February in our False Bay garden

by Diana Studer

- gardening for biodiversity

in Cape Town, South Africa

The shadow fell just right to walk the talk. Inspire. For Sarah Through the Garden Gate in Dorset

Inspire

The angle of the sun, with our hard work trimming the top of the Brachylaena discolor. Originally this space was filled by an invasive Brazilian pepper tree. Blank wall is a few paces from our house wall, our boundary = their garage. Taken through the window to show you how I wanted that expanse of wall to become gazing into the heart of a forest.

Brachylaena discolor

Mostly leaves this month inspired by Kris in California at Late to the Garden Party. My tuberous begonia is knee high with huge leaves. Butterfly leaf is Bauhinia bowkeri.

Bauhinia and begonia leaves

This completely screens one of our rain tanks.

Bauhinia bowkeri

From our Porterville garden I brought two cuttings with a few leaves. Planted five years ago. Now Hibiscus tiliaceus bears its flowers way up there. I only see them once they fall. For Gail at Clay and Limestone in Tennessee

Hibiscus tiliaceus

Our small black plastic compost bin (2014!) seemed like a good idea. But. Too wet. And frequently FULL, needs emptying. We have a new slatted wooden bin. I layered crumpled newspaper, some sodden half way to compost, then chipped garden prunings. Repeat till the sodden was layered into its new home. Now we have space, and I wait, hopefully, for maybe six weeks ... and crumbly compost from the hatch at the bottom! Another advantage of the slats is that you can what is happening in the layers.

New wooden compost bin

One of the Searsia shrubs in our tapestry hedge has branches dying off. We have been cutting back steadily. I found a discarded solar light flung in there - perhaps the battery leaked?? Head on the gap is large. Looking along the hedge the new gap blurs away (central gap is a deliberate space for Halleria lucida to use)

Tapestry hedge gap

Ivy pelargoniums in raspberries and cream. Potted Searsia has almost achieved its aim of shielding the bay window chair from passersby. In the shade trifoliate Knowltonia vesicatoria.  

Pelargoniums
Searsia and Knowltonia

February forgot to summer, so we are catching up. Very grateful to live on the Peninsula, that yellow tongue off red hot South Africa. Since it is 30C in our living room, with sunny side curtains drawn, Thomas in his lush fur coat, is curled up in his cat bed! The Ungardener is climbing mountains.

HOT today

February books.

Renee KNIGHT

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Disclaimer - any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental...

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But this time the disclaimer has a neat red line through it. Disturbing book about skeletons in the family closet.

Nicole Mary KELBY

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The pink suit

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A different version of - where were you when Kennedy was shot. Told by the seamstress who made that iconic suit. Chanel tweed. The threads in different colours telling the story of the hands (dyers and weavers) which created the fabric. 

Stuart TURTON

The seven deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

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Need to keep up at the back there for this one, which weaves a very tangled web - neatly wound up at the end.

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'My mind has gone blank ... I'm cut short by the sight of my own hands ... Every memory I had a few seconds ago is gone'

Elizabeth STROUT

My name is Lucy Barton

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'There was a time, and it was many years ago now, when I had to stay in a hospital for almost nine weeks'

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A difficult childhood, estranged from her mother. But yet, her husband asks his mother-in-law to come (he thinks you need babysitting!) and they have a few days to sit and remember, and to talk and untangle some of the knots.

Kim EDWARDS

The memory keeper's daughter

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The author tells us what inspired her novel

A Presbyterian pastor had a story to give me.

About a man who'd discovered, late in life, that his brother had been born with Down's Syndrome, placed in an institution at birth, and kept a secret from his family, even from his own mother, all his life. He'd died in that institution unknown.

Her novel is a more modern, more enlightened story, the heartbreak still there. But also the joy. This brother and sister bonded by music.

Caroline O'DONOGHUE

Promising young women

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A #metoo story dedicated to women in offices, everywhere

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Another version of, she has the ideas, but his name takes the credit of course.

February books

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