Discovery tour.

Posted on 5 Jul, 2008 9 comments

This GOY certainly is amazing. You can just click on anyone and see their collection and learn about plants and flowers and hear first hand how to grow them. I can hardly keep up with you all. I haven’t even seen everyone who came to visit me, nor have I seen the new people who came here the same day as I did and thereafter. This site grows by the minute it seems. And like one of you said it is so amazing we can all look into each other’s garden, nomatter where we live, thanks to internet and this site.
Well, my whole gardening life has been on big dicovery tour and still is. When first moving to the tropics I was just in the garden all day, secateurs in one hand, the rake in the other, wheelbarrow alongside. Seemingly dull looking plants I gave a second chance and some weeks later they said thank you to me by showing off the most wonderful flowers or seeds. I had many Cordylines, green and red ones, and one night I smelled some beautiful perfume, crept out with the torch and saw it had flowers! All the sounds were all new too. Like screaming possum, which were often fighting and falling outof trees. Then there is the Stone Curlew which gives a long whisteling cry in the night and then those frogs! In the wet season they go banana’s each croaking a different song. I loved them all. Fruitbats also making screeching noises and then we had the magpie gees, gock gocking along as they flew over from one mango orchard to the next. These are truly large birds and even the flapping of the wings made for thud thundding sounds. Bandicoots were a nuisance. Not noisy, but the diggingest creature I ever saw. The come out at night, you can spot them sometimes with the torch. Here they dig in the lawn and the mulch, in Darwin they preferred to chew on the black poly pipes of the irrigation. And then those ants. Green ants, which are very active in the summer. When gardening you often forget to look up and suddenly you have these mean ants crawling all over you, because you went with your head against their nests. You then have to quickly shake them all off, because boy, can they bite!. They build the funniest nests, folding over leaves and “glueing” them with some spit I think, whitish stuff together, untill they have a large closed ball. In here they lay their eggs. Eventually the eggs hatch and the nest is eaten away inside out and they leave. You see these “balls” hanging in bushes and from tree branches. They are beneficial to the garden, green ants clean up all dead matter, but they do come on the veranda’s and against the walls, but disappear just the same.
The best rewards in the garden was always to discover a new plant or flower. Those alocasia’s just appeared outof nowhere, tiny little plants. And suddenly new seeds, a Eucalyptus tree in the garden suddenly had orange flowers, when they dropped ( often by the birds who ate the honey ) you could seen and smell them closeup. Wonderful, wonderful, all those magical discoveries in the garden. ...

Comments

Grammazoo

5 Jul, 2008

Ah, Marguerite, you are so right! I love all the visiting we do on this site. It is facinating to see the different areas we all live in and the flora & fauna there, You are wonderfully descriptive and I love seeing the photos and hearing of your life in the tropics! Thanks so much for sharing!
We are growing amazingly quickly and it is hard to keep up with everything so I will appoligise to anyone whom I might have neglected so far. I'm sure that we will be revisiting and finding new gardens this winter when housebound too! So hopefully everyone keeps posting lots, lots lots and we will be occupied for a long time, lol!

Spritzhenry

5 Jul, 2008

A thank you from me, too Marguerite. I am really enjoying looking at life at the other side of the world - so different, interesting and beautiful. I agree with Grammazoo, it's getting almost impossible to keep up with everyone now. I just don't have that much time to spare to look at EVERY photo, much as I'd like to - I would really like to look at all your flowers and gardens, all you members out there! However, the wind is roaring and the rain is pouring this afternoon so I am enjoying some GOY time away somewhere else without feeling guilty that I should be clearing, weeding, pruning or digging. Winter? It's autumn here today...

Popeymike

5 Jul, 2008

Interesting stuff Marguerite .I have no gardening friends so this site is a god-send. Your garden is so different and fascinating, how else could I visit a garden in Oz? ,Or Canada, the US, Hungary etc etc.Keep up the good work
best wishes, Mike

Wohlibuli

5 Jul, 2008

Okay I'll put in my two cents (scents) lol worth and say that I have also found all your pics fascinating. Keep posting we are all enjoying an insight to flora and fauna we may never see in person. Your green ants, sound a lot like our fire ants, O boy when those things bite you... well the name is very appropriate! I enjoy the insights to all the English gardens also, as I'm sure you do. A worldwide site like GOY is just the right thing!

Chrispook

5 Jul, 2008

I agree with all our friends Marguerite. It's great to see plants from the other side of the world, and all your tropical flora has absolutely amazed me. I travel to many different countries and see various intereresting plants, but my travels are limited to the former communist world, so I'm more likely to go to Siberia than anywhere tropical. This is why I enjoy your pics so much. It's so different.

Sadie

5 Jul, 2008

I hope you realise we will all be logged into you through our winter just to remind us what summer should be like. Keep writing. lol.

Marguerite

6 Jul, 2008

Thank you, thank you all you nice garden friends. I didn't expect to get any comments. Haha Sadie, you are right you know, when the Northern Hemisphere is in hibernation I will enjoy a good swim and walking barefeet on the sand. Tell me, if I am allowed to put pictures from the beach, the rainforest and the scenery from this area as well. All photo's are taken by me and I won't put people on, perhaps a dog or two, LOL. But I've just been exploring the beauty of this region and I would like to share it with you. I can also write about it. So, just let me know. I still have pictures from my previous garden and nature around me there as well.
Just let me know and I will do so. Thanks again for visiting.
P.S. I like questions too. And again a big thank you to Sid for finding the Caster oil plant.

Popeymike

6 Jul, 2008

Get them on Marguerite, I've put pictures on from my travels to NZ, and other members have put holiday shots on.Its all good..!

Sadie

6 Jul, 2008

Please, please, please. Let us all share. lol

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