Late June Garden

Here are some pictures of the back yard beds.

The back bed has a sweet cherry tree, self-seeding yellow coreopsis, a Red Lake currant, some white alliums, lamb's ear, basket of gold, false indigo, mock orange, corydalis, a Rosanne geranium, among others.

 The cottage garden I planted this yera is starting to grow, though it will get a lot more colorful in a month.

The deck bed features a Rainbow Mix coleus I grew from seed in the basement, columbine, my poor New Jersey Tea (it's the chicken wire on the far right), hostas, asiatic lilies, and perennial bachelor buttons among others.

Baby Spinach

Adam and I are expecting a baby in early November. My friend in Phoenix requested a baby bump picture, so Adam took this one before work this morning. You can see Action Owl in the background, failing in his job to scare away bunnies. Though, despite the fact that I've seen a LOT of bunnies this year, the damage hasn't been too bad. I guess I've gotten good at figuring out which plants I have to protect and which ones they'll leave alone. The exception is that I failed to protect my New Jersey Tea (Ceanothus americanus), a nice native shrub, and they keep nibbling it down to the ground. So it's definitely not going to bloom this year.

June is a beautiful month

First, I failed to post the picture i took of our front yard in May. So I'll start with that:

I'm always amazed at how small everything starts and how easy it is to keep things under control at this stage. I forget how big things get in the coming months.
Here's our front yard from this morning. Unfortunately, the irises are already done so i didn't get them in the picture. And the false indigo are past peak (though still lovely structurally).

The other picture I didn't post right away was my new 'cottage garden' that I planted on the south side of our house. I used colors that seemed like a cottage garden: blue, purple, green, pink, and white. A true cottage garden is pretty wild, but this is my interpretation. It doesn't look like much yet of course. But give it a few months. Thanks to Adam for building me that trellis to hold my Clematis integrifolia 'Rooguchi'. Other plans include nicotiana (flowering tobacco), digitalis 'Foxy', some siberian and german iris I transplanted from other places in the yard, Leucanthemum 'Crazy Daisy' that i grew from seed, bells of ireland that i grew from seed (though not very many germinated), snapdragons, zinnias i direct seeded, and dahlias.

This morning before work Adam said that my wood lily (Lilium philadelphicum) was blooming. Sure enough. We planted it about five years ago as a tiny seedling we bought from a prairie nursery at the farmer's market. And this is the first year it bloomed. I knew it was a slow grower (and truth be told, I wasn't entirely sure it was still there at all, despite my attempts to protect it from the purple coneflowers and bloodroot that keep threatening to swallow it. I'd say it was worth the wait.

Surprise bloomer

In the fall of 2013 I planted five Fritillaria rubra maxima bulbs in the tropical garden. They came up the next spring, but then quickly died. I later learned that these large bulbs are hollow and likely rotted (future note: plant them sideways). However, this spring four out of five came up again and one actually bloomed. I remember now why i decided to plant them. They look great in my topical garden along with some daffodils and tulips I had planted last fall.

What does it take for a hellebore to open?

This hellebore (i think it's 'Ivory Prince') has been on the verge of opening for about two weeks now. I keep checking it every day to make sure i don't miss it.

This past Saturday i finished spring clean-up in the front yard. Here's what it currently looks like. You can't see that there are still crocuses blooming, the daffodils are definitely up, and the hyacinth started blooming the next day. 

 Here are some of my best crocuses this year ('Goldilocks' and 'Lady Killer').

And here are my ever-faithful bloodroot, just starting out. I probably left a slightly too thick layer of pine needs on them last fall, but after i had finished cleanup in the front yard on Saturday, i ran out of steam to continue in the back.

Spring is here?

Two weeks ago it felt like spring. Last week it felt like winter again. Now I think we're back to spring for good. My crocuses have been blooming for a couple weeks, and the dwarf irises started about a week ago. These are 'Pauline' (the more purple one in the back) and 'Pixie' (the brighter ones in the front). The tulips are about 6" tall and the daffodils and hyacinths are just poking out.

Cape Fauna

An interesting thing about coming to another continent is the variety of plants and animals you don't see at home. It's been entertaining when we are driving on a road near Cape Town and see a sign warning about penguins crossing the road. There are numerous signs warning that baboons are dangerous wild animals, and it's illegal to feed them. The charm of these warnings hasn't really worn off yet. 

Yesterday, we visited the Harold Porter botanical garden. It was a very nice garden, and connected to a few hiking trails. Unfortunately, one of the trails was closed due to flood damage, but another (Leopards Kloof) was open. We walked for a while on that trail, but turned back when the terrain got a little rough for Adam's flop flops. While sitting in the garden cafe, a mother bacon and her baby sauntered onto the patio and stole a bunch of sugar packets from a table. Apparently, baboons are the raccoons of South Africa.

Last night, we had our last nice dinner of the trip in a small wine town called Franschoek. The drive into the valley was worth the price of admission. Adam could not truly appreciate the view for fear of driving off a cliff, but Emily took a few pictures. The rolling mountainside and steep kloofs were stunning. The dinner itself was really nice as well. We did a five course tasting menu with a bottle of wine. After dinner, we took the flat route home for safety's sake.

Today, we visited Cape Point. This is the southwesternmost pint in Africa, and home of the famous Cape of Good Hope. The landscape was a native dry fynbos ecosystem, with a lot of succulents and resilient bushes. While there, we saw some kind of antelope, ostriches, seals, and baboons. 

Tomorrow we fly home. We've had a great time, but we are ready to be home as well.

We've included some pictures below, many of which show some of the interesting animals we've seen in the last two days.

A colorful bird

A cappuccino cippolini monkey examining a flower.

A beach along Africa's southern coast

One second after this selfie, a wave soaked is both.

The beautiful view from the treacherous drive to franschoek.

How much silverware does one person need?

Elands, we think at Cape Point.

Cape of Good Hope. Or Kaap de Goeie Hoop.

The old light at Cape Point

The new light

Some kind of honeyeater.

The rock that sink the Lusitania.

Lizard.

This is the furthest point on the cape.

Chicken. Just kidding, it's an ostrich.

The Wine Region

We've now been in the Cape wine region for a few days and are having a great time.

On our way out of Cape Town, we stopped at the Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden. The garden has a fantastic collection of plants from the various regions of South Africa, and particularly the Cape region. A highlight was the Boomslang, a treetop boardwalk that was built out over a hillside giving great views of Table Mountain and the area around Cape Town.

Our guest house is in Gordon's Bay, less than an hour from Cape Town and fairly close to Stellenbosch, the center of the wine region. We're surrounded by mountains and have a fantastic view of False Bay from our guest house.

Our first day we visited some wineries and had a lovely lunch at one of them. We also wandered around Stellenbosch which is a completely charming town. Today we went hiking in the Jonkershoek nature reserve. The views were spectacular and we had a picnic next to a small waterfall.

The weather has been absolutely lovely. Partly cloudy and in the low 80s. Coming back to Madison will certainly be a shock.

 A ficus-lined walkway in the gardens

 The Boomslang

 A lovely hillside covered in fynbos

 A view of Table Mountain from the gardens

 Rustenberg winery, one of the oldest in Stellenbosch.

 A view from the tasting room at Uva Mira winery.

 We weren't there just for the view. The wine was really good too.

A chubby blue-headed lizard at the Jonkershoek nature preserve.

 This is a kloof, where we ate a kloofnic

Did I mention the beautiful views?

Cape Town and Simon's Town

We arrived in Cape Town on December 27. One of our first views was of the beautiful Table Mountain that overlooks the city.

The next morning we tried to take the cable car up to the top of Table Mountain, but the line was ridiculously long so we left. It was a nice view, even from the lower station. We ended up visiting the South African National Museum and wandering around the Company's Gardens. The Gardens were originally created by the Dutch East India Trading Company to grow produce for their voyages.

The next day, we took the city train to Simon's Town, a small beach-front town on False Bay, about an hour's ride by train from Cape Town. The train tracks ran directly on the beach for half of the trip, so it was a beautiful ride. Though it's so windy here that sometimes the sand from the beach would start to blow in through the windows so you had to close them or risk looking like a sugar doughnut. From the train station, we walked a couple kilometers to Boulder's Beach where there is a colony of African penguins that you can view up close. The penguins are still endangered, but clearly they felt safe on this secluded beach.

We also viewed the Castle of Cape Hope, previously on the sea front but now about a half kilometer into town due to land reclamation. This fortress was built in the 1600s and is the oldest building still in use in South Africa. We viewed the daily 'handing over of the keys' ceremony. Close by was the District 6 museum - a memorial of sorts to the thousands of Cape Town residents who were forcibly removed from their homes and relocated away from the center of town in the 1960s when this district was rezoned as a 'white zone.' Their homes were subsequently razed.

On New Year's Eve we did a group wine tour to four wineries near Cape Town. One wine we tried that is unique to South Africa is Pinotage. They had a lot of other nice reds as well. In the evening, we ventured down to the V&A (Victoria & Albert) Waterfront to take part in their big New Year's celebration. There was live music, food vendors, tons of people, and a rather anti-climactic countdown. It was still good to be there and be part of it.

Happy New Year everyone!