Where the mild things are

Disaster averted! My now sheepish gargoyle.

Today I realised, after a few weeks of niggling doubt, that one of my garden gargoyles was missing. Had he been consumed by rampant pigface, which has been overgrowing like crazy in recent rain and humdity? Trying to explain to fellow investigators exactly what he looked like, and failing miserably, I had to bring up online evidence (see archived Flickr photo below) - good ol' Internet! - but miracle of miracles, he was not MIA after all!

The hide 'n' seek gargoyle is back!



As he appeared in 2007, last seen surrounded by self-propagating portulaca.

Pretty pigface II

These pigface flowers close every night. The newest ones are small and a brilliant red, fading to the vibrant dark pink but seemingly getting larger each day.



These trailing pigface strands grew from a small clump taken from my school's garden, but have grown much bigger than the parent plant! There weren't many flowers this year, until I had the larger, separate pigface plant above trimmed back, allowing more light to hit the bush rock wall over which which the smaller blooms were trailing. The tiny blooms popped open the very next day!

Pretty pigface

Ah, the pigface has not only spread vigorously, it is now flowering in abundance! The flowers are closed when I leave for work each day but, in the afternoons, they are welcoming me home!

How does your garden grow?

It's a little bizarre that the grass is growing so wonderfully in the middle of a drought, but we've been getting a combination of frequent storms, that can dump a month's rainfall in ten minutes over parts of Sydney, followed by days of gorgeous sunshine. You can practically watch the blades of grass growing!

I'm particularly thrilled about my gardenia bushes, which are blooming extremely well this year. Gardenias were my paternal grandmother's much-treasured flowers, due to her daughter Elaine's fondness for them (Aunty Elaine died at age 17, although she has ben an influence over several generations who never met her). I once bought my grandmother a potted gardenia for her balcony as a gift and it was an annual celebration whenever that first fragrant bud burst open. When I bought my own flat in 1984, a gardenia for the balcony was one of my first purchases.



Since moving to the house in 2000, I've made a point of picking up a new greenhouse-reared, ready-to-bloom gardenia plant each year, mainly because they have had more promise of many blooms than the ones here, which have traditionally granted only about ten blooms each per season. The last few years, despite careful spraying for pests, some little caterpillar has been tunnelling through the tiny unopened gardenia buds and this either mutates each bud as it grows to full size, or causes it to not open at all.

This year, anticipating disaster again, I bought a new, ready-to-bloom gardenia plant - which has started performing well - but all of the other plants are covered with buds and flowers, too! Mind you, there've been some black caterpillars threatening to start munching but so far so good. (I squished one in the centre of his body the other day - and his brains shot right out of his head. If that's where a caterpillar keeps his brains.)

I'm also enjoying the development of this year's agapanthus blooms (but so far no action from my two Black Panthas), the gorgeous self-seeding portulacas, and the amazingly hardy pigfaces (first time this year) in their numerous colours.


Fingers crossed for a black pantha!


Sunday's magic number: 88.6 I'm so excited! It was a difficult week, watching a friend tuck into Krispy Kreme donuts when I had a skinny milkshake, and I even refused to partake of free Christmas cake at work. Sigh... I guess it's been worth it.