HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM SPIKE

On New Year's Day, guess who came visiting?

Yes, Spike! In the early evening I was about to go out to water the more delicate northern hemisphere plants, after the second consecutive rather warm dry day, only to find him at the door. It has been the kind of weather that brings the flying ants out to swarm, which may have been another reason for Spike to come into the garden.

However, a little later I discovered he was thirsty. I have been keeping the Hydrangeas well watered, given the weather. So their saucers were full of water...

...at just at the right height for a thirsty Echidna!

 

This New Year I decided I would make a traditional-looking New Year's ikebana. Two of our neighbours have very large Pinus radiata trees in their gardens. So tall, in fact that it was difficult to find an upright branch. However, one lower branch was beginning to curve upward at the tip.

The other materials are Hydrangea, a bright red Geranium, and some gold Mizuhiki. I made the vase some years ago from a piece of large diameter bamboo that I bought from a plant nursery. 

While I enjoyed this exercise, I was also keen to express the feeling of Australian summer in a New Year's ikebana. The material I wanted to use...

...was the flower of this Eucalyptus cornuta. It is one of two large trees at the bottom of our garden. Although E. cornuta is not indigenous to this area, these trees pre-date the building of our house in 1984 and were already established in 1978, when I bought the block of land; which explains the metre wide trunk. E cornuta comes from the south coast of Western Australia, like its cousin E. lehmannii.

The tree is about 10m high and, as this photo shows, has a large spreading branch. A couple of weeks ago I noticed the newly-opened flowers from our bathroom window.

They have such an interesting form and a really lovely honey-like fragrance, which I enjoy when I walk past the ikebana. The flowers, in the photo above, were well above my head height and I was only able to cut one small stem with three opened flowers.

The rest of the flowers were still "in bud" and each single flower in the cluster is covered by a long narrow operculum, which cover the greenish-yellow stamens, as you can see in this photo.

The cascading form of the side branches lent themselves to a nageire (tall vase) style ikebana, to which I added some more gold mizuhiki. The vase is by the Victorian potter Arnaud Barraud.

Best wishes for the New Year of 2022.

Christopher

2nd January 2022.