With much going on with the book coming out, I haven’t been able to get into the garden for a while and suddenly noticed out the window that the hippeastrum (centre) has flowered (exciting to me as it’s looked half-dead for a long while and I didn’t expect a recovery, especially with my past bad experiences trying to grow flowers!)
Looking around the garden, I see spring has indeed begun in my absence with lovely amber nasturtiums and little, late pea flowers in the vegie patch, the white flowers on Nonno Anni’s coffee tree and more white flowers (top) covering Grandpa Bob’s hawthorn (and attracting lots of lovely bees). There’s a striking red canna too, one of ‘Nanna’s cannas’ grown from Nanna Francesca’s that grew for years in her front garden and precious to me (since those who’d later live in the house would mow over them until they eventually disappeared completely).
And I also spotted a pinky-purple flower that I think might be a weed but it’s growing so valiantly in a cement crack next to a stone wall that there’s just no way I can pull it out. Lovely how so much life can be happening in an ordinary, suburban yard – birds, dragonflies, plants from loved ones, weeds, unexpected survivals and flowerings. Zoë 🌷🌿 xx
I planted these in the vegie patch to attract bees yet the flowers have taken me straight back to the daisy bushes Nanna Francesca grew in her front garden. She often had us stand in front of those daisy bushes for photos and from the 1950s on, we have decades of family photos taken with the daisies. (I’m guessing I’m not the only one who has old photos taken in front of a certain plant or tree in a family garden over the years!) While those daisies are long gone now, I love how daisies will forever remind me of Nanna Francesca. (I also couldn’t resist including the photo of Bisnonno Vitale watering their front garden back when three generations of the family all lived in the house on Brunswick Street.)
Zoë Boccabella 