Garden Happenings

After recent frosty mornings, my Bethel sage has stopped flowering. It was covered in unopened flower buds that sadly froze. It doesn't like that! So it is time for it to be moved. In this photo the Bethel sage is the tallest branches in the garden bed:

Looking a bit bedraggled after the frost, but the highest branches are well over 2m tall. Until the frost it was lovely to sit inside and watch birds in it, but it really is too big to be planted this close to the house:

It has taken several years to get to this point. But each summer it shoots up higher and higher. Gardens in bushfire areas shouldn't have large shrubs close to the house like this, so the Bethel sage is moving to another part of the garden.

Elsewhere in the garden, my Limelight protea flower (as seen last week) is opening up:

Inside view:

I'm so glad the birds have left it alone this year! (So far, at least.) The colour combination is gorgeous.

A few days back, some garden bed edging was being put in place, and in the process my blue devils (Eryngium ovinum) disappeared. I bought them at a native plants exhibition last October. They hadn't grown much since then, but I had their location marked with bricks. Somehow as the edging was laid my markers were moved and my devils disappeared. I was happy about the edging, but not happy about the lost plants. Fortunately some more little blue devils were sourced, and I went and collected them yesterday:

I shall have to mark these ones more definitely when they are planted out.

And here's the front garden bed later this afternoon once the Bethel sage was moved:

It has left a couple of gaps that I will fill with something low-growing but still attractive to birdlife.