The postage stamp size garden I am endeavouring to maintain with far too little water has yielded great pleasure in terms of colour. Especially pleasing are the Namaqualand / African daisies. I planted a packet of out-of-date seeds in the bare, dry ground with great faith and have watched them anxiously from the first tiny shoots to the orange and yellow flowers that open with the sun and wave merrily in the breezes.
Growing plants from seeds in a drought is a risky affair and so I caved in once our local nursery opened and bought calendula seedlings. These have survived being chomped by several locusts to produce pretty blooms, such as this one.
The miniature marigolds were also purchased as seedlings, but very few have survived the onslaught of snails.
This Van Stadens River Daisy (Dimorphotheca ecklonis) originates from plants my late mother grew on our farm in the now Mpumalanga.
To my considerable joy, several self-sown cosmos have grown up from last year’s crop.
A very strange thing I have discovered since the COVID-19 lockdown began is that there are no flower seeds for sale in the supermarkets. At first they weren’t allowed to sell any seeds (don’t ask) and now only have vegetable seeds on offer!
Something Over Tea 
Well done, especially with out of date seeds
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For some reason there are no flower seeds available, so out-of-date ones were the best I could manage. These flowers have managed to survive very arid conditions, so I am very proud of them!
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Rightly so
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Lovely colour bursts. How strange about the supermarkets not selling seeds during the initial lockdown – perhaps an interpretation of the regulations that was not universal as supermarkets here continued selling seeds – I bought some veggie seeds at a local supermarket during the first lockdown period. Some shops, however, sold out of veggie seeds due to demand, at least for a time.
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Do you remember the snippet (from Wait a minum’?) “Natal is also part of South Africa”? Seeds were stripped from our supermarkets when lockdown began and only recently returned the vegetable seeds. A visit to the nursery is required for they have seed packets in now – as does the hardware shop!
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Gosh that musical is a blast from the past! Have just discovered that some of the numbers are up on YouTube (audio only). So interesting reading about the show and the cast.
And back to the present – if we all get some rain we can plant some seeds!
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Happy day when the flowers start blooming! Glad you were able to get some to grow. Do you have mail order nurseries there? We had the same run last spring on seeds in March/April and companies are now advising to get our orders for next year in early. Strange times indeed.
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I am going to get a fistful of packets as soon as I find them in anticipation of the rain that has to come!
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You have done very well. The self sown cosmos are a real bonus.
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Some of the cosmos are very short – few are as tall as they grew last year – yet they are all pretty in a variety of pinks.
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Our coloured cosmos are quite tall but are not going to make it to the flowering stage by the look of it. It has just been too cool for them.
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They do prefer bright, warm sunshine – even though they are winter-spring bloomers here. The shortness here comes from a lack of water.
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Lovely bursts of colour!
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They have cheered me up no end.
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What a joyful collection you’ve put together again, Anne, Thank you!
As for some of the idiosyncratic, to put it mildly, regulations we had to endure during the most restrictive lockdown periods, the prohibition on anything gardening related, when we we’re all sitting at home twiddling our thumbs, was one of the hardest to comprehend.
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Quite so. Now we need rain and along with it some inspiration to start another colourful patch as this one inevitably goes to seed!
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African daisies have been a very « useful » landscaping plant here. Some of the colors are gorgeous… Often I planted them near the driveway in my previous arrangement, and when I’d step out of my car after an outing they would greet me and require a few picture posings before I carried my groceries in.
I also planted many colors of the plants at church and tended them for years. It’s a pleasure to see your flowering garden!
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This is an awfully late reply, yet I am pleased to know that you have also planted and enjoyed African daisies in your garden 🙂
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