Changing Seasons : December 2021.

I started this month feeling rather overwhelmed with the overgrown state of the garden. After being away for only 2 weeks at the end of November for the long anticipated “art retreat” (see here) The garden had gone feral. The growth had been phenomenal. Plants all battling each other for dominance. The stronger, more virile ones taking over and the more fragile, delicate ones, without me here to keep control of the bullies, gradually being overwhelmed. The weeds had taken over the pathways and paving slabs were covered with twining, twisting weedy intruders.

Where to start. What a challenge.

Well only one thing to do. Start at one corner and slowly work our way around. Pruning, clipping, pulling weeds. Slowly we could see order coming back to the garden. It is now summer and the temperatures and humidity are difficult to work in. But it has also been a wet month which does keep the garden growing and makes the weeds easier to pull out.

Now 4 weeks later I can finally say we have the garden back under control after barrow loads of mulched up clippings and pruning and slowly winning the battle with the weeds and can now see the paving slabs again.

The garden is very lush and abundant, but when I looked back at last December it is not flowering as much. The Poinciana flowers are only just starting but last year they featured in all their fiery glory in that post. But the other tropical flowers are in full bloom.

This month Jack has got the Desert Rose bug again. A while back one of the older shrubs had a seed pod. They don’t seem to get them very often.

(This is a pod that is on one of the younger plants at the moment)

The seeds are a bit like dandelion seeds and he had been keeping them for the weather to warm up. Well that time has come, and he has given birth to a whole new batch of baby Desert Rose seedlings.

Here they are in their cradle in the green house.

The previous plants are now flowering and, interestingly, though they all came from the same seed pod, they are a variety of shades of red and pink.

Here are some more areas of the garden. The fishponds and water lillies love this time of the year.

This is what I call the feral corner. I just let it do its own thing with a couple of salvias that I let take over. They have happily smothered out all the weeds and the other annual seedlings I planted in here a year ago.

In the back garden the birds love the bird bath and I have to refill it every day as they vigorously splash around in it.

A serene Buddha keeps an eye on the comings and goings of the birds, and us…

Finally here is a round up of a few more flowers in bloom at the moment. The garden is also dominated by the spiders and their webs. I have to be very careful walking under and between shrubs or I wear a cobweb veil on my face….

All too soon it is the end of another year. Looking back at last December we were booked to fly to Sydney to stay with a son for Christmas. Just days before we left covid struck and with 38 cases in Sydney, the borders were slammed shut and we had to cancel our trip. New South Wales now has over 12000 cases a day, and still going up.

The Queensland borders were opened 3 weeks ago and thousands flocked here to holiday, and from having only 16 cases, we now have over 2000 a day in that time and predicting many more. We have now joined the rest of the world trying to cope with living with this insidious, constant changing virus.

One of the best things about keeping a blog is being able to look back at previous years. I find how short my memory is about previous events. Now I can look back at 3 years. 2020, 2019 and 2018. Each year was so different.

Though it has been a busy month in the garden it has been a peaceful one. So as we head into another year I wish all my WordPress buddies best wishes for 2022 and may you all have a happy and healthy year ahead.

Thank you Ju-Lyn and Brian for hosting this monthly “changing seasons” challenge