Huh a week into lockdown and today is a rain day to spend in bed. Mum split and potted up all the zygocactus, I've split and potted up all the aloes, repotted spider plants, shifted granny bonnets, and done general tidy ups. Our floral meeting was again postponed. Otherwise I would have picked hellebores, daffodils, pineapple sage, orchids, african violets and abutilons for the 'best bloom' or flower interest table. I also had my first dutch iris bloom of the season too. It's gloriously purple. And also freesia, which is flaming bright orange.
Still not much luck with my passionfruit, which is now in a pot after looking decidedly spindly, sickly and yellow. What does it take passionfruit??? Blood and bone? (Which I cannot source, as we are in lockdown).
And what's eating my magnolia flowers? Or who? I didn't know they were so tasty, as they've been chomped by something...birds I suspect as I can't find any tell tale bugs on them. After looking online I found they are edible, so I furtively tasted a petal. It tastes like ginger. They are delicious! I didn't know I had to eat the before the birds did.
My next thing to do is maybe buy some seeds online as I don't have many for spring. So I ought to make a list...even though I'm not the best at seed raising. I remember I didn't have much success with Kings Seed. On my (very small) wishlist is...
love lies bleeding (amaranth)
gourd
I'm going to attempt to grow choko...somewhere. Surely I can't fail at it but you would be surprised at the number of so called easy-to-grow failures on my clay soil. Maybe thats what we get for chopping down all the Kauri trees long ago. If they aren't allowed to grow here, then nothing will. A curse on our land! What is Auckland? Once lush Kauri forest but now a waste land of leaky homes, NO homes, barren clay soil, polluted streams, oil slick roads and silted up sewage engulfed harbour?
Tane Mahuta isn't very happy with us.
