What's in the Basket?

What's in the Basket?

Comment   

Wow!  What a busy month its been.  Harvesting of autumn and winter flowers has been in full swing.  We are still catching up on clearing and particularly pruning some of the plants that got away from us during the break we had with our baby (who is now 3!!).  

I love pruning!  I am working on a blog post about pruning proteas and leucadendrons.  Its such a satisfying activity.  Yesterday I did a small burst of pruning, and came back with a basket of early winter flowers.  Pruning large Protea Pink Ice can be hard work.  Some branches need more than my Felco shears can manage.  But the flowers are beautiful at this time of year and I salvage any I can.  

Small Protea Repens have been in the ground for 4 years.  They need a different type of pruning and shaping, encouraging lots of new straight stemmed flowers for next year.  I'm looking forward to having the first good harvest nest year.  The flowers from this year are lovely and you can see some of them in the basket.  

There are also some Banksia Occidentalis in the mix.  They are nearly at the end of their flowering for the year and even though they're only 3-4 years old, they need heavy pruning.  I'm trying to keep them at a manageable height because they are such vigorous growers.  

Some Leucadendron Safari Goldstrike are in the basket.  They are getting ready to flower and I'll be harvesting them in a couple of months.  This will be 5 years since they were planted and we are so happy with them.  A few wayward shoots too good to waste made it into the basket of pruning pickings.  The flower heads have properly formed and won't wilt, but I'll wait until they colour up before I pick them in earnest.  

The first few branches of Thryptomene are just starting to bloom.  By the end of winter, these will be covered in white blooms.  The excitement of seeing the first flowers of the year always encourages a bit of early picking!

The last little flower in the basket is a wild yellow Banksia Marginata.  I have a few of these Banksias growing along the path to the flowers and they are flowering profusely at the moment.  The bushes are really large - 6 to 8 metres tall and full of flowers, but most of them are growing at odd angles with shoots sticking out.  Every so often, one or two make their way into my basket and usually end up in a vase in the kitchen!  

May Madness

May Madness

Comment   

It's been a mad month!  Early May is always a busy time on a flower farm - Mother's Day is one of the great flower-giving occasions of the year.  It happens in late autumn here in the southern hemisphere, just when proteas and leucadendrons are really blooming well.  This year I was organised - it was still busy, but things were under control!

There were lots of local orders this year and we had a ball putting everything together.  We did lots of seasonal bouquets of various sizes, and some boxed arrangements - something I'm just trying my hand at.  I've not had any florist training but what I lack in technique, I hope I make up for in enthusiasm for the flowers themselves.  

The Pink Ice Protea are really clear and lovely at this time of year.  They were the stars of the show, and set off really well with a variety of leucadendrons and foliage.  I've used some lovely grevillea foliage, some banksia, and some thryptomene which seems to be popping out early this year.  The white flowers are a lemon scented tea tree flower which are just gorgeous at the end of autumn.  And they smell good too!

The leucadendrons seem to be colouring up early this year.  Maui Sunset are lovely and pink, and the Inca Gold, whilst not at their stunning yellow best, are definitely looking golden, showing off their red tips.  It was great to have a variety to play with when putting it all together.  

The morning after mother's day we had a nasty surprise when we found our baby dangerously ill. She was rushed to hospital (an hour and a half by road ambulance).   She is ok now, but it was a shock and its taken us a while to recover from it all.  Combined with a deadline for an exhibition of linoprints that I've been working on and May was definitely what I'd call MAD!  

But what I love about growing flowers is the calming measured quality that they give to your life.  They keep growing and blooming, and the cycles keep ticking over.  When you plant something, it seems like it will take ages to give you any flowers, but life gets busy and time goes on, and before you know it those tiny plants are producing  flowers and needing a prune!  They add such beauty to life.  I think they give more than they take.  

And now, we're into winter.  We've got major infrastructure projects planned for around the farm over the next few months, including a new flower shed.  I'm looking forward to the winter season and all that it will bring!