Readers of my family blog at Thomases.org will know that Graham and I went to Japan in August/September to visit our daughter Meredith who was teaching English over there. I loved looking at the gardens – both public and home – and was delighted to see they grew many of the same plants we did. It was summer there and lots of colour everywhere!
What did I do when I came home? Chose to put in a few Japanese style plants and ornaments to add something extra to our garden.
And by our front door
I have a Wax Hoya named Magnifica and bought it at the garden show some weeks ago. It’s been put in a pot by the front door so is under shelter but open to light and fresh air. However, the big green leaf has turned yellow and dropped off and one of the other smaller green leaves has dropped too so I had to start looking up about the care of Wax Hoyas. Seems because it’s not flowering I should not be watering it much at all so will stop doing that for a few weeks and see what happens.
In the meantime, I came across some interesting sites regarding Hoyas and a blog named Hoya Garden dedicated to them by a man in Brisbane, Australia. I’m listing the other sites I found below for your interest. These are lovely plants with flowers which are are deeply fragrant and I remember the pale pink one I had at my parents’ home when in my teens.
I wonder if I’ve returned to gardening now my kids are grown and I no longer have to spend time doing things for them anymore? I remember mum and dad really getting back into gardening around the time I left home – prior to that I used to love digging and planting in the backyard in my teens and had many plants, flowers, strawberries, potatoes and other things growing. Mum and dad would have been a bit younger than I am now but similar scenario – kids off their hands.
Collectors Corner (where I got mine from)
Gardening Australia (ABC Australia)
I go through phases of gardening passion and during one of those phases a couple of years ago I asked my family to buy for my birthday a software program relating to the planting and planning of one’s garden. They did just that and bought for me Garden Composer. I used it a lot when it was first installed on my computer, but when my computer was later upgraded I hadn’t gotten around to re-installing it – until I went to the Garden Show a few weeks ago and then I realised I should be using the program again.
It is great because I can look up various plants and check the time of year for planting, how to deal with different pests and diseases and a number of other things. You can even design your garden with the program. My family claim I’m just a software addict and perhaps that is true 
. This time round I printed off the user guide and bound it, and included inside the front clear plastic cover, a large copy of the ornamental vegetable garden I show in an earlier post of this blog.
I’ve been doing some research online as well to find various things to assist with my gardening. And as I find more, the blogroll will be added to. One thing I found to be really good is Better Health’s Planting Calendar. It tells you which food plants can be planted at various times of the year and gives you tips for each month too. You can download the calendar to write on and use. I printed it off and it’s been put inside the book I made from the program above so I’m compiling a lot of useful information about our own garden. KMT
Yes, I have the gardening bug, aside from working on the computer and spending lots of time online. Many who know me (online or in business) wouldn’t believe it, but those closest to me know it to be the truth! And I love getting comments about my flower garden in the front yard and how it’s developing. My latest project is a vegetable garden in the backyard, my daughter Christine and I have been working on it together and I’ll share with you our progress. All comments on gardening, and suggestions on how to solve any problems are welcomed. I’m hoping too, that in the not-too-distant future I might be able to have guests post gardening articles here as well. KMT