Australian and New Zealand Gardening: OUR BROMELIADS INTO 2015.. , 3 by splinter1804

splinter1804 wrote:
Hi everyone – Firstly let me thank Jean for setting up a new thread for us, I was only thinking that we should have one for the New Year and Jean must have read my mind, so thanks again Jean.

I guess you could say it’s our fault that the rain’s back again, because I put the sprinkler on the front side garden yesterday morning as it’s in a location where the neighbours weeds which overhang the fence, block some of the rain, and as I didn’t have time to water by hand, I took the lazy way out. Also we used our new Karcher water blaster on the side and back paths, so you see it had to rain after all of that.

Like you say about the S.A. fires Jean, “that’s the country we live in and we get the best and the worst from Mother Nature”. It certainly doesn’t help though when the fires are started deliberately as they are in many cases, and I think the penalties for someone charged with these crimes are far too lenient.

I still remember a high fire danger period back in the early seventies when I was in the Bushfire Brigade (Now Rural Fire Service); we had gone to attend a grass fire one night in a paddock adjacent to the Prince’s Highway near Oak Flats, it was probably started by a cigarette butt from a car as it had started beside the road and burned up the hill from there.

After we had it all out, we were just sitting there in the dark waiting to see if there were and hot spots which could start up again when we saw headlights coming down the hill on another road to the north of us and running parallel to the railways lines. The car stopped and shortly after, there was a flash as the scrub beside that road flared up and the car sped off quickly down the hill. It took a few seconds to sink in before we realised we had just witnessed a “firebug” in action, and to this day it still makes me feel sick in the guts when I think of it. On our way to extinguish this second fire we radioed back to control what we had just seen, but of course the offender was never caught.

Jean – I think you’re setting an example for us all as “Seasol” is the way to go during this hot weather, as apart from many of its other benefits, it is said to extend the plants resistance to heat and cold by an extra four degrees by strengthening up the cell structure. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but in some cased it could be the difference between life and death for some plants.

Even if your pic’s are old ones, they’re still nice to look at and I especially like the Vrieseas which now seem to be coming out all at once. Is the yellow one on the left of the picture Vr. Evita? I have several pots of this and they are all out now and make a wonderful picture.

This plant is of particular interest to me because like another plant I have called Vr. ‘Orange Sundae’ (Unreg.), they both have naturally green leaves, but when grown hanging high up in the shade house in stronger light, the leaves change colour to pleasing light mauve/purple colour (See Pic.1 of Orange Sundae).

Teresa - Dear oh dear! Poor Sugar, I feel so sorry for her; such a hard life she leads, first she has to take you for a walk until she's almost exhausted and no sooner is she having a rest when you hear that hubby wants her to take him to the dog park this afternoon. A girl's work is never done!

Anyway, it’s time to go again and first up is Vr. ‘Orange Sundae’ showing the effect on the normally green foliage when grown in high light. Pic’s 2 - 5 are a few of my variegated Neo’s.

All the best, Nev.