Come for a walk around our garden that is coming alive after the first spring rain. Firstly, there is the plum blossom on an offshoot of the already very old plum tree when we arrived thirty years ago. It eventually collapsed, became overgrown and we forgot about it until off shoots like these began poking through the ‘jungle’ a couple of years ago. If we are lucky, we may get a handful of plums that the birds have not devoured first!
The indigenous Cape Honeysuckle grows unchecked all over the garden. This plant is partially covering the homemade canoe we used for a trip to the Okavango Delta in Botswana long before our children were born!
A previous occupant planted this clambering rose on the bottom terrace of the garden. It was tiny and completely overgrown so that I only discovered it about two years after our arrival. During the intervening years of drought I was sure it had died – until it began clambering all over the Dais cotinifolia last year, covering it with white blossoms.
Having cut back a section of the encroaching jungle during winter, I purchased two varieties of Osteospermum to provide some colour in the bare spot.
Two plants with a long family history are blooming now too. Both originally come from slips taken from my mother’s garden on our family farm in Mpumalanga to be planted in our fledgling garden in Mafikeng in the North West Province and were replanted here in the Eastern Cape! The first is the indigenous Van Stadens River Daisy.
The second is a Marguerite Daisy.
Last summer I scattered a packet of mixed flower seeds in my sunniest spot – not much came up – but since our first spring rain two self-sown varieties delight my soul. One are the Californian Poppies, which are robust and seem to have multiplied.
The other is a single Cosmos plant – the flower of which I do not recall seeing before. Last summer the flowers were all pink!
Encouraged by all this brightness, I purchased these scarlet petunias from the nursery.