One last walk through the garden

Before I headed off up north to visit my daughter and her family, I did a quick check of what was growing in the garden before I left. There is definitely change there as we head towards the winter months although you would never know it with the last few days before I took the photos reaching above average temperatures for this time of the year. Some plants have nearly finished flowering but there are still a few pretty ones there which have survived the dry weather.

The dahlias continue to impress....

 ....despite the lack of water.

They pretty well rely on rainfall as we are reluctant to use too much town water due to the cost of excess water rates.

The beautiful Garden Show-offs from a previous post have gone to seed....

....and they are quite a pretty pink seed just like the flowers. (That is the gardener's grotty hand holding them).

 The Stevia is now flowering....

 

....as is the Brahmi. 

  Some of the Bromeliads are also flowering....

....and are quite beautiful in their own way.

 

  

 A couple of Day Lillies are still giving some colour to the garden ....

....and what could be mistaken for Gotu Kola is growing well at the front door.

I planted two cucumber seeds a couple of weeks ago as an experiment to see how many we could harvest before the cold hits. So far we have had three cucumbers growing. I am also experimenting with cherry tomatoes and have planted some seeds in a pot which I can move around in winter as we had them growing for almost the whole year last year until a person whose name I won't mention but whose hand is in the photo with the pink seeds, was 'weeding' and pulled the cherry tomato plant out that I had been nursing along during winter as it was producing enough tomatoes for us. Then I had to buy the rock hard tomatoes from the shops which were tasteless. It's hard to get good help these days, isn't it?  :-)

Some readers may not have seen a Monstera Deliciousa which is native to the jungles of Central America so I don't know why it is living in our temperate region with cold winters but somehow it is thriving.  It can only be eaten when it is mature and apparently tastes delicious although I haven't been brave enough to try it myself. The unripened fruit contains oxalic acid. These can be picked from our front verandah. 

It is amazing how much a garden changes in a week especially if there has been rain. Showers are forecast almost every day for our area but we rarely see anything more than a few drops. So it will be interesting to see what is flowering or ready for harvest when I get back from the Outback where it is fairly dry and barren and still terribly hot. They must look forward to the cooler weather of Winter in the North West of Queensland like those of us in the South East look forward to the warmer weather of Spring. Now...I just hope the gardener remembers to water all my plants!