The Countdown Has Begun

Only four days left to get my wreck of a garden whipped into shape for Saturday's open and there's so much left to do.  Here are a few shots of how things are looking at the moment.

'Fragrant Cloud' rose is at it's peak, perfuming the air beautifully.  Of course by the weekend the petals will be falling all over the place, mostly into the pond beneath them. Neat.

Meanwhile 'Chrysler Imperial' has fallen over because it didn't get cut back this year.  Oops.

When one is stashing pots before the blooms emerge, clashes like this frequently happen.  Tasteless.

Oh well, if you can't impress them with color, give them something to laugh at.  Hammer head - get it?  Note to self, slip that Monrovia pot into something else.
 

To the right of the danger gardenette, this jungle is unruly.  I would clean it up but the hummingbirds are fond of the Eccremocarpus scaber taking over the palm.  Yes, that's it, the hummingbirds. 
 To the right of the Danger Gardenette  Maybe I should take that hand trowel off of the table.

Of course, there should be a minor disaster.   See that lovely variegated pineapple plant growing oh so nice and straight?  Well, there used to be two of them up there.  The other one was growing a little sideways.




Some of these have taken a turn in the Danger Gardenette in years past.  Many of these get hauled back into the house for the winter.

Somehow the shelves still look full.  They just get more cramped  in the winter.

Amorphous konjac is looking gorgeous.  I really should find space for it outside.  Since it's winter dormant, though it gets stored under a table for the winter.

This is just about ready.  I do love spending time in here, but like the rest of the garden, I seldom just sit and enjoy it but find pleasure in working around the plants.

The floor could use a nice spray down with 30 second cleaner but the smell is awful and lingers for a while so we'll just be happy with the natural algae look.


Yes, the glass table top got cleaned.  When you spray neem oil on the plant above it every week to control spider mites, it gets pretty grungy looking.


Just outside the greenhouse a hanging begonia that I purchased a couple of months ago is looking terrible.  Meanwhile the one to the right of it which lived through our mild winter, much to my surprise, looks fabulous.  Maybe I'll bring a begonia from the front garden down here to replace it.  The pot ghetto is supposed to be a holding area for new plants but it's full of other stuff now, like that dahlia that was planted in a pot a couple of years ago with plans to plant it out in the garden.  That never happened but the plant survives under the eaves of the greenhouse where it doesn't get any winter water.  It's so hard to get rid of something that survives and blooms,

Old bamboo culms die from time to time.  Removing them is such a chore.  Why not just paint them and leave them in place? 

Most of the rest of the garden looks something like this at the moment, this post is getting long, and I need to go to bed so that I can be up at the crack of dawn to blow, sweep, pick up, and rake the damned bamboo litter which is everywhere.  (One day, I'll get rid of it!)  I'd be lost without my collection of plastic buckets