False Bay garden in June

by Diana Studer

- gardening for biodiversity

in Cape Town, South Africa

This is a good winter. My aloes have recovered from last year's shrizzled buds. Aloe ferox blooming in June. Buds of Aloe marlothii coming for July. Emerging buds on the coral Aloe striata. For Through the Garden Gate with Sarah in Dorset.

Winter aloes

Karoo Koppie is ticking all my orange and red boxes. Leaf margins on coral aloe. Firesticks Euphorbia tirucalli turning from lime gold thru bronze to terracotta. Raspberry red Lachenalia bulbifera. Gold and orange Chasmanthe floribunda. Stately bells of Cotyledon orbiculata got knocked sideways by wind. Garlanded by a border of scarlet pelargoniums.

Karoo Koppie in reds

My mother's Cypripedium. Slipper orchid King Arthur.

Cypripedium King Arthur

June garden flowers blue Rotheca myricoides and Felicia. Blue and white Strelitzia nicolai. Pure white pelargonium and Iceberg rose. Still patiently pruning my lemon tree to a better, more compact more reachable shape, and thinning out the too much groundcover above the roots. Yellow Euryops pectinatus. Pink Dais cotonifolia (sorry too late for the photo - but we had nice flowers) and pelargonium. For Wildflower Wednesday with Gail at Clay and Limestone in Tennessee.

June garden flowers

From the sky came a gangly ungainly shadow. Not dark and menacing hadeda ibis. But a young purple heron, with his snakelike head and neck. Hoping for a frog...

Young purple heron

Emptying the overflow buckets after rain I found a rain spider.

Rain spider

'The service in this place is the pits. Half rations (vet put them on a diet). And I think you should know, this fire is not working!' says Zoë.

Zoë waiting for the fire to be lit

Sleep sandwich. Thomas enjoys coming in festooned with garden bits like an over decorated Christmas tree (now he is curled on the cushion on my chair)

Sleep sandwich

Mid-winter sunny breezy days and my washing pergola does good service.

Line dried washing in winter

Don't judge a book by its cover, but I do! Alex Latimer is both author, and illustrator. The cover tells the story, set in Upington, Northern Cape, hot just across the border to Namibia. With an entertaining visual gift to his readers spread across all the pages.

Followed by Alaska. Rosamund Lupton and I both have/had one deaf ear. Her narrator is a profoundly deaf young girl. But the cover, tall trees, while she is crossing the tundra in a blizzard and utter darkness!

Book cover art

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