Colourful garden, full of new life

Monty sniffing the cactus flowers

Well, I was a day wrong in my prediction for the opening of the cactus flowers, but this morning they were open before the sunrise, so they must be nocturnal flowers. The heat of the day has shortened their life and I think by tomorrow they will be dying back already. All that effort for such a short time!

On the other side of the fence, the agapanthus are a riot of blue - it just occurred to me that the success this year may be due to my handpicking the big brown snails off the leaves every week and translocating them to the field next door. They've probably eaten every bud over the years!

The most successful planting in my garden over the years has been clivias, which have reproduced from offshoots as well as seeds thrown in the undergrowth, but at this time of year, the only one flowering is the lovely clivia repens, which my mother gave me a few years ago and are still only the original two plants. The attractive tubular flower makes a nice show in a dark corner and I'm hoping that they will produce seeds this year.

The garden is filled with young, newly fledged birds of all varieties, so it's been a successful breeding season. They obviously can find all the food they need in the area, and the burgeoning pigeon population attracts the raptors, too. Very exciting when they jet in for the kill, although HWCFA doesn't agree with me on that point!