Gardens and Growing Stuff

[Irrev-Black]

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The biteys mostly made it through winter, and the hot, dry stuff that followed. (Lost all the Sarracenia leucophylla, though: no stamina, dammit!)

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The Venus Flytrap needs a bit of frosty weather to be happy, and this one seems to have done okay.

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It self-divided, so now there are eight little flytraps divided off and potted.

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After this one was bedded in, a bee came to slurp on the peat about an inch away. I didn't reach the camera in time.

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Dunno how many of these will make it to next winter...

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What a difference a lack of anthocyanin pigmentation makes in these sundews.

[Irrev-Black]

When I moved the bathtub swamp garden, I thought I'd lost all my Sarracenia leucophylla pitchers, since the whole shebang got dried out.

Life, uh, as Goldblum reminds us, finds a way.

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These re-shoots are coming from an old, dried-out rhizome that was just buried in the peat base.

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Flytrap division plantings are going well, too.

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[Irrev-Black]

Years ago (quite a few) I gathered up some Hardenbergia (Happy Wanderer) seeds to send to @MJT, and had a few left in an ice-cream bucket, sitting up back of the shed.

So, round the end of winter, I was cleaning up, and just flung those seeds in with the potting mix I was putting with some spring onions. Hardenbergias are bastards to get sprouted, anyhow...

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Except when Jeff Bloody Goldblum intervenes, apparently.

Now I've got some colour for the back fence.

[stylofone]

I want to replace supermarket salad greens with garden-grown ones. I'm starting with baby spinach and rocket seeds. The former seems to have germinated with a very high success rate, the latter only produced 4 feeble-looking plants, but it's not a bad start.

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[Irrev-Black]

Flytrap divisions are mostly doing well.

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They don't reproduce from seed, it seems, and flowering (if left unchecked) kills 'em. (There is a member here who knows about this stuff, but I won't hammer their mentions.)

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The volunteer plant of my hardy hybrid chillies is now in its third year, and still thriving.

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[stylofone]

My megalith-inspired garden concept, installed this morning after a sweaty expedition into the bush with my wheelbarrow..

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[stylofone]

I'm mourning one of my grevilleas. After copping a beating from plumbers, concreters, and then the laying of turf all around it, it is no more. I replaced it with a different variety today. Its sibling still has a few green leaves, but I don't think it will pull through either. The callistemons in the same location are a lot tougher.

Meanwhile, the cat posed with my fifth standing stone. This is reviving my ambition of adding a 2001 style "monolith" to the back yard at some stage... although the stones are a lot easier.

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[Irrev-Black]

I'm mourning one of my grevilleas. After copping a beating from plumbers, concreters, and then the laying of turf all around it, it is no more. I replaced it with a different variety today. Its sibling still has a few green leaves, but I don't think it will pull through either. The callistemons in the same location are a lot tougher.

Meanwhile, the cat posed with my fifth standing stone. This is reviving my ambition of adding a 2001 style "monolith" to the back yard at some stage... although the stones are a lot easier.

yV6MceMDcSAwfANpyuxTDjpuScSWSuTOG5YUuN3N.jpg

(Pictures Lucy bashing the bejaysus out of something while Also Sprach Zarathustra* plays loudly.)

* BTW, I owned the album once - the whole of Dickie Strauss' ASZ, conducted by Zubin Mehta (a Zoroastrian, noted for striking parallels). 'Tis pretty tame once that big minute thirty-seven's over.

[Irrev-Black]

Please pardon the paucity of posts. My back is almost completely kerfuckled after a long session playing Grim Reaper with Sammy Sawfish, a hedge trimmer not designed for use at ground level.

For that matter, my ruined spinal column isn't set up for bending double, either.

The near future holds a

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which can be used overhead or angled out like a scythe.

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Anyhow, with what little energy remained, I did the rounds of my pepper bushes. My Big Birdseye bush afforded enough peppers for me to get on with my latest positive protest against the Big Two Grocers (who stock hardly any of this condiment) - I am going to try some DIY Sambal Oelek.

I promise pix and a report over the nextfew days.

[stylofone]

which can be used overhead or angled out like a scythe.

I note the extension cord. My lawnmower is like that. It was dirt cheap, it doesn't spew fumes and doesn't need short-lived lithium bricks to run. Also I only use when the sun is providing free electricity to power it. If you don't mind the tether, the 240 volt gadgets are great.

I have heard that there is a mindset which assigns prestige in exactly the opposite way - petrol engines are manly, fancy expensive electric gadgets are modern status symbols, cheap plug-in ones are at the bottom of the ladder.

Suckers.

Having said that, I must confess I have a shed full of cordless power tools, including a little grass cutter with a hedge attachment.

I use it instead of a whipper snipper, those things always fuck up and I lose patience with them. Although they are very manly.

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