May and our False Bay garden

  

by Diana Studer

- gardening for biodiversity

 in Cape Town, South Africa

 

Looking back at May for Through the Garden Gate Down by the Sea in Dorset with Sarah. Cape Town has moved into early winter. Chilly and wet, gray for days at a time, the way our weather used to be! I rescued the most open pink rose, but the petals are still turning brown and mushy.

 

Pink rose in winter

Thru the bay window I see spikes of Albuca bracteata, 2 open, with 2 more buds coming. Surprisingly, despite being white not red, the sunbirds like them. Yesterday there was a queue of 3 small birds on one bending stalk! Red flowers with elaborate colour detailing worked into the tips of the flower tube Lachenalia bulbifera.

 

Lachenalia bulbifera

Looking for stray balls for next door's dog at the bottom of the garden, I found first ever flowers on Pavetta lanceolata, forest bride's bush (in a good year it will be veiled in white). Generous buds on Aloe, which needs rescuing from Plumbago and Tecomaria. Last month's purple lavender and yellow splash of Senecio macroglossus thru our kitchen window, still going good.

 

May garden flowers

Weather has hammered Mandela's Gold Strelitzia.

 

Mandela's Gold

We do garden for biodiversity. Good when I can escort back out to the garden a very yellow preying mantis.

 

Yellow preying mantis

But not so good when we battle our 'squirrels in the bird feeder'. Those mice are Olympic athletes. They appear from the Coprosma repens, land on the roof. Battle engaged. Which branch do they leap from? Cut! Rinse and repeat. Now the littl'uns can't leap across, but there are still 2 bigger ones. Next branch is a very thick and sturdy one ... And I need to clear more inherited ivy. We want the mantis, but not the mice.   

 

Mice in bird feeder

Our electric car has new tyres after 50 thousand kilometres on the first set.

 

50K on our first set of tyres

We need to catch all available sun on our 2 sets of PV panels. First I trimmed Bauhinia bowkeri for the afternoon sun. Would also like the white flowers to come down to where I can see them too.

 

Bauhinia bowkeri

Olive tree we brought from Porterville has grown. These panels face North and catch sun all day. From the driveway, there is still another slice to come off later.

 

Olive from the driveway

Tapestry hedge has a stray poke of olive behind. Between the houses Brachylaena discolor is in the queue for the next load for the Ungardener to take for municipal composting.

 

Tapestry hedge

Standing at the garden gate, my Karoo Koppie succulents need rescuing from this Garden Just GROWS!  

 

Olive from the garden gate

Cotoneaster is, working as intended, and pushing out new branchlets where I nipped off the last leaf. Since the conifer is meant to display bark and trunk, I brought home bits of white quartz, a reminder of Gifkommetjie ridge. In the single pot, the micro-landscape, the rocks should look as if they belong together, as these did when I gathered them up. Added the moss which appears on our brick paving, but the birds knock it out again.

 

Bonsai trees

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Pictures by Diana Studer

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