RATHER SEEDY

Walter de la Mare is among my favourite poets and so he sprang to mind when I thought about illustrating some of the autumnal seeds from around here. His poem about seeds illustrates, I think, what springs to mind when many of us think about seeds when we first hear the word:

The seeds I sowed –
For week unseen –
Have pushed up pygmy
Shoots of green;
So frail you’d think
The tiniest stone
Would never let
A glimpse be shown.
But no; a pebble
Near them lies,
At least a cherry-stone
In size,
Which that mere sprout
Has heaved away,
To bask in sunshine,
See the Day.

It will certainly resonate among my northern hemisphere readers who have already begun planting seeds in the hope of seeing flowers or vegetables before long. Seeds represent the birth of life, a renewal, the promise of something special. What brought this to mind are the many pictures of dandelions I have seen in a number of northern hemisphere posts as being clear signs of the final arrival of spring. Here they have gone to seed:

They will remain dormant for a while as we move into longer periods of colder weather. The poppies went to seed a long time ago, yet I cannot resist showing you their little cage with holes for the seeds to escape from:

What an intricately designed seed case this is! So are the blackjacks: these blackjack seeds have tiny barbs on the end that catch on anything and everything that passes them:

Before you know it, your socks or your slacks will be covered in them – as will the fur of your dog and even the cattle walking past. Wonderful ways for these plants to disperse themselves! I usually photograph the attractive spiky dry seed pods of the common weed Datura but came across the green version of it:

In time this pod will dry out and split open so that the seeds within can disperse in the wind. Here is the delicate tracery of what is left of a Cape Gooseberry husk after the fruit within had dried and the seeds blown about:

What beauty there is in the end of life here! While the picture above might represent the emptiness, the aloe seeds below show anything but: these ripe seeds are the result of good pollination and proudly show the swelling promise of more aloes to come when the time is right:

GREEN LEAVES

Today has been darkly overcast and dull with a very light shower clearing the air a short while ago. Having already looked at various hues of green on St. Patrick’s Day (interestingly the dead snake elicited the most responses!), as I walked around my garden this afternoon I was reminded of the various shapes of leaves we get in nature. First up is the Spekboom (Portulacaria afra) which grows outside the side door leading to our swimming pool. The colour of the stalkless, succulent leaves tend to vary from bright green to pale grey. I planted this small tree as a broken off twig several years ago and it has already reached a height of nearly 4m. I prune it periodically and plant the cuttings elsewhere in the garden.

This Aloe ferox growing near our front door is well over thirty years old – well suited to this dry part of the Eastern Cape. Its beautiful flowers will appear sometime in May and continue through to the end of August. These broad leaves are showings signs of age yet still look attractive to me.

This Ziziphus mucronata, commonly known as buffalo thorn or blinkblaar-wag-‘n-bietjie, seeded itself outside our lounge window. I enjoy the glossy green leaves, although remain wary of the thorns – one hooked and the other straight – that are difficult to extract oneself from. Despite the thorns, trees growing in the wild are browsed by both game and stock animals.

Gardens are all the sadder, I think, without nasturtiums growing somewhere. Not only do they produce blooms in a variety of colours, but their blossoms, leaves and immature green seed pods are edible.

According to the Agricultural Research Council “Sword fern is a category 1b declared invader in Limpopo, Mupumalanga, Kwazulu-Natal, Eastern Cape and Western Cape, and a category 3 invader in Gauteng, Free State, North-West, and Northern Cape. It must be controlled or eradicated where possible, and may not be sold or distributed through commercial outlets.” Try as I might, I simply cannot get rid of these plants which grow faster than I can attack them!

Another exotic is the Cape gooseberry (Physalis edulis) which originates in South America. All the plants (the number of them wax or wane according to the weather) growing in my garden have seeded themselves – probably courtesy of the birds which adore the golden berries as much as I do. I generally leave them to grow wherever they please, unless they are really in the way.

RANDOM PICTURES

I feel the need to brighten up this blog a little for this tends to be a drab time of the year. As today is the fourth of the month, I decided to take the fourth picture from four different years that show aspects of my garden – bar one:

Look at the shape of these feet.

Five minutes away from home.

These Cape gooseberries were turned into jam.

PATTERNS: CIRCLES

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone … W.H. Auden

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered …Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death … Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Then as if a mirage at sea a village of ramshackle homes
Single story on a sandbank all with gardens of the strangest design
A flea farm, gooseberry bushes and butterflies in net cages … Michael Wolf

The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants … Emily Dickinson

 

DROUGHT = NO JAM

Over the past few years our garden has yielded an abundance of deliciously golden Cape Gooseberry fruit – all for ‘free’ as the plants have seeded themselves and simply got on with their cycle of reproduction. There is usually so much fruit that our grandchildren could pick mugfuls and there would still be enough to both satisfy the birds and allow me to make jam or to make a sauce for ice-cream. These gooseberries were a late autumnal / early winter treat that meant one could pick a few after hanging out the laundry or simply when passing by one of the many bushes weighed down with fruit.

Then came the relentless drought. Many gooseberry bushes sprung up as usual, but hardly any survived – and those have scarcely enough fruit to make picking worthwhile. Besides, the birds need that sustenance more than I do! Hopefully, like the Canary creeper, the gooseberries will bounce back again next year – if we get some decent rain between now and next autumn.