Spring In The Garden - September
Clouds of white blossom everywhere! Love early early spring as it is so fresh and mostly blue and white which I adore before the full on blast of summer colour.
Best garden companion I have next to Le Sac is my perpetual garden diary which I started a whole 39 years ago when I came to Bobundara and in it I write down what the garden is doing, lists of plants bought and at the front a year by year potted history of garden projects - is so good to have as a record. For example, if I want to have a long lunch in the garden in February I can look through all my jottings for that month to see what is out….
Looking now as I write, September notes it is all about blossom and garden spring to life.
3rd September 2009 - ‘beautiful - white blossom heaven -snow pears in full flight, lawn daisies, carpet of violets still flowering, hellebores, Daphne and winter sweet…cherry walk starting to bloom, first white flag iris out and my most favourite clouds of elm blossom with petals fluttering down onto the flowering bluebells naturalised at their feet….spirea, may bush, stylosa iris, daffodils…the house full of flowers….’
All this bounty without a drop of rain for months as I have written on 23rd September 2009 ‘Dust storms from Riverina creating a bit of a red shower…’. A REALLY dry season and yet Mother Nature joyfully welcomes spring with so much beauty….
Amazingly in the same grim dry year on 20th September I have noted the first tree peony and have written ‘garden beautiful (underlined!!!) with elm blossom, pear blossom, lawn daisies, candytuft and honesty flowering away….
Elm blossom is so often not even noticed as it is an almost translucent light lime green colour and is so beautiful as the blossom appears on bare limbs - exquisite. No doubt you have heard of the threat of Dutch Elm Disease which wiped out elms throughout Europe - thankfully we in Australia don’t have the disease although we do have the beetle which is a pesky critter which can defoliate trees in no time flat. First indication are small holes in leaves - like shot holes, then the leaves turn brown and drop, leaving elms defoliated in summer when they are usually covered in leaves. Not content with just eating leaves, they find their way into houses and create havoc. Wherever they land they leave their mark. So toxic is their presence that if they land on a car, they burn through the duco, so imagine the effect on windowsills, carpets, curtains, bedspreads and sofas inside - they leave permanent brown stains which can’t be cleaned off - they have to be painted or carpeted over.
One year all my hundreds of elms in the wild garden succumbed and so in love with that part of this garden, I contacted the top specialist who came from Canberra and said it was not possible to control as there were too many - but he did say (to which I rolled my eyes disbelievingly) that sometimes these things come and sometimes they disappear. As all my trees were defoliated and looking very dead and the whole interior of my house a wreck because of the hundreds of elm beetles staining each windowsill and carpet under the windows I was at my wits end.
However……Mother Nature intervened with a very cold winter, not dissimilar to this winter we have just experienced and it zapped the little critters and now the trees have sprung once more to life and not a beetle in sight - outside or inside. Eureka!!!
So there is a reason for everything, including severe frosty mornings!!!!
And once again the beauty of elm blossom carpeting the haze of bluebells underneath, taking the place of the sea of daffodils. And so the cycle continues…..
Trisha x
