Loving these bright splashes of yellow today. I’m hoping they’re the beginning of drifts of yellow California poppies, but for now they’re just in ones and twos, with some bonus gazanias.
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Blueberries blooming in fall! This is the “top hat” variety. I checked the other bushes and they aren’t blooming.
Blueberries will do this if the fall is warm for too long and it affects the next season’s crop (fewer berries). Picking off the flowers doesn’t fix this.
The last of the shrub rose blooms. Very thorny, but brought a few in last night before our first hard freeze. Very strong scent - the whole kitchen smells of roses. @gardening#bloomscrolling#roses
Nine hours driving home on the Hume, thinking, listening. Youngest came down to Melbourne on the night train to hang out with friends and ride shotgun home with me, and we learned a lot about each other through road trip music choices.
Came home to find my cactus flowering. Still astonishing, still and always. It belonged to my friend, and flowered on the night he died in November 2020, so every year it brings him back in such a good way.
Harvested the Passiflora lutea today. This is for the food security + rewilding project.
There are around two seeds in every berry and I collected enough already for everyone who wanted them. They don’t taste very good: sweetish pen ink with hints of dish soap. They stain a blueish purple. The flowers are edible though and can be used as a garnish.
I was worried the pollinators wouldn’t find these flowers after two new species were completely ignored (achocha and pink soba). But they found it. 😊 Maybe I will have spider berries for Halloween?
One of our late season #perennials is Toad Lily. The plant doesn't look very special from a distance, but once you are close enough you can see the awesome tiny lily flowers.
This shrub rose has been blooming since May! It also seems to be planning on blooming all the way until first frost given all the buds it is producing!
We have fewer late season perennials, but a few things are still blooming. There are a few yellow blossoms left on the rudbeckia and this perennial salvia has been blooming for months. The Joe pie weed is in full bloom. This #native has established really well in our yard. #bloomscrolling#florespondence@gardening
we're getting more and more 'heavenly blues' each day. this will come to an abrupt end with the first frost, but for now we're enjoying it while we can 🌸
Pushing on with heat-proofing the pots in the yard, I suddenly found this lovely one. The backstory: several months ago the washing line blew over and fell on this rose, snapping it and uprooting it out of its pot. It was a very dejected stick, no sign of life, and it took a bit of repair even to see if it could come back.
Halfway through day one of long weekend gardening, getting ahead with some El Niño planning—weeding, topping up, mulching, moving pots that will struggle in the hottest parts of the yard. Encouraged by this lovely Rozanne geranium I had sort of forgotten about.
Made it to the end of Friday. My friend has given me surplus tomato seedlings to plant. Let’s go long weekend. (If you’re outside Australia and curious, it’s the celebration of the 8 hour working day, so shout out to the union movement too.)
Will they every bloom, I wonder. Junior Woodchucks' Guidebook says that Salvia hispanica is a “short-day flowering plant”, which will not happen here in Denmark until 3+ weeks from now, and meanwhile the temperatures are dropping. The plants are over 1 m tall at this point, so I'd rather not take the pot inside.
Anyway, a couple of bush crickets have been enjoying the forest for a good while now, so that's a reward in itself.
@plants Eight weeks ago I was wondering if I would ever see flowers on chia plants in my small garden. At that time there was 13h 35m between sunrise and sunset. Today we have just 9h 33m, and even if we add the two twilight zones the days are short. And isn't that a bud on a chia plant? 😻
The temperatures are less than 11°C these days, so I doubt that the plants will produce viable seeds, but what a delight if I can finaly see its flowers in vivo.
In the past six months I have attempted to pollinate each flower on my Spathiphyllum, with nothing to show for it: while the spadix does grow initially, the spathe will eventually wither and there are no seeds to be found inside the spadix (see the first photo).
So what if I pollinate the spadix before the spadix has opened? This looks much more promising: the spadix grows much larger (see the second photo).
I have pollinated lots of open inflorescences with no results other than some initial growth, but no seeds.
I have pollinated three closed spadices, and all three have grown to a volume that is currently at least twice the volume of any open-pollinated spadix.
The proof is in the pudding, they say, so it's a bit early to conclude anything, but so far it looks like a promising pattern.
Am I really the only person on the entire fediverse who has attempted seed propagation of their peace lily?
"The Internet" by Chris Hallbeck (files.mastodon.social)
alt textThe internet is fantastic. You feel connected with the whole world. Video chat with friends that live far away. A constant stream of hate and doom beamed directly into your eyes 24/ 7. Cat videos....