This has been a wonderful week for my orchids. Although very hot and dry until today’s afternoon shower, I managed to keep all the orchids well fed and watered. At first I was watering all of the orchids every ten […]
My Victorian style orchid fever, has continued with Oncidium orchids. The one in the main picture is Oncidium (Beallara / Aliceara) Peggy Ruth Carpenter. Oncidium alliance orchids are easy to tell apart from phalaenopsis. Oncidiums have plump, oval growths on the […]
The summer garden has been showing off lately. So many beautiful herbs, fruit and veggies in bloom and fruiting. We have also been blessed with lots of rain in between the heat. All this is a great combo for attracting […]
Did you know there is a very special orchid that smells just like chococolate? Let me tell you more about it and show you two of mine. Please LIKE, COMMENT & SUBSCRIBE to my Youtube channel: Youtube.com/therainqueen for more videos […]
I can’t explain exactly how it came to be, but a couple of weeks ago I fell head-first into the orchid hobby. I have always associated orchids with elegant ladies, massive greenhouses and similarly massive amounts of effort and time […]
We’ve had a good week weather-wise. Pleasant days of cool mornings, hot around midday and the typical Highveld afternoon thunderstorms. The Vaal dam is still desperately under capacity and our water restrictions are still ongoing. Luckily our rainwater tank is […]
Lemon-scented herbs are amongst my favourites. I’m currently growing lemon thyme, lemongrass and the subject of today’s post: Lemon verbena (Aloysia citrodora). I love to walk past the herb and inhale the intense citrusy aroma. Lemon verbena makes an excellent […]
This is one of my favourite times of year. The weather is warming up, which means more days of gardening and an explosion of colour as spring blooming bulbs open up and fruit tree blossoms prepare to give us a […]
We were recently at Walkhaven Dog park and I planned to take loads of macro pictures and some portraits with the 100mm and the 50mm lenses. Just my luck to pack the whole camera bag its tripod, charger, filters and […]
I haven’t been doing much gardening or elaborate cooking lately due to the heatwave, work and academics. Since the previous post I’ve been so lucky to find more unusual / new to me plants. Some were even gifted to me. […]