Wow, Huey's laying on a pearler of a first week of spring. Sunshine plus warmth in the 20s every day, and for the next few days it seems. Love your work this week at least, Huey! While all the garden renovations chugg along nicely, the established plants in other parts of the garden where mattocks aren't being swung have all jumped out and, if they could speak, would be cheering loudly. The whole show here is starring, of course, the dazzling scadoxus family, but they're not the only spring bloomers around here.
The Scadoxus are at their peak right now, after taking
more than a week to fully open.
This year there are four of them, last year three.
They're at their best in the late afternoon, when the
low sun catches the tops of the flower tips.
Talk about photogenic! These scadoxus
are superb in the early morning light,
gleaming like neon adverts while all
the greens around are slowly waking up.
In the afternoons they catch fire. They're
the first thing you see when looking out
from the house, and you'd think I'd be over
the sense of 'wow' after a week of this,
but no, every 'first glimpse' gets me.
The largest of them seems to be making babies while
still blooming. Ever the optimist, I am hoping this is
a good thing, the beginning of a scadoxus empire,
achieved without much help from me, I might add.
If there is such a thing as a ridiculous amount of
flowers on the one plant, then my lime tree has a
ridiculous number of flowers on every twig, branch,
stem: you name it, it doesn't just have a flower on it,
there's a cluster jostling for a bit of bee action.
The hum of bees is the soundtrack to being out here
right now, and it looks like these baby lime-ettes
indicate that a bee has paid a welcome visit here.
When limes flower profusely, lemons flower too, but
not quite in such abundance, and in a different colour
scheme, too. Both have a lovely fragrance to be near.
Reliable as ever, the pinky-white cymbidium orchids
make their September appearance with aplomb.
And the most popular flower with visiting native birds
is working its way up to an October peak, but it is
already filled with blooms. This is Grevillea 'Peaches
and Cream' a modern hybrid that, like the Robyn
Gordon and Ned Kelly grevilleas to which it is
related, blooms most of the year anyway. The native
birds actually squabble over visiting rights, sometimes
quite noisily, but they all get a good feed every day.
As the garden is being renovated now it isn't quite as filled with flowers as it usually is at this time of year, but the old regulars are still a delightful bunch to have around. This really is the nicest start to spring that we've had for several years – may it continue this way for as long as possible, I say.
