Sunday Selections # 311

Welcome back to Sunday Selections.

Begun way back in the mist of time by Kim of Frog Ponds Rock and now continued by me, with a drastic relaxation of rules.

Originally meant for showcasing old photos lost in your files, never seeing the light of day, the meme has morphed into photos of your choice, new or old, good or not-so-good, anything you please, but nothing rude please.

If you are participating, please leave me a comment so I can buzz along and have a look.
Elephant's Child always participates, and her pictures are always worth seeing.

Today's photos are mostly gardens:

Something odd was happening in my garden last week, with several items and plants appearing over a couple of nights, that certainly weren't mine. I eventually discovered these things belong to a young neighbour whose mother is currently visiting. Mum has gone cold turkey off her medications and is prone to doing unexpected things, like wandering away and getting lost, and taking all of her daughter's things off her balcony and putting them "in the garden". 
MY garden.

first to appear was this little plastic sweetheart, on a small concrete plinth. She was placed a little drunkenly leaning right at the edge of the garden, so I moved her to a safer spot on a flatter section.

I've named her Gloria and you can see here her water dish has a little chip off one edge, I may try to fix it one day with a little "knead-it". (that won't happen now, see below)The owner knows her things are here and is happy to leave them since she can see them from her balcony.

this beautifully glossy Peace Lily appeared the same night,

along with this blue pot which I thought was empty but have since learned there is a bulb in it.
there was also a small seedling tub with a dead marigold flower in it.

the next night, well early in the morning, just before dawn, I heard noises and when I got up just after dawn, I found this, which appears to be a Bird of Paradise,

planted in the dirt between a couple of the plum trees.These things grow to be huge stands of leaves and flowers, some as much as three metres across if left alone for many years, so clearly I can't leave it there, but I don't know what else to do with it just yet.
The thing I really minded was the number of plants the mum trampled while wandering about in the middle of the pre-dawn 😒

My apricot seedling, now 11 inches tall, from ground to top leaf, escaped trampling, thank goodness,

although it has been nibbled by caterpillars or something.

When I went out just now to measure the seedling, I noticed the blue pot and the Angel have both gone home.

My frogs are slowly getting buried in leaf litter and I can't find the fourth one at all. He's probably hiding under the Jade.

In another garden across town, I've been doing a bit of pruning.

Here is where I cut off a large branch from the Polygala, you can see the brown spot on the water meter, where the branch had been laying for some years and I noticed it was beginning to grow around the meter and would have damaged it. Water meters are expensive to replace.
 

other less thick branches are growing across in front of the gas meter, so they will have to be removed also. The meter readers need easy access.

It's hanging out into the driveway and covering the garden tap where the hose is attached, so of course no one can reach the tap with out getting poked in the face by branches.

I dragged the cut off branch over to the wildly overgrown Buddleia and left it there until the green waste bin was emptied of lawn clippings,

then began stripping off the leafy smaller branches and dead twiggy bits. Once those are all gone, I'll let the main branches dry a bit longer before cutting them up with the pruning saw.

Here is the base of the cut branch, as thick as my upper arm, hiding behind the Buddleia, which looks thriving and healthy from the outside, but under the canopy there is a ton of deadwood. This shrub has overgrown into the lawn area by two metres at least, and all the grass that was there is now dead.
It does shade more than half the porch nicely though.

Over in the other corner,

a very fragrant Lemon Verbena.

the flowers are tiny and white with a purple centre that can barely be seen here.

I used to pick handfuls of these leaves, crush them slightly to release the lemon fragrance, then place them in bowls in the bathroom and kitchen.

We'll finish today with no-one's cat, Missy,

once a glossy jet black, now a little rusty around the edges at almost 18 years old. 
She's quite sprightly still, galloping down the hallway to be let out after eating.