flowers – Page 9 – The woman on the mountain

Summer whites

January 7, 2009 by Fred Baker

whites-1
Not cricket apparel or cool clothes, but flowers: free gifts that appear each summer to brighten my days and my by-then mostly green garden.

They all receive my admiration but none of them need or receive any attention in between.

The Spider Lilies are extraordinary, delicate space age creatures that prance and arabesque from fleshy bulbs and leaves. Beside them flower the herbs yarrow and meadowsweet; the nearby oregano is about to burst into white flower spikes too.

whites-2

Twining daintily along my verandah and perfuming my evenings is the Mandevilla laxa, commonly called Chilean Jasmine, although it isn’t a jasmine at all.

whites-3

And the shed is being overwhelmed by a rioting fountain of Chinese Star Jasmine.

The scent of these flowers comes to me separately and together at different spots in the garden.

Sweet summer whites.

Hardy and rewarding lavenders

September 17, 2008September 16, 2008 by Fred Baker

While the forest flashes purple, the tough garden lavenders are blooming too. Some lavenders do well here, beautiful to see and to smell, needing little attention beyond the occasional prune, appealing to neither possums nor horses, but adored by bees.

My most prolific is the French Lavender, Angustifolia dentata (see the finely ‘toothed’ leaves), which grows very easily from cuttings and doesn’t care how poor the soil I stick it in. The colour of the small flowers on the spikes is truly lavender, not purple.

The other one that flourishes here is the Italian Lavender, Lavendula stoechas, much darker and stranger in shape.

The petals on the spikes are very small, very deep purple, but the the tall lavender bracts on top remain like feather head-dresses even after the petals are finished. It makes a most impressive bush.

How generous such plants are, to flower like this every year and demand so little of me.

Peeping through my fingers Glimpses of childhood, old age – and the dangerous bits in between.
A linked collection of my fictional short stories, funny or poignant, but always perceptive, imagined from observations of my fellow humans in our hopeful stumble through life.

Rich Land, Wasteland — How coal is killing Australia. Exposing the facts behind the spin, sharing true stories of the long term negative impacts of the coal and gas invasion, from broken rivers to broken hearts.

The Woman on the Mountain A candid meander through my life on my remote mountain wildlife refuge, answering the oft-asked question of ‘Why do you live way out there’? – and how I became such a weird woman as to want to!

Mountain Tails Illustrated tales for animal lovers about the wild creatures who allowed me to share their living space — and a plea to look after them before it's too late.