White blossoms

The white tree dahlias are blooming like mad things. The flowers are double petalled and quite large, more showy than the purple-pink variety, though perhaps not as prolific. These would be even more spectacular if they were the same pink!

Not particularly good photos but the light is poor this week - it's been mostly grey and dreary. Last week was lovely autumn weather, with sunny afternoons. The flowers do brighten a trip to the backyard clothesline on days like these. I've been trying to convince myself to get out there and pull some more weeds, but the cold
is discouraging.

It must be May...

...if the tree dahlias are blooming. They flower like clockwork, same time each year. The buds have been developing for a week or two and a few days ago the first pinky-purple flowers crept out. Now the blossoms are coming thick and fast, and the backyard will be awash with pinky-purple snow as the petals fall. They're tall plants, well above the house eaves. It's been windy and the long, long stems - a bit like bamboo - are propped up with fence palings lest they topple over. One windy night last week, one of the thinner and weaker stems did break off, but I leaned it up against the parent plant and despite its separation the buds on the broken limb have opened anyway. These plants are tough.

The bees love these flowers. Perhaps there's not a great deal to choose from at this late stage of autumn, but there is usually a host of happy bees buzzing in and out of the blossoms gathering nectar. In the lower right corner you can just make out a bee zeroing in on a flower, and lots of buds to come. It looks like a lovely day in these photos, and part of it was, with the sun out and blue skies. Don't let the blue skies fool you, though, it was cold! I have on my fingerless gloves to type.

That's the roof gutter this bough is leaning on. There's another bee sipping at the centre of the flower on the right. I have a double white tree dahlia, too, but it always flowers a couple of weeks later than the pinky-purple variety: the buds are just beginning to form. After if flowers, I plan to move the white one from it's current position underneath the clothesline because I haven't been able to raise, lower, or turn it for a couple of months since the dahlia grew through the wires :)

The tree dahlias are amazing. They survive heat, wind, drought, cold and keep on coming back. Every year after the flowers are finished, I raze them to the ground, and within a couple of months they send up new shoots. I am always astonished at how quickly and how tall these plants grow - easily sixteen or more feet of growth in a season. Gotta love that.

Tree dahlia

The tree dahlias are blooming again, perhaps slightly earlier, but I didn't think they would get to this stage at all. First, February's 45 degree temperatures and burning winds crisped them (literally - to the point I assumed they were dead) as if blowtorched. But they came good: new leaves bursting forth to make them just as lush as they were before Black Saturday, even if their stems were somewhat spindlier. Then the week after Easter, there was a windstorm with speeds over 100kmh and the poor dahlias took another beating, to the ground with their poor new skinny stems. However, they're so resilient that even those that couldn't be stood and tied upright again (and my fence is not up to holding too much weight) started growing for the sun again. The branches I couldn't stand up I just pushed out of the walk way, and they're flowering too, prostrate though they are. There are fewer blossoms than other years, and more sporadic instead of massess of flowerheads, but I'm glad they made it all.

I have a double white form in addition to the pinky-mauve, but it flowers later - the buds are just forming. The broad beans are mostly up, just a couple of gaps, as is the spinach (hard to tell from the weeds at this point, until they grow a few more adult leaves) and the snowpeas. The rosemary is looking healthier after a little rain, so is the sage, though not as robust. Oh, and the
chives have popped their heads up over the edge of their container, too, also after being par-cooked by the weather. I much prefer gardening when I'm not being baked, either.

White tree dahlia

Drawing 150

Drawing 151

Hmm, I think I'm winding down for the semester break a bit too fast! There are still two classes to go and handing in my print folio, but my brain seems to have flipped into holiday mode already.

I think I want to sew something that's not for Etsy or Ebay, and rather just for me. I need to go have a rummage in the fabric black hole(s) for something not too challenging, fast and satisfying.
Perhaps now is the moment to deconstruct the Josie and the Pussycats doona cover I bought in the op shop last year and make a skirt - I don't usually do pink, but who can resist (hums) "long tails and ears for hats"? Now I'm going to have that theme song stuck in my head...

I mentioned that my white tree dahlia was finally flowering - picture below. I bought a tiny piece at the local market, probably only a few centimetres in length - you plant sections of an existing plant to propagate these. It took a year or more to really establish (the corner I chose is perhaps a little dark) but I took a cutting and planted more near my clothesline. I thought they'd died of drought, but after a bit of rain in December, two healthy trunks sprouted up and now have buds and a couple of flowers out. They're different to my established pinky-purple dahlias, with a double flower of tight little curved centres and sparser long outer petals, probably around 8cm across. Forgive the photo, it's winter.

White tree dahlia

Almost there!

Drawing 148

Drawing 149

Almost at the end of Semester One! I have two classes on Tuesday, a day in the printmaking studio on Wednesday and handing in my print folio plus visual diary, and that's it.

I handed in my painting (so-called) folio today, then came home and was at a bit of a loss what to do! No homework, nothing to finish off (well, there is the printmaking diary to work on, but I've got days to do that, nothing like leaving it to the last minute) , oh the freedom...so what did I do with all that freedom? Had a coffee, watched an episode of the X files on DVD, made drawing-a-day, unpacked my painting bag (hey, look, there's the sharpener and the ink brush and my favourite eraser, all of which I've been hunting for a week - all tucked up together cosily in the very nether regions of the bag). I watched the rain and wind bring down two trunks of my tree dahlias, finally flowering prolifically and now prostrate on the lawn; the weight of the water was too much for them. Oooh, and the white tree dahlia I planted two years ago is flowering for the first time this year, a pretty double flower. I'll get a photo of it when it's less stormy.

Drawing day eight

Still working on the linocut, but overdid it on Friday ("I'll just do this little bit, ooh, but look I've nearly finished with that area, I'll just keep going for a little while") and paid the price of screaming nerves.

I probably shouldn't have tackled the weeding in that state, but ripped back some of the jungly back yard in the beds around the clothesline. I did make a happy discovery under the weeds: the white tree dahlia planted by the fence is not dead or consumed by a myriad of snails, but is instead sporting two healthy looking shoots. It probably won't do much this year - it seems to take a full round of seasons for the tree dahlia to establish a good root system - but I'm hopeful it might flower next year. The purple/mauve ones I planted a few years back are thriving, taller than the fence (probably over 8ft tall) , thick stems (they're like bamboo, jointed) and lush green leaves. See some here: http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup/?id=1672744&refnum=339883
The garden is majorly overgrown and I plan to put in some serious gardening time before I go back to classes in three weeks. I meant to plant vegies, but it's getting a little late in the season for many.

This morning, The Bloke and I went to Dandenong Trash & Treasure Market. I hadn't intended to actually SPEND more than a couple of $$s, but an art folio with shoulder strap caught my eye - I've been looking for one smaller than the huge A1 size I have, for transporting prints and printmaking stuff - and at $10 as opposed to $40-50 for brand new A2 size, it was too good to leave :) It's a nice hard sided one, with a strong zip, pockets inside and binder clips to add plastic sleeves. Perfect!