Sunday Selections

Welcome back to Sunday Selections.

Begun way back in the mists of time by Kim of Frog Ponds Rock and now continued by Elephant's Child, who gladly accepted my offer to keep this going, with a drastic relaxation of rules.

Originally meant for showcasing old photos lost on 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 a comment so we can buzz along and have a look.

We're looking at my garden again today, feel free to wander along with me:

this a long shot showing the garden from front path to mail boxes, the fuzzy white circles are sun reflections

same garden, (I only have the one), from the other end, near the mail boxes

these are our mail boxes, in sets of eight, they are scattered around in the grounds closest to whichever block of flats they belong to.

at the mail box end, behind the tap are the aeoniums I planted in the ground. You can see by the bare patch in the middle they aren't doing so well, being constantly trampled on by cats and by people taking short cuts while trying to catch their cats. I plan to get these dug up and placed in a large, tall pot next autumn.

here is a closer look at one that has been nibbled half to death by assorted garden pests, snails, earwigs, wooly bear caterpillars.

a slightly closer look at the length of the garden, if you enlarge the picture you'll see the black long leaf aeonium doing very well in its pot, just to the left of centre.

on my porch in this large pot is the "curly" leaf crassula, one of the jades which are all members of the Crassula family, this huge specimen began as a tiny piece brought from the nursery, about three inches in diameter, now the top of the plant is almost hip height on me. 

here is a close-up of the leaves so you can see the wave in them.

back down in the garden patch is my "Gollum", another type of Jade. I have three of these now, with this one and another one being cuttings taken from the original and doing very well.

in front of the gollum is my Echeveria, aka hen and chickens, this measures about a metre across, maybe a bit more and is knee height. I started this with one smallish branch given by a neighbour five or six years ago.

I have two new wind spinners here and behind them, two pots which will be hung as soon as I find branches strong enough to hold them, they contain cuttings of another small leaf succulent, Mesembryanthemum, also known as Livingstone Daisy (it has another name too, but I don't recall it just now) and it comes in a few colour variations. 

this is the parent plant (mesembryanthemum) given to me by my brother when he left Adelaide. It had lived on his balcony and never flowered after the original first blooming. I discovered it was afflicted with mealy bugs, which I picked off and squished, also it was pot bound in soil so dry and hard I feared it might not survive. I sat it in a bucket of water for a full day, trimmed off several dead branches and it began to flower. So I took the few cuttings you saw in the previous photo, then replanted it in this larger pot and it is recovering nicely. It should soon spread to fill the pot and have branches hanging over the sides too. Then I'll have to find something much taller for it to stand on.

sadly, a sight seen too often around here and that's enough of that. I don't know why they were here, but that is an evidence collection van. I erased the number plate.

I rescued my tiny Devil's Ivy, (philodendron) remember these from way back in the 70s when everyone had one growing all over their bathroom/kitchen/hallway? This was in a tiny pot on the ground, it vanished then popped up several metres away in this pot which I then picked up and hung in the tree. I think someone 'stole' it then changed his/her mind.

I also dug up my rhubarb, which has never done well, being trampled on and not getting enough water, it looks a bit miserable but should recover with plenty of water. 

I bought two of these small green pots and placed one in the centre of each birdbath, then planted dwarf French marigold seeds in them, we'll see soon enough if they grow. They'll be a lovely splash of colour.

I have a new tinkly fairy windchime,

and inside (blurry) two more, a rainbow flower and a blue owl, these will be hung outside as soon as I decide where.

also new is this delightful little wizard, found in a thrift shop and placed under this small dome that I bought at Ikea just to keep him safe.

another Ikea find, an old style lamp, turned on and off via the wheel on the right there, it can be dimmed or turned right up to blinding glare. The lamp and wizard are at opposite ends of my desk in the corner.

Finally, this cartoon which I loved, so cut it from the newspaper and blu-tacked it to my picture wall.