Winter!!!

Winter starts today in the southern hemisphere. It is my favourite season: I love cold days and it seems this winter will be unusually cold, it was still autumn when we had 3 nights with frost and below zero temperatures!! This hadn't happened since 2015.

The last roses before the prunning.

In the pond a stubborn water lily refuses to go dormant

Hibiscus don't like cold and their leaves look sad

But they will continue blooming through the winter, frost might damage their foliage and blooms but never lost an hibiscus to cold here

Enjoy winter if you are in the southern hemisphere and embrace summer if you live in the north!

See you next time!

Late May blooms

There are not many flowers in the garden lately. This Camellia is the only one blooming at the moment, I won't see many flowers on my camellias this year because the hail storms ruined most of their buds.

Not many roses after the rainy weeks of April and May

Good news: Jean Giono is back! I can't believe I found another one!

Hibiscus keep blooming as usual ... I should love this noble plants more, they bloom almost year round, never get sick and once they reach a certain size they live on their own, I don't even water them.

An Aloe has bloomed 

In the pond most water lilies are "sleeping" but some varieties are still blooming

See you next time!

The garden of my dreams

There is not much going on in my garden at the moment, the rain is back and everything looks damp and sad, most roses are horribly defoliated and the weeds took over... without chances of gardening and bored because of the rain I was watching gardening videos on YouTube when I found this:

I don't understand danish but isn't the rose garden a beauty? Searching for more information I found that Claus Dalby is a famed gardener in Scandinavia who has published many succesful books in Europe, there is a nice article about him here . Claus also has his own blog which contains a lot of photos about his gorgeous garden with roses, peonies, tulips and other temperate climate beauties. If that holds no interest for you, you can skip ahead. If you like cool climate gardening, visit the site here (and book your ticket to Denmark!)

See you next time!

Rose disaster..

It's been raining almost non stop for 22 days and the temperatures have been unusually warm for may, this is the recipe for rose disaster and they are succumbing to blackspot and other high humidity related diseases

flowers look sad hanging down

Many defoliated rose bushes with diseased yellow canes (and overgrown lawn!)

Diseased foliage :(

But not all roses get sick! Parure D'Or foliage looks perfect as always

Honoré de Balzac is another rose that rarely gets blackspot or powdery mildew

But the surprise were the David Austin Roses, they were planted in February, they never showed signs of diseases and grew and bloomed marvellously! Unlike most hybrid teas they look wonderful after 13 inches of rain ¿are they the rose miracle I've been dreaming of for so many years?

In the pond the unusual warm days "woke up"  the water lily Barbara Dobbins!

See you next time!

One misty moisty morning...

Today the day started cloudy and very, very humid. The Tillandsia aeranthos has been very happy with all these wet weeks, it multiplies prodigiously with rainy weather.

My poor Roses endured many rainy days

In the pond a water lily was wishing for the sun

And then the sun came out! 

Roses were happy again...

Hibiscus too

Visitors and dwellers of the garden were happy too

See you next time!