kind of garden bloggers bloom day March 2012

It was only 6 months ago that I was so pleased to have finally joined the wonderful and popular meme hosted by Carol of May Gardens. But it's not working for me ... I can't stick to the calendar and my posts cover much more than flowers - in fact, I'm including anything I want to show in the garden, at any time of the month.

So can I still call it GBBD? How far can you go outside the square and still be part of the meme?

So here's the latest garden update, whatever  it's called ...

My new little Pomegranate tree getting ready for its first autumn shedding

A tangle of self seeded echium, society garlic, parsley and garlic chives

I thought the rainbow fern was dying, but joy! babies appear and slowly uncurl

Severely cut back echium, blue fescue, violets, new and old rainbow fern, acacia itypheallea in the back

Gradually the fence is starting to be covered. On the right the blue grevillea  is nearly up the middle of the fence, and the pittosporum on the right is up to the top of the fence.

Correa 'Dusky Bells' not seeming too bothered by the aggressive encroaching violets

Self seeded Verbascum bombyciferum or Silver Mullein. Since it's a biennial I don't really mind where it plants itself because it's only there temporarily before it moves on.

The large butterfly is part of the Metallicus family.  Recommended if you don't want to be bothered by caterpillars.

Mixed border without flowers with different shades of green and grey and different shaped leaves.  Gaps where  changes, re-arrangements in process.

This poor little smoke bush looks quite healthy but is actually being pushed over by the hyperactive violets. As soon as it drops its leaves, which will be in a couple of months, I will move it into a nearby violet-free space where it can stretch out luxuriantly.

Watch this space - lots of little things, won't take long to fill up again - I hope!

This is the plant that a friend has said looks like a sea anemone It is going to grow 2 - 3 metres in the next few weeks. I think it should look spectacular with the artichoke nearby. It's another biennual - Echium wildpretti

the value of dreaming

Fure's Cabin, Katmai National Park, Alaska, submitted to Cabin Porn website by Sam Keam

There's nothing quite like a real or imagined brush with mortality to focus the mind on the essentials of lilfe. I always have a yearning to be closer to nature. Usually gardening helps this a little bit. In hospital taking pictures of the sky helped. Now I'm home but for the time being I can't garden. I can't even be in the garden much.

I find myself lying in bed fantasizing about living in a kind of capsule in the garden, with retractible roof and walls, that I can control at the press of a button. Inside the capsule is a comfortable bed, and chairs for friends and family to join me.

I'm not the only one with dreams of living in nature. There's a popular website called Cabin Porn and you can submit a photo of your quiet inspirational place. In The Atlantic recently Finn Arne Jorgensen wrote about this and what it means.

Basically Jorgensen is saying that the idea of the cabin is a fantasy representing an idealized past with all the things we feel we have lost: self'-reliance, using our bodies in honest labour, being close to nature, etc. Since for most people their cabins are a second home, the cabins are not a way of life. They are actually part of consumer society.

Norway is one place where the cabin idea possibly could have worked because there's a lot of land and a small population. But in reality government regulations and the desire for consumer comforts like water supply and electricity limited the freedom of cabin life. Isolated cabins without neighbours are reserved for very few. So there's a disjunction between the built reality and the romantic dream.

But there's still value in dreaming, Jorgensen believes, because dreaming about the past helps us work out the future.

I think Jorgensen was writing mainly about private cabins. For this post I have chosen photos of cabins in national parks, available to all who have the ability to access them. To me these are the most inspirational - owned by us all, and hopefully(!) respected and protected by all governments of the day.

P.S. I wrote the above after I'd been home from hospital for a few days. Then I got re-admitted - this time to a room without a view. So I consoled myself by dreaming about my garden capsule, and replaying the Cabin Porn website in my mind. 

Mt. Brown Hut in the Westland foothills of New Zealand (Source: remotehuts.co.nz)

room with a view

I suppose you couldn't really call having major surgery in hospital a holiday. But I was near a window with a wonderful view of the sky, and at my request the curtains were never closed.

Day and night, night and day, in ever changing light conditions, I experimented with my compact Panasonic digital camera.  

Even when I couldn't get out of bed, or even sit up, I found I could still change the colour, the aspect ratio and the macro zoom so the same thing looked interestingly different.

It wasn't a holiday but I do have snaps to share.

sick leave

I'll be away for a while.  I'll miss you guys. 'See' you when I get back ...