Tibouchina

In 2015, I had mentioned that I had used Tibouchina prunings to stake peas. By December that year, some of them had struck and were showing leaf buds.

This summer, they really blossomed and created a spectacular effect! They grew tall so fast and have created a lovely screen to block off the neighbour's window across the street.

Nearly 6 ft tall

Tibouchina in bloom

Tibouchina

Birthday Lily

In Dec 2015, I got a Princess Lily plant for my birthday. It did well the first year under the Hakea. Then it started to die out due to lack of water. I had left it in the pot as we had no more place to plant anything new!

This summer, we did not plant any vegetables in the veggie patch. Instead, I planted all the flower seeds I had - Calendula, Carnation and Virginian Stock. In that process, I also moved the Princess Lily to the patch. Most of the leaves were already dead. But when I took it out of the pot, there was a massive network of roots! I had hopes that it would survive.

Sure enough, the roots settled in within a couple of weeks. Soon, the plant became bushier and started flowering. Here are some pictures of how well it is doing.

Princess Lily

Princess Lily

Creatures in the garden

A good garden should have all sorts of insects. A gardener hopes for the good kinds - ladybugs, bees, even ants. But, there are all sorts of creatures that inhabit the garden.

I managed to capture a few on camera.

Bees: Always the most looked forward to in a garden. Where there are bees, there are flowers and fruits. This one was captured on the Orange tree, busily pollinating the various flowers.

Bee

Bee

Butterfly: The presence of a butterfly is advantageous and disadvantageous. The obvious advantage is pollination and a visual treat (like this one). But, their life-cycle includes caterpillars. And caterpillars love to chew leaves with a voracious appetite. Anyway, this one was too good looking for me to worry about caterpillars.

Butterfly

And lastly, I do not know what this is. But looks interesting.

Unidentified insect