Spring has arrived!

One of the great things about keeping a blog is that if you are a keen gardener you can keep a record of what is happening to your plants from year to year. I just had a look at the blog posts I wrote at the start of spring during the last two years and it is interesting to read that some plants just haven't appeared this year at all, others have almost finished flowering which were just starting off in past springs and yet others are having a slow start this year. I guess it all depends on the amount of rainfall and how cold winter has been but seeing the flowers spring to life at this time of the year is always fascinating.

There are going to be some big changes in our garden this year due to the CEO's health issues and he has decided that he just can't keep up the maintenance of our 1/2 acre and I am getting a bit long in the tooth as well and don't want to be spending too much time weeding etc. and heavy lifting is definitely out. So one of my ideas is to make the succulent garden larger as we have lots of different varieties that we can use rather than buy new plants. Succulents are low maintenance and some of them have lovely flowers like....

...the Kalanchoe fedtschenkoi which I finally identified online today. The flowers are dying off now but they have put on a lovely show during the last few weeks and considering I was thinking of pulling this succulent out because it didn't look terribly impressive, I was pleased that it flowered before that happened so that I could see how pretty the orange and purple looked together.Obviously procrastination does pay off sometimes ;-)

Mum's old pelargonium  will be staying as it is also low maintenance and seems to flower year round.

The apricot tree will probably be cut down as the birds eat the buds before the fruit fly can get to any fruit that would grow and the CEO meant to cut it down last year. As you can tell a lot of procrastination goes on here.

My birthday present last year, a very expensive Peony, is just coming to life again. It never did flower which I was really disappointed about. Some pest kept eating the leaves but hopefully I can give it a bit more TLC this year and actually get some flowers as they are just beautiful and I see them all the time on US blogs.

At the moment I can pick a bunch of Freesias every morning and they are just such a joy to look at and to smell.

 I took a chance on the weather staying warm as we had a couple of warm nights last week so I planted some seeds that I was given by Fair Dinkum Seeds including Pepino seeds. Some are just starting to peek through to the soil so perhaps I didn't plant them too early. This is a Pepino from some seeds I planted last year. This is the first one on the plant so I am keen to taste it when it is ripe. It is about the size of a passionfruit at present. I have never tasted one before have you?

 

So...changes are coming on this patch of land as well as changes in the seasons. Do you have any big plans for your patch this season?