Butterfly

I was working inthe garden yesterday and this beautiful Monarch
butterfly landed right next to me. Vesty was licking his lips

Norfolk Pines

Araucaria heterophylla

In my garden, I have four beautiful Norfolk Pines, they are very pleasing to the eye. However the debris that you have to put up with, as a Norfolk Pine owner, is quadurapled as I have one on every corner of the property.

As the tree is actually a conifer, these plants leaves are not ordinary and around our house we call them 'Monkeys tails'. They drop all year round and are not good to put into the compost as they would take an eon to decompose. I have tried hiding the evidence around the garden but these areas are now all full, so now I put them through a garden shredder and use them as mulch.

The cones are another issue, they pop and fall to the ground in lots a nut pieces, these make a clattering noise when lawn mowing, but dont seem to do any harm to it. Disposing of these is also a problem and during a storm the cones seem to smash against the roof making a hell of a noise and after the storm they just cover the garden, gutters, driveway.

This site below describes how you can have these beautiful trees as a pot plant, as I have several baby trees in the garden, this is something I could try.

http://www.thegardenhelper.com/norfolk.html

Interesting facts (well at least to me :-)) from Wikipedia page about these trees

• It is sometimes called a 'star pine', due to its symmetrical shape as a sapling, although it is not a true pine.
• The trees grow to a height of 50-65 m
• The cones are squat globose, 10-12 cm long and 12-14 cm diameter, and take about 18 months to mature. They disintegrate at maturity to release the nut-like edible seeds.
• Large numbers of Norfolk Island Pines are produced in South Florida for the houseplant industry. The bulk of these are shipped to grocery stores, discount retailers and garden centers during November. Many of these are sprayed with a light coating of green paint prior to sale to increase their eye appeal.
• Some people may experience a strong allergic reaction if they touch the leaves.
• The Norfolk Pine is classed as Vunerable in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species

http://www.iucnredlist.org/search/details.php/30497/all

Town flowers

Here is a cute succulent flower found in my town.

A garden Fairy

I have had a friend staying the house and she has been helping around the garden over her weekend. She asked what needed doing, and when I came back from work - Pouff - it was done. The next day the same happened again - it is just like having a garden fairy come and give me a renewed sprit to get clearing out my garden again.

First she raked over the whole garden, making piles of leaves, Norfolk Pine Cone seeds and smalls branches blown down from the storms we have had over the last couple of weeks.

Then, and this is most important, she made the piles dissapear, and that is worth loads to me, as when I make a pile of rubbish I can aggonise over where I am going to put it - compost, bin or hide it (there is not many hiding spots in my garden any more). The next day she cleared the jasmine from the lovely jade plants I have at the bottom of the garden.

That evening when I got home she also helped me clear the bank by the pongas and stag horn fern clump. We even found an egg, hidden by one of the girls :-)

We had a massive bonfire to clear up the debris and again my garden was tidy with no piles of rubbish.

A good weekend for the garden.

Flowers around the town

Since I have been stopping to 'smell the flowers' I have also noticed a lot of flowers in my towns plant beds. There are some really cute flowers so I thought it may be worth posting them here too.

Quite a few, if not all, will also be natives so also easy to grow in my garden.