:: pansy xii ::

Gosh, many more cobwebs being blown away today...and a neighbour's elderflowers are taunting me from across the road, swaying and bending in this wind...come and take as many as you want, they said...

...hmmm...that does mean making up the syrup afterwards...am I feeling that lazy this Sunday? 

YES!

:: pansy xi ::

as busy as the pansies proliferating in the backyard today...not proliferating...just doing, doing,doing!

:: pansy x ::

soggy, still and chilly here today...time to declutter the work room...the 'W' room!!

:: geum? ::

tiny, tiny red flowers held aloft on leggy stems above furry soft-looking, geranium-type leaves...so sweet...geum, maybe?

:: fragaria vesca ::

alpine strawberry

:: geranium x cantabrigiense ::

One of the unexpected 'wee' treasures I picked up at last year's Spring Fair Plant Stall at the Christchurch Rudolf Steiner School...

...a sweet creeping groundcover miniature geranium in this very lovely shade of violet...had no idea what colour is was when I bought it - so happy now it is flowering for the first time under the apricot tree.

:: symphytum x uplandicum ii ::

The first pendulous flowers waking up from comfrey's long Winter sleep...gently unfurling downward into these lovely pink 'drops'...divinity in the garden!

:: echeveria iii ::

Miss P brought a tray of her favourite succulents and cacti with us from Northern Hawkes Bay and began a new hot and dry garden here in Christchurch, along the driveway, outside the living room.

Each Spring we are delighted by an ever-thickening border of these lovely echeveria plants in flower with their spikes of coral-pink-with-yellow flowers,  a bit like street lights for fairy-sized beings...

:: echeveria ii ::

Delicate soft pink tendrils of echeveria buds unfurling silently...

:: nz forget-me-not ::

Each Spring this arrives, quietly in the background under the Kowhai tree with leaves as scratchy as any comfrey or borage family plant...and a teeny wee blue flower, reminding me of the humble forget-me-not, yet, not - someone told me it is a New Zealand native version of the forget-me-not...?

:: myosotis ii ::

According to Greek legend, there was one little flower still not coloured by the creator, it called out 'Forget me not!' and the creator turned and gave it the tiniest bit of pale blue, as that was all that was left...and the forget-me-not was delighted to have such a pretty shade of blue to wear.

:: hyacinthoides hispanica ::

what I thought was a common bluebell growing in our garden is the paler, more upright 'Spanish Bluebell' version...the things you find out when you delve...

:: bellis perennis ii ::

"you know it's Spring when you can get you foot over 9 daisies", said the mother of a previous neighbour of ours...

...guess it depends on how big your foot is...but from this picture, it looks like it might be Spring :-)

:: rosmarinus officinalis ::

Surprises are mostly wonderful things...like this rosemary plant that began flowering recently with wild striations of colour I had not expected! COOL!

I was originally thinking I would tell you all about Rosemary - maybe another time - as I had another great surprise today...

...I gingerly went along with 4 jars of saved bean and pumpkin seed that I was willing to part with to the local Spring Seed Swap for the first time...

...my little collection of what I had managed to remember to save and look after felt a bit precious and I put them down on a table scattered with tatty envelopes, names (of what seemed at first glance to be undesirable or old) seeds within scrawled across the fronts in chicken-scratching marks...

...and wondered why on earth had I decided to turn up!

...the small group gathered were hardy-looking gardener sorts most a few decades older than me...

...and then more people turned up...and more...families and hipsters alongside expert greenthumbs...

...more seed packets added to those tables and I began to inspect these little packages a bit more closely...

...actually there were lots of seeds here I would like to grow in my garden...

...by this stage there was a lovely, friendly buzz about the tables and everybody there was respectful and moderate in the amounts they took/swapped...

...my enthusiasm fired up and I ended up taking home about 20 little bags of seeds to update my collection for this season - what an absolutely brilliant event! 

What a nice surprise for a Saturday afternoon in Spring!

:: viola odorata ::

 I had hoped for a frosty framing for the first peek at one of my favourite flowers, the violet, this morning as we had a, shall I say, 'generous' frost.

But by the time I was back from walking Miss Olive, the frost was already disappearing and instead the violets were coated in the slightly more challenging to photograph fine droplets of misty water!

 I was so excited to remember that I had planted lots of little violet plants in Spring last year...and I hoped there might be...some...

...well, wishes do come true and I was met with a most agreeable sight surrounding the old apricot  tree - there was what could almost be described as a 'swathe' of violet plants covering the ground...and also exciting...

...the daffodil bulbs planted 2 years ago, which gave a small display last year, seem to have gathered strength and each one has 5-7 leaf shoots driving straight upwards from the midst of all these lovely, sweet-smelling violets...ah, Spring!

:: the calendula and the bombus ::

I wandered out with a whim and a fancy to forage for a whole swag of gorgeous calendula to colour-up the inside of the house...out into the fast-falling Southerly-driven drops of wet, cold rain...

...and look what treasure I came back with - the memory captured in a photo of this fat, furry little fellow sheltering right under one of said lusciously-vermillion blooms encrusted with shining rain drop jewels...that's my kind of happy! Yum! Thank you Nature!

:: calendula officinalis ::

Today's post calls for a few calendula because on a cloudy (nearly all day) Winter's day a dose of vibrant vermilion just feels good!

:: primula vulgaris ::

...not blue, not purple-blue, even, but PURPLE - is the colour of these small Winter wonders tucked away all Summer and Autumn...

...below two pears espalliered outside the sleepout is an efficient under-planting of comfrey plus these delightful little primroses or polyanthus...

...during the warmer months the comfrey sprouts explosively up and over their heads, shading them from the heat of Summer...

...and once all the fanfare of the comfrey dies down as it does after being harvested for the last time around the end of May, then it is time for these little beauties to shine and they do all through Winter and into Spring...until...yes, you've got it - comfrey time again! 

...but back to the colour - what the heck is wrong with my camera - I've tried all that I can think of and it is truly clear in this photo - as I say - these flowers are PURPLE, not the blue depicted by this photo. The camera appears to be taking captures that are on the very cool side - and it bothers me when I care about colour as I do...any suggestions? It is an Olympus XZ-1...

...

:: lamium purpureum ::

Finding a flower each day is a challenge, for sure - sometimes in finding the time, sometimes in remembering and sometimes just finding a flower!  It is really getting cold here now, with snow to low levels predicted for the South Island over the next few days.  I'm partly highly excited by this idea and partly, because of how cold it will be, apprehensive. Mostly excited.

With the colder weather comes the dramatic slowing down of growth and the struggle to find flora.

In between 'real' plants in the unkempt parts of our garden (most of it at the moment! LOL!) there are loads of these little flowers peeping in between...what are they? Well, after using the best words I could to describe them, I did find them fairly fast on the internet.  

I believe they are 'deadnettles', from the mint family, with the square stem and with the hairy scalloped leaves, only not stinging as the hairs on the leaves are 'dead'. 

They're not particularly interesting other than that...and now that I know what they are I think I might just acknowledge them a little more happily when I come across them while weeding.

:: dianthus caryophyllus iii ::

I only noticed the ant in the middle of the carnation bloom now...and it is dark...won't be re-shooting that one! LOL!

Maybe it is ants that chomp all the pretty petal-edges into such delicate frills? ;-)