I suppose you could say I was 'in the zone' for gardening as yesterday I continued rearranging plants and now have removed all the ginger lilies except for a few in the corner in the rock bed so they are not crowding the other plants. They have now been moved to more suitable spots in the garden, a large clump by Sock's clivia and more in the flaming canna bed. I pulled up sheets of plastic 'mulch' from underneath and thought it was horrible stuff and never did a good job of suppressing weeds anyway, plus another disadvantage of black or plastic mulch you can only lay it down on an empty bed and then plant things through it, by cutting slits in plastic, it won't work if you already have a garden. I've tried thick cardboard mulch but the creeping buttercup now just grows right through it. Where there is plastic mulch the beds are as dry as a bone and the soil, compacted and unable to breathe beneath it. Where there is no mulch creeping violet (but white) has taken over, which looks quite lovely and no longer think of as a weed. It works sort of like ivy although non climbing and when all knitted together makes a good ground cover.
I have learned to live with a few buttercups which, if my shrubs continue to grow to shade the area they will eventually die out, hopefully. En masse in flower they look quite pretty but I suppose it would never do for a garden magazine!
So..now Ceanothus 'blue sapphire' has room to spread its joy, I have liberated the echeverias from their pot and put them in more prominent places in the bed, as sort of have a glaucous blue theme in my garden, slash sub tropical. Not sure how this works but the trio of gardenia, ginger lily, frangipani are going to work together and may become a quartet if hibiscus wants to shoot up as well.
The blue/purple trio is lavender, ceanothus and echium. Then I have pinks scattered around, like sweet william, lambs ears, and thyme.
Beth's geraniums are now gracing the terrace/porch and I now have a sun lounger thanks to Trade-me it was only $5! My deck chair is coming soon too for the deck. I moved the circular cafe table and red chairs to one part of the deck and the picnic table is now under the shade of the tangelo tree. So now with that sorted I think I'm nearly ready for the bbq season and parties. Bring on summer!
