October and our False Bay garden

  

by Diana Studer

- gardening for biodiversity

 in Cape Town, South Africa

 

October has filled our garden with flowers. Posies on the windowsills. Pelargoniums for blowsy colour and Iceberg for fragrant elegance.

 

Posies on the windowsills

Salmon pelargonium explosion. Pink pelargonium with pretty marking on petals and leaves. Melianthus major.

 

That salmon pelargonium

Celeste's iris and memories of my mother's garden for Through the Garden Gate Down by the Sea in Dorset with Sarah.

 

Celeste's iris

Perfect deep blue Anchusa capensis. Elaborate purple spire of Coleus neochilus. Left edible mint, right Coleus madagascariensis - not to be confused!

 

Blue and white garden 

We took our egg boxes and jam jars to Heart and Soil. Where we met the goats for the cheese. Generous bunch of Swiss chard did 2 meals. Enjoying their marmalade.

 

From Heart and Soil

Bunch of bananas still, slowly turning yellow. We have trimmed off 2 to try. Fiercely pruned olive is now smothered in flowers / fruit. Lemon has flowers and tiny fruit. Sawed the lime stump down and have a fresh sprout!

 

Bananas, olive and citrus 'trees'

Bonsai forest is now 3 gnarled and twisty trees, with some lichen on the dead centre. Begonia buds and South American pink Oxalis.

 

Bonsai
and exotic pinks

Yellow climbing daisy. Hibiscus a deeper yellow with more sun. Coleonema album in blue pot flowering nicely. Alstroemeria lolling across the path - picked for my sister.

 

Yellow and white October flowers

Roepera flexuosa is flowering already (planted in June) Trusses of yellow on Psychotria capensis. Feathery Bulbine has leaves which are good against summer and hiking itchy bites.

 

Yellow flowers for October

I garden for biodiversity. On the Californian poppy a wild Cape honey bee feisty against the buffeting breeze. Monkey beetle diving into hawkweed. Dotted fruit chafer beetle on Felicia.

 

Little lives in our garden

Watch cats sitting either side of the gate on evening duty, Thomas looking up the road, and Zoe looking down. (Remembering first Pickwick, then Sparkles, Henry, Chocolat and Aragon)

 

Thomas and Zoe watch cats on duty

Today is All Souls and I remember my mother's Holds upon Happiness and my father (her lanky New Zealander), my middlest sister Margie, Jurg's parents, and Nick.

 

Garden year month by month here, back to November 2014.

 

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Pictures by Diana Studer

of Elephant's Eye on False Bay

 

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