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

I've been followed by roos before. It was about 5am or something equally absurd, very cold, and very foggy. I was walking home from a party a few streets away. I could hear odd noises behind me - muffled noises, sounding like a cross between spilt porridge and velcro. ( There's no other way to describe it.) When I stopped moving, the noises stopped. When I got to the next street-light I stopped and waited; three large roos loomed out of the fog and stopped dead. They followed me all the way home. The strange noise was the sound of roo feet on damp asphalt.

I've also been chased by swans and nuzzled by a possum. (Not both at once.) That's not nearly as embarrassing as what happened to Dad - he was bitten by a cute little fairy penguin.

By the way, the daphne has its first flower. I guess that means I've put it in the right place.

Thats brilliant. Does it smell lovely?
I think my Daphne has died I don't think it liked the long dry spell we had here I havent given up on it yet, i'll wait till spring before i dig it up, just in case its just gone dormant.

I don't know if the daphne smells at all, but I hope it does. The thing is, the flower is about 6 inches above ground level, and if I take my nose down there I might do my back in and get stuck there in the mud...

But never mind, Spring (mine) isn't that far off now. There'll be more flowers, and more accessible ones.

Aahhh... I can see why you would'nt want to get down to ground level.

Spring is my favourite time of year. I love to watch for the first flowers to appear, which are normally the snowdrops, followed by crocus and then the dafodils. My garden looks its best in spring, just a mass of colour.

There's a few daffodils just about to bloom, in front of the japonica and the crepe myrtle. There's also a single gladiolus in among the rosemary. I didn't plant that. I wonder who did plant a single bulb.

Next weekend, I intend to get outside and start clearing away some of the winter rubbish. After that, I'll start thinking about where to plant things in the next round.

I've just planted some spring bulbs. Hopefully they will all come up. Theres a couple that are quite difficult to grow, but i have every confidence that i'll be rewarded. Ones a Fritillaria persica, it has a tall spike of almost black, bell shaped flowers. The other is an Erythronium pagoda (Dogs tooth violet) that has yellow reflexed star shaped flowers.

So have you some new ideas for plants?

Oh that single gladioli must be mine, i planted some and one never appeared, i must have put it in upside down!

Well, that's that explained then.

I meant to plant some freesias and irises, but it's a bit late now. Next year...

As for other plants, in the first batch I think I'll stick to grevilleas and callistemons, and maybe some more daphne. There will be another round, and that'll depend on how things recover in the Spring. The pelargoniums are looking a bit sad at the moment; if they revive, I'll have more of them, and maybe some more hebe.

Are pelargoniums usually frost-tolerant? This is the first time I've tried to grow them in a frost-prone district, and they've mostly died. I had a good look this afternoon.

Is it worth trying again, or should I just do something else?

Hiya.
I'm sorry to say, pelargoniums are not frost hardy Maybe you could try some hardy geraniums in their place? They are very reliable and totally frost hardy, with pretty flowers which go on for ages.
Over here we take pelargoniums in during the winter, prune them and put them out again after the frosts. Lots of people take cuttings and have fresh new plants next season.

Drats.

I might examine my options. More correa, maybe. That's doing well. Either that, or mulching the base of the plants heavily in Autumn. Or something. Clearly I can't rely on local nursery advice. Oh, how I resent leaving the Mediterranean climate I'm used to.

Did the nursery tell you they were hardy then? I too have been told things in the past from nursery's which turn out to not be the case. Luckily i don't have to worry about that anymore.

The labels all said 'frost tolerant', for a start. I think that might mean that they cope with the occasional light frost, rather than daily heavy frost for 4 months. H'mmm.

One frost here is enough to kill them, so i think that label is very mis-leading.
I bought an Asclepias (milkweed) earlier in the year. The supplier who supplies some of our plants, assured me it was hardy, my research says it will be dead as soon as the frost starts. We'll see who's right eh! In the meantime i'll just enjoy the pretty flowers.

Tomorrow, I'll be officially out in the garden for the first time since whenever-it-was. I'll cut back the obviously dead bits of things and see what happens. One of the pelargonuims has some tallish weeds and grass around it; I think that might have been a frost barrier. If there's any live plant at a lower level, I guess the lesson is to shield it somehow when frosts start.

If you can protect them, they may well go through the winter. Try using a layer of straw, it lets the air and water pass through, but also keeps the plant warm. Don't use hay though, that will just turn into a mushy mess

Thanks for the tip. I'll look into that, come Autumn.

Looking outside now, I don't think it's really warm enough to be out there just yet. How frustrating. After lunch, maybe.

The weekend was perfect gardening weather, eventually. I planted some more grevilleas and gave up on two pelargoniums. One will recover; it was the most robust when I planted it in the first place. There's a couple more that I'm not sure about yet.

Of course, after blissful 20C weekend weather, there's a gale and blizzard warning today.

Its sounds like you had a productive and pleasant weekend
I myself had to w**k 'grumble' It was a bank holiday here too, but that makes no difference to my boss.
Hey! You're having odd weather like us, its amazing how many different types of weather we can get in one day Today its lovely and sunny, but tomorrow we're to have cooler weather and rain.

I'm so glad I got the planting done; it's deeply unpleasant out there now. Windy and gritty. No rain yet.

What sort of conditions does camomile cope with? There's a small patch of ground in front of a rose-bush, in full sun - at the moment it's only weeds and the sad survivors of some alyssum I scattered there last spring. It would look nice covered in camomile, if that's a good place for it.