I was amused to note that, in her blog last week, my colleague Emily Karanikolopoulos also reported about strategies for preserving hydrangeas through the blistering 41 Celsius heat. As I mentioned in last weeks posting, we were fortunate that we only had one isolated hot day.
Since then the last two days have brought an unexpectedly good steady rainfall. This has occurred because the weather pattern in the south east of Australia has dragged warm moist air from a tropical cyclone in the north west of the continent. A blessing for us. The same storm system is now bringing good rainfall further south in Western Australia.
Enough of the weather report. This week I noticed that the casuarinas which had to be lopped 18 months ago are really growing strongly again.
I posted this photograph last January when I first noticed the trees re-sprouting. They had been in poor health having been infected by boring beetles. I am hoping that they do not get re-infected.
Elsewhere in the garden the scabiosa atropurpurea is becoming very leggy so I have cut off a lot of the old seed heads.
This is how it looked a few seasons ago when it went wild and began to look like a meadow.
Scabiosa works beautifully as a full, but quite open, arrangement expressing the abundance of the late Spring early Summer season. The chun glazed ceramic bowl is by Graeme Wilkie.
These are the hydrangea flowers, still on the bush, that I managed to salvage from last week's heat. It will be interesting to see if I can nurse them through to the autumn.
Here is an arrangement I created with some I had picked before the heat struck. The double line is in fact a single New Zealand flax leaf that I partially split. The large wood fired vessel is also by Graeme Wilkie.
Greetings from Christopher
14th January 2018
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