Flowery flowers

I think it's just going to be pictures of flowers from here until autumn ... it is so exciting whenever a new one pops up! And many of them are not at all the colours we thought they might be. For starters, there are five camellia bushes when we thought there were two ... we can tell because there are five different flowers. There is a big forsythia tucked in there as well, that gives the yellow flowers. Very gaudy, but we like that.

Isn't this variegated pink amazing? Coconut ice we're calling it.

The little rhododendron is an absolutely shockingly bright pink. Not subtle at all. The other one hasn't flowered (and is looking a bit sad to be honest) but we're hoping it's more elegant. Hah.

Blossom is everywhere and gorgeous. The bees are in the rosemary behind it but I'll have to chop it back at some stage. When we get round to this particular bed.

We have tulips! I didn't know they were skulking in the ground; just these three so far and they look like being a very dainty shade of pink. 

Other than that it is all about the roses ... after pruning 104 roses and spraying 104 roses we have now fed 104 roses and mulched 104 roses. Actually only 97 because there are six in the bottom bed I'm weeding before mulching (if you can call using a mattock on a garden bed 'weeding') and I think I did kill one in the pruning extravaganza in July. Next week I will spray 104 roses for black spot (yes, even the dead one, you never know).

And our neighbour came over after clearing out his strawberry bed to see if we wanted any runners ... why yes please, so Brad planted about 80 in the ex-cineraria bed, covered them in sugar cane mulch and we will see if they live. It's just a temporary measure until we get our proper vegie enclosure built as I doubt the birds would leave us any fruit; but even if we don't get fruit we will have runners of our own for next year. I googled cineraria too, it turns out what we called it in NZ is "florist's cineraria" which is quite different, more like a daisy, and some botanists have it as genus senecio, which explains Pam's word for it! how confusing it all is.