h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There's some weird things happening in my garden! Flowering now I have

- winter jasmine
- Helleborus (fair enough)
- Daffodils (What? Bit early?)
- Fuchsia which hasn't stopped since about May! (Wha??!)
- Primula vulgaris..bit early too.

What about yours?

Oh, and snowdrops and Ceanothus.

Winter jasmin is still around, otherwise, no flowers at all! The daffs are showing now though.

Snowdrops and my pink and purple heather. My rose still has a flower on it (!) and I have noticed a lot of daisies around that never really went away. Isn't that a little odd?

A bit Kelli!

I was looking at this old gardening book of my father's, printed prbably in the early seventies. The seasonal calender it had for jobs to do etc. was so messed up compared to a modern book. Things like when to mow the grass after winter etc.

Then there was the enormous cocktail of chemicals advised, nearly all of which are now illegal.

Not much new blooming yet. Some Anemone buds waiting to open though - there's a photo of one on the new h2g2 creative gallery http://public.fotki.com/Mudhooks/gallery_42/h2g2_friends_art_album/

A scraggy wee bare-root daylily I planted last year is starting to sprout up too. Good to see that, since it did damn all last year!

Also got an astilbe which is well up.

I've got so many seeds now, I don't know what to do with them. I need two acres of polytunnels! (Anyone fancy a seed swap? )

How's the weather in England now? Any warmer? That little warm blast I was feeling so snug about over here has vanished now. Bloody cold!

Seed swap? I've done those before with Researchers.

I'vegot crocuses and daffodils, and that's about it.

I went out and mowed the lawns yesterday, and cleared away the winter border. I always leave the dead bits around as I'm a wildlife gardener. It looks a lot better now - a bit bare and flat, but it will give the new bits and pieces space and light to grow. Clearing the area where my peppermint is was lovely, as it's chocolate peppermint so the smell was wonderful.

As for wildlife, we (my son and I) found a yellow ladybird with 'trillions' of spots and two frogs.

I wouldn't doubt it!

I have lots of things flowering just now. Helebores, hyacinths, pulmonaria, primulas, narcicuss, dafodills, 3 types of viburmum, leucojum, anenome blanda, My cowslips are also in bud.

Still got the hellebore on the go here too. Anemone De Caen, dafodils, and some forget me nots are starting. They just invited themselves, and re-seed themselves each year, so I'm happy enough - less work for me. Muscari are still going in a pot with an unidentified cypressy thing I got in a market for about 30p.

There's a camelia that's been here about seven years and has decided to flower for the first time too. And I've great hopes for a lupin I started from seed which is bushing up nicely. It's all starting to happen at once!

Vireya Rhododendrums thats whats blooming now, great masses of clustered orange, delicate posies of pink candy coloured trumpets, dazzling coronals of brilliant yellow. The majestic Wheel of Fire tree(Stenocarpus proteaceae) is in bloom after a ten year wait and the obscure Atherton Oak has flowered in a splendid show of understated nonchalance. All are adding a lovely burst of Autumnal colour to a sub-tropical garden usually subsumed in polished greens and dappled shades of limes and quite browns,all hues of a forests understory.

Animals that scamper about include the Echidna a spiny destroyer of the well mulched garden and its fellow conspirator the Bandicoot who takes great delight in digging holes of various sizes in a well tended lawn. Sun loving Bearded Dragons supine on the warm basalt rocks cast their unwinking eyes at the slow meanderings of the Blue Tongued Lizard on its slow investigative journey of all nooks an crannies, searching out the abodes of snails and slugs. Noisy combative Rainbow Lorikeets wreak havoc amongst the flowering Eucalypts, while their more demure and fantastically coloured brethren the multi hued Eastern Rosella snip seed pods from the grasses. Asleep in the fork of a Gumtree the superbly camouflaged Frogmouthed Owl doing its impression of old bark sleeps the day away and only the raucous guffaw of several members of the local wakeup alarm squad disturb its slumbers. These cackling hoons are well named as the Laughing Kingfisher, better known as the Kookaburra. A far cry from an English garden, but a garden of earthly delights none the less!!(apology to H. Bosche.)....cheers!

I just realised that you Greenfingers of the Northern climes probally have no idea about any of the plants an animals i just mentioned. Oh well..take my word for it that they give the same pleasure as any Gardner round the globe gets from watching thier patch grow and bloom...cheers

Gardener...grrrr...typo's..

Hi rhynch,
I'm all excited because I planted a whole load of dwarf rhododendron bushes yesterday, they will flower soon (can see all the buds on them already) and then they will get on with the job of growing up for the summer. So do all your rhododendrons flower in autumn or is it just your variety? I think all of the ones I've seen in the UK flower in spring. Have put in some other flowering things around them (some petunias and something called senetti) so we should have some colour later in the year too This is all in a new bed that I created over the long weekend, so when that lot is nicely established I'll put some bulbs in for next spring. Think I fancy hyacinths and crocuses

The weather has gone grotty again today, so I may not get my new bedding plants in to the back garden this evening. I need to weed the bed before planting anything, which will be a bit of a task. The bed used to have a crab apple and some other unidentified large plant (it might have been some kind of berry but it did nothing last year) that I dug up last autumn, it also has a forsythia and another big shrub that I love but don't know the name of so there probably wasn't much nutrient content left in the soil. I dug through *loads* of compost after removing the two shrubs so everything I plant should grow happily this year

I don't have to battle with echidnas in my garden, although the puppies are doing a good job of digging up the lawn On the plus side, they seem to like crunching up snail shells, now if we can only train them to eat slugs they can do our pest patrol for us!

k

Hi rhynch,
Must admit I don't know most of the things you mention, but it all sounds very poetical

Hyacinths - hmm, they're not bad outdoors. But how did they become so popular as a houseplant? I always find them a bit akin to teargas indoors!

I'm not sure about using my dog as slug police. It's a good idea, the only thing is I don't fancy the idea of a slug after it's been through the digestive system of a dog!

'Dances around all excited'
Last year a wild spotted orchid appeared in my garden. It had 2 lovely flowers. I took some photos, but my camera was crap, so i mostly only got pink blurs
I noticed 2 days ago that its started shooting again. This time i'll be ready with my 'new' camera and hopefully get some good close ups of this beautiful flower.

*glares at the non-wild non-spotted phormium seedlings taking over*

You've no idea how lucky you are Venus!

Oh believe me i do. I consider myself privaleged to have such a thing growing in my garden.
It makes a change from the cat-pooh...which grows faster than any weed!!

I dunno. I don't mind cats crapping. Let's face it, when you gotta go, you gotta go.

But do the buggers have to be so smug about it??

Yeah, thats true....but these little b*ggers go on the grass. I can't say how many time i've trod in or mowed over the stuff And they do hace that snug expression after.