Feed me to the worms

By on April 25, 2009 in garden

Every Clivia Miniata I have planted in our garden has been slowly but surely eaten alive by worms. It is the most distressing thing to see such a lush green plant being slowly destroyed. I have not gone the poison root for obvious reasons and so have had to say farewell, one by one, to [...]

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Scented Grass Bulbine

By on April 25, 2009 in flowers, indigenous

In an earlier post, I wrote about  the Bulbine latifolia.  I also have another species of bulbine, the Scented Grass or Narrow-leaved Bulbine, in my garden and it has just started flowering.  It has tiny, delicate, starry-yellow flowers which shoot out on stalks, about 50cm high.  It is very easy to propagate – by dividing [...]

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Red flower – good or bad?

By on April 24, 2009 in flowers

This creeper has taken over a whole section of my garden, even growing up a paw-paw tree.  It has a very beautiful flower but I’m suspicious that it may be an invader – does anyone recognise it?

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Queen of the Flowers

By on April 22, 2009 in flowers, food, indigenous

The Hibiscus or Queen of the Flowers is commonplace in KZN, so much so that part of our southern coast is named after this flower. But the most common species of Hibiscus in South Africa, Hibiscus rosa-sinensis, otherwise known as Chinese Hibiscus, originates from South-East Asia. Interestingly, the Hibiscus is the national flower of Malaysia where [...]

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Kingfisher alert!

By on April 20, 2009 in bird, garden

So, as you may have guessed from the title, this post is not about a plant but rather a kingfisher I spotted in the garden this morning.   The photographs are not the best as I don’t have much of a zoom lens and as soon as I got close to him he flew away. But [...]

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