now. 

 And while I was procrastinating over some work stuff yesterday (our exasperated art director was about to defenestrate me) I found this lovely quote in A Gardener’s Year by Eve Palmer, who also wrote the classic The Plains of Camdeboo:

I always think I am not very fond of orange in the garden until I see the orange hues of August, and then their looks of robust new life and gaiety coming at the tail-end of winter are absolutely right.

Er, well, we’re not in August yet but I think it can count for June-nearly-July.

If, like me, you’ve piles of books around your house, a small stack beside your bed and even several which have slipped between your bed and a wall, you might enjoy The Flange over at Garden Monkey.  Have a look.

What gardening books are you reading at the moment?

 

Take up your pitchforks and hoes (2)

This weekend I’m going to persuade my friend Jamie to help me find a site suitable for a spot of guerrilla gardening.

Let the lightening bolt strike

If you live in Durban and have some time on your hands this weekend pop in to the Green With Envy garden show in Vause Road some time.  I was there for work this morning (part of my job is to be nice to people at such events) and it seemed to be going swimmingly. Their plants looked good and strong too. In fact Green With Envy’s plants always seem to look healthy.

It was quite a well-heeled and rather older crowd this morning, it was a week day after all, so it was great to bump into designer and garden blogger Ross Nevette who was charming and refreshing to chat to.  I think I’m going to start calling the troupes of bejewelled women at these shows the Pointer Sisters, since their French manicures seem much too polished for them to be down-in-the-dirt gardeners. Unless they know something about nail care I don’t, (easily possible, to be fair) I surmise they spend more time pointing instructions to their long-suffering gardeners than they actually do on the ground.

The theme of the garden show had something to do with French courtyards but, as Rebekahn graciously pointed out, why does one want a French courtyard in South Africa when the genuine article is likely to be littered with Gauloise cigarette butts?

No reason for the cabbage picture.

To market, to market

A few posts ago I wondered why indigenous Polygala myrtifolia had been hybridised by Americans and not South Africans.  It’s taken a while but I think I’ve remembered the answer which springs from an interview I did with plantsman Steve Grenfell late last year.  Come to think of it Steve, tall, tanned, silver haired and by popular consensus in possession of an extremely beguiling smile, would doubtless beat Matthew Wilson/Joe Swift in any Garden World competition hands down.  I’d forgotten about him.  Maybe he should be our garden pin up…    

I digress. Apparently the answer lies in the size of the market.  Hybridising plants saps time and money, and in South Africa plantspeople don’t have much of either to invest in making new varieties.  Domestic gardening, that is growing pretty flowers instead of planting seeds of mielies (maize), pumpkins and spinach for subsistence, is prohibitively expensive when you live on R1 500 (100 pounds) a month and only a very small number of people in our country can afford to garden in the traditional Western sense.

According to Steve many nurseries in America benefit from a much bigger, wealthier and more demanding market and so are able to and probably have to fiddle with plants to make them sell better.  Face it, most of us are suckers for larger, brighter flowers and a convenient growth habit.

So I’m pleased to report that we are not as slack on this as I had originally presumed.  Still, it would be nice to see Malanseuns, who are the fourth largest plant growers in the world and the largest growers in the southern hemisphere or something, making more of our largely untapped plant heritage. 

Of course the irony is that if this happened in bigger way our own wild flowers which grow here for nothing would then perhaps be sold back to us with the added cost of marketing spin and hybridisation, making them once again beyond the reach of the average South African.

Or have I lost it? 

 

May Blooms. In June.

Last month, I promised that I’d have better pics of what’s blooming in Brixton for Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day. The photos are better this month, although they’re a day late. But June 16 is a very special day in South Africa, so I thought uploading today would be a good way to celebrate Youth Day and remember the young South Africans who faced what no child should have to face in the struggle for freedom in this country. Heavy thoughts, I know, but hopefully these can lift your spirits a bit:

The Irises are doing brilliantly:

I love the way the purple irises look against the orange Californian poppies. Of course, since this is my garden, the poppies and the ubiquitous forget-me-nots are everywhere…

Last, but not least, are the unknown rose (no idea where it comes from, or what it’s called):

and the very last bits of the meadow mix that I scattered last summer:

Not bad, huh? Little bits of sunshine and colour and light in the middle of the Joburg winter. They’re a joy to behold.

R.I.P. the Salad Bowl

I’m very glad that vivh’s basil is flourishing. I may have to go round to hers and beg some greenery soon, becuase up here in Brixton, there’s nothing but death and destruction, at least in the edible leaf department.

The lettuces I so confidently planted out round about the middle April haven’t just failed to thrive - they actually seem to be regressing. Their roots have liquefied into slime, and the tips of their leaves are crispy and burnt. I could swear they’ve actually shrunk. I’ve moved them into the semi-shade, into the sun, out of the sun, under a tree. No dice. Could the soil be too acid? Mr Khumalo told me the soil was too good for them, and that they like poorer soil, so scraped out some of the good stuff and replaced it with bog-standard soil from the garden, and still no joy. I’ve left them to dry out and watered them well. I’ve tried to ignore them, muttered threats about balsamic dressing and butter and paid them daily compliments. Nada. Now I’m the hell in, and bordering on the neurotic. So I’ve decided to give them one more month. If there’s no progress, I’m calling it a day. They’ll come out and something else can go in the elegant red pot.

On the upside, though, the first of the Namaqualand daisies have come up. They make me to happy…