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

Yep, the bud is growing quite quickly and appears to be pink! I did a little research to find out if Yucca's ever have pink flowers and came up with a blank It's probably due to the weather not being warm enough now.....still pink is good

I don't ever remember playing on a lawn when i was a kid. I was far to busy exploring woods, fields, compost heaps (looking for slow-worms) and hedgerows. Also waste ground was a really cool place to explore, who wants to play on a boring old lawn eh!

Lawns *are* boring. Dull, drab and generally awful. If I ever own a house, it will not have a lawn. Jungles are much more fun. I can still remember climbing my grandmother's fig trees when she wasn't looking and trying to get into the plum tree without touching the ground and then losing myself in the lilies and acanthus behind the strelitzia... *sigh* I certainly didn't miss lawn when I was there.

The garden here is teetering on the brink of the spring growth spurt. It's rather exciting. The various euphorbias are already surging along. The hayfever's going well too.

Actually i have a large lawn, or as i prefer to call it 'garden i havent dug up yet'. The flwer beds are gradually getting bigger as the lawn gets smaller. There will always be some lawn in my garden, as i have to have somewhere to walk and admire the latest flower.

I have memories of exploring one of my grandparents large cottage garden, picking raspberries and steering clear of the huge spiders in the wood shed. Happy days
We're fast approaching Autumn now, some of the trees are starting to change colour. It won't be long before i have to rake up a ton of leaves from my lawn

I like the idea of grassy pathways as a replacement for a lawn. It's what I'll have here if the rains ever come and the grass ever comes back to life. But if I ever own a place there will be no lawn, not even as paths, primarily so I don't have to mow it. (That's my first gardening principle: if it needs ongoing maintenance, it has no place in my garden. There are a few exceptions of course...)

I'm currently in the middle of a truly spectacular bout of hayfever. Not fair. I blame the acacias in the district.

I don't think you would like a garden like mine, it is almost constant maintenance. I love it though, i need a reason to be in my garden as i can't just sit out there and do nothing. I don't get invited to other peoples garden often, as i start pulling up the odd weed and dead heading flowers.

Sorry to hear your hayfever is particularly bad, must be a really good year for pollen.

I really, really like high-maintenance gardens - as long as I don't have to maintain them. Of course, if I had more time and more control over the layout of the garden I might be prepared to get more involved. If I ever own a house, let's see what happens.

In the meantime, I just hang around in other people's gardens and admire them.

The hayfever was only moderate today; there was just enough rain overnight to lay the dust and pollen and other atmospheric filth.

I was hanging around Kew gardens yesterday, i just love that place.
They have a new aboretum walk, 59ft high
We found loads of funghi to photograph which was fun. There were lots of water birds to watch and of course many plants to look at. In the great palm house there was a small space given over to Astralian native flora. I was so surprised at how soft and downy some of the leaves were on those plants. I always assumed that coming from a dry climate they would be tough and leathery. You learn something new everyday eh!

AUstralian native i should learn to preview.

It depends which part of the continent the plant is from. Rainforest, desert, rangeland, alpine districts - take your pick. But yes, we do seem to have a lot of downy plants here.

Did Kew have a flannel flower available for stroking and fondling?

Almost all of my grevilleas are in flower right now. This sort of thing makes it all worthwhile. The honeyeaters are out there now, going quite mad. I'm glad I've managed to make the place appealing to birds.

I can barely breathe today. Must be bloody Spring. *sneezes and snuffles*

I have no idea which area the plants were from, but they were nice all the same. Sadly no flannel flowers, i guess even the mighty Kew cannot get those little devils to grow

Your garden must look a picture with all the Grevilleas in flower I have now seen two grevilleas and the colours were quite striking, a vibrant red and a different shade of red...or was it orange. Anyway i can imagine that a group of them would look stunning.

Do you take anything for your hayfever?

I take tablets with varying brand names, but they're all based on fexofenadine hydrochloride. Yes, I do always read the small print.

Most of the grevilleas are red, with a couple of orange ones and some pink. There's also cultivar 'fireworks', which has red tending to yellow. The one I really want to flower, the Murray grevillea, has shown no signs of doing so yet; I've been waiting two years now. I can't remember what colour that's supposed to be. Maybe I'll never know.

The callistemons are just starting to develop buds. At this rate I'm expecting full bottlebrushes in November.

My grand-daughter gets very bad hayfever, it has meant she's had alot of time off school when it's at it worst. What really makes me mad is the school get all snotty because she's off sick again, then in the next breath, they send her home because her hayfever has suddenly got worse

The Yucca flowers should be open very soon, i hope they manage to open before the first frost.

I'm pleased to report that the Callistemon i bought earlier in the year is doing exptememly well. It's put on quite alot of growth.
Are all your Callistemons red? I'm sure i've asked that before

Most of my callistemons (can't remember how many there are, to be honest, I'll have to do a census) are red or somewhere at the red end of the spectrum - there's a sort of deep burgundy one, and a more pinkish one. There's also what's supposed to be yellow but that plant's quite slow-growing, it seems, and it hasn't flowered yet.

I prefer the true red ones. They're the classics.

I don't understand that school at all. First they get snotty because the girl's not there, then when she gets literally snotty they get annoyed... There's no pleasing some people.

*sneezes*

I'll be doing some reworking of the shrubbery over the christmas break. It seems correas need just a little more water than they're getting under the eaves, and I think they've also been poisoned by fertiliser residue from the exotic weeds - roses, I think they're called - that were in the space before. So I'll replant that strip with Mediterranean things like Jerusalem sage and acanthus and maybe dwarf pomegranate - it depends on what the garden centre has when I get there.

The hayfever is still in it's prime eh!

Are correas in any way related to roses? The rose family is very large and comprises of alot of un-rose type plants. If they were related, it would explain why they havent done well in that spot, besides being under the eaves. Did the people that lived there before look after their roses? Only i would'nt have thought there would be much in the way of fertiliser left from them by now.
I do love acanthus, though the last two summers here have been wet and it would seem they are martyrs to powdery mildew, i going to have to dig mine out.
How are you other dwarf trees doing?

Yep, hayfever will persist for a while yet - even though we've had a decent rain lately so the dust and pollen count is down.

Correas, like other Australian natives, don't tolerate phosphorus. Anything that had been put in to support the blasted roses would have had more phosphorus in it than any unaltered Australian soil has. I think that's probably the root of the problem, and I don't much feel like digging it all out and replacing it. Masochism just isn't my thing. (And yes, the last people cosseted their blasted roses. They were of that generation. Mercifully, fashions change.)

The existing pomegranates and things seem quite happy, and have needed no attention at all. That's my goal, really - plants that demand neglect. So I'll get more of them...

Oh yes, i forget your native plants prefer acid type soil with no phosphorous.
It's good news that the others are thriving on neglect. I've never been a fan of roses, even though i have three in the garden. I just can't see the attraction 'shrugs'
Do dawrf pomegranites have the same size fruit as a larger tree?
The only thing growing in my garden at the moment is cat pooh! I had to clear up vast amounts on thursday, some even keeping warm under a fur coat!

Dwarf pomegranates produce half-size fruit. Not sure if they're edible, and at any rate there's only been one so far. And as it happens I don't like pomegranates that much; decades ago I used to have a medicine that tasted like pomegranate juice. The association of concepts is too strong. That being said, they're a useful plant in a dry garden.

I don't have a crop of cat pooh here, for which I am grateful. Dad used to be plagued by the stuff, accusing the family cats of setting land mines for him. Personally, I thought Dad just needed better glasses, but I could appreciate his viewpoint.

I can't remember if i like pomegranate or not, i havent tried once since i was a child. They just seem like too much effort to get into. I have the same feeling about oranges, by the time i've peeled them, taken of all the pith i no longer want to eat it.

The cat pooh is still growing in places, so i'm still out there when i can to get rid of it

The squirrel is also digging up my flower beds There are labels strewn all over the lawn and i won't know where the plants are untill they start to grow again.

Did you have a nice christmas?
Ours was not very good, due to ill health.

Christmas here was a non-event, by choice. I spent the day alone, enjoying the peace and quiet. It's the one day of the year I can be certain of being left unbothered by people.

Now - ill health. Yours, or someone else's? Has it passed now?

Here's an actual gardening question. What does one do with non-wetting soils? It's been so dry here that, when it rains (and we had a mini-monsoon at the weekend), the moisture doesn't really penetrate the ground. I was doing some planting (more euphorbias) and I found no moisture in the ground anywhere down to a depth of 18 inches. Then when I was watering things in I saw that the water mostly beaded and flowed away, leaving the soil around the new plantings apparently dry. It's really very disturbing.