Surprising appearance of lettuce
Flowers, or weeds. I'm not sure.
New seedlings embarking on perilous livelihood
Meanwhile the more established plants battle for dominance
Strangely surviving rose, and dying (dead already?) chilli
As the weather warms & we get longer days, I have ventured back into my ‘garden’. I say so with quotes, as my method involves chucking stuff in the ground & seeing what lives. I do try to plant things by height, so the bigger things are at the back. But, erm, that’s the extent of it.
It’s all flowers & herbs as I don’t want to grow veges. Although I do have plans to buy a lemon tree & a feijoa tree (a ‘pineapple guava’ tree as I discovered the garden shop call them). I’ll plant them in big pots so we can take them when we move out.
I kind of want a big overgrown mass of a garden, and the stuff I planted when we first moved in is now close to achieving that — battles for dominance going on between the mint & parsley & that other plant with the name I forget. Actually I forget all their names. My plant identification skills: they are bad. This plant, I remember, it starts with H and isn’t hebe. Or hibiscus. Something likes to eat its dark green textured leaves, which are always full of holes. The same something that likes to eat the mint, I think. Speaking of things eating the garden, there are also these goddamn whiteflies all over the parsley & mint and no matter how many times I spray they never go away. It’s some kind of garlic spray, peritheum?, and maybe it’s not strong enough.
I threw some seeds in a spot last autumn, now a mass of plants. I, however, am unsure if any of the actual flower plant seeds survived. I think it’s all weeds… at least one of them definitely was a giant weed that I removed on Sunday, embarrassed it had got to an almost woody stage. After my tidy up, I threw in a few more seedlings and another rosemary, scattered about the place.
I’m surprised the one rose seems to be doing well so far. An existing chilli pepper plant beside the rose alternates between dying and thriving, without any interference from me (Apart from propping it up on a stake. Is that what’s killing it? Although it seemed to be dying quite well all by itself, crumpled up on its side). I think it may have finally kicked the bucket. It’s VERY dead looking now.
I would like to have peonies but I suspect I would kill them in 2 seconds flat.
There is a lettuce plant that has appeared among the lambs ear & thyme & bluey flowery stuff I planted. It must have been an existing seed just waiting to burst out, happy to have friendly mates around. And I think there’s another chili near it too, from whatever garden was there before we moved in, poking its head up. Or it could be a weed. It is suspiciously near the flowers-but-probably-weeds patch.
There must have been a pretty cool vege garden going on here, once upon a time. But when we moved in it was all covered in bark, with not much actual plant life.
Heliotrope! That’s the one being devoured. Some kind of caterpillar’s favourite meal.
I might buy another type of spray and attack those suckers with a combination of poisonous applications. Luckily I always wash the herbs before using them…
