Self care by growing a garden

Hi @Libra @MamaBear

Would love to hear about your gardening adventures here.

How are you going @Sheila

@Former-Member, Like most things, the garden plants we get attached to are either the ones that we really enjoy or the ones that have memories attached to them. (I think you well and truly know that.) I hope that you make some good garden crazy friends at your new location who will happily swap and share and help you make new memories.

Have garden, will travel. 😉

We've dragged a few more plants back from Mum and Dad's place. I mostly grabbed pots of bulbs and succulents, my sister mostly took cacti. There were a bunch of tall ones, things like a 4' tall 40-50 year old Old Man cactus. Those have to be about 40 y.o. before they flower, and it was at risk of dying from neglect. They were a challenge to pack. My sister got the bright idea of turning some of the packing boxes into triangular tubes. The trailerful is at her house, and we'll be unloading her stuff and taking ours home later today. Hopefully all have survived the trip unbroken.

I dug up a couple of asparagus spears that I missed last winter, and also managed to get some pieces of a lovely hellebore, white with a pink edge. It's completely the wrong time of year to dig them up, but on summer visits when they've been dormant-ish, the soil has been too hard to get a shovel in to. I managed to get down deep enough to get three pieces with enough root on them, and I've taken off all the flower buds so that they'll put their energy into re-establishing... I hope.

We also brought back some plant stands. They were actually really helpful in packing the trailer. I was able to wire/tie them together with some scrap pieces of wire mesh to make a "cage", and all the plants went inside. A piece of shadecloth over the back half, a tarp over the front half, some rope and tiedowns and we had a load that was solid as all else for the 400k drive. 🙂 (I'm rather proud of my trailer packing skills. Hubby and I did the tarp and tiedowns together, he did the rope, the rest was me.)Someone else's Old Man in flower. I don't think I was living at home anymore when Mum and Dad's flowered. Yes, those spikes are prickly, but they're not as bad as the tiny hair fine ones that you can't get out ... This is why I prefer succulents.

And back home- seeds are doing their expected miracle and growing 😄

Where am I going to put a few hundred poppies, snapdragons, hollyhocks and cornflowers.... 🌸🌸🌷🌺🌻🌻🌹🌷🌷🌷🌸🌺🌻🌹🌷🌹🌺🌸🌸🌻🌻🌺🌻🌼🌼🌺🌸🌷🌹🌹🌸🌸🌺

Also planted two blueberries, a russel lupin and some more seedling plants. I should read labels more closely. One of the blueberries grows to about 120cms. The other one grows to 2.5-3 metres... I didn't even know they came that big! I might be aiming to keep it pruned to 1.5m or so.

I went searching for mosaic patterns last night. I found these and thought it was great.

@Maggie, I've had a little try at mosaics. I'd like to do more, preferably using bits of old china dug up from our garden, and my own "failures". (I'm a potter but haven't been making for a while due to being a carer, among other things. There's always things that come out of the kiln where the pattern is lovely, but something else has gone wrong and it's not usable. And there's also the ones we kept to use ourselves which eventually broke.)
I love this mosaic footpath. Unfortunately it no longer exists. New owners remodeled the garden, and it was destroyed in the process.

@Smc How could anyone remove that footpath? This is my first attempt at mosaic. I’ve bought some old china, broken it, that was fun, now I’m deciding on a pattern. Just a small first, then I guess it might be everything that stands still long enough.

I love pottery, never tried. Just admired.

That path looks beautiful @Smc, not sure how anyone could remove it either!

@Ali11, @Maggie, I'm the kind of person who thinks twice about removing a brick path, let alone a mosaic one. If nothing else, out of respect for the person who put in the hard work. But I guess you can't tie a new owner to the previous owner's "vision".
As far as I know, this is still intact. Margot Knox, the wife of Alastair Knox, famed mudbrick builder/architect, retired to a home in Hawthorn, Melbourne, and totally transformed it with mosaics. She died in 2002, and the house last sold in 2010... hopefully to someone who loves what she created.

Absolutely stunning @Smc and there is so much artistry involved in crafting a mosaic like that. Have you ever seen the film The Spanish Apartment? It is a french film that was shot in Barcelona, and one of the scenes is filmed at a famous mosaic there. Here is a shot from the movie, and a photo of the spot for reference