The Cherry Garden

5 Aug '08 4:44 pm

The early signs of Spring are here. The bulbs are out in force and the gorgeous row of flowering Tibetian cherries are doing their thing up near the garage. This is where I planted the climbing roses Golden Showers - along the fence behind the cherry trees. These cherries flower so early in the season that there is no chance of them clashing madly with the lemon roses! This garden has been a neglected mess but this spring I have plans for it! The Aggies are coming out and in goes a subtle colour scheme of lemon and white with daylilies, carpet roses, foxgloves, creeping white convolvulus (not the rampant weed!), cosmos, etc. I'll let you know how I get on... but for now I am enjoying yet another fab display from these trees. Smile

6 Aug '08 3:29 am

I hate to grouse but that can only mean we will be sliding down into winter soon. Well at least we'll have the comfort of your garden-waking-up, spring photos. Those cherries are coloring up beautifully. Do you get much of a harvest or are these just for the flowers?

6 Aug '08 9:11 am

These are non-fruiting. The Tibetian cherry is usually a bit of a smallish straggly tree that lives only 7 or 8 years. It has numerous fruits that are loved by the birds. As a result they self seed everywhere and have become a bit of a pest in our Northern forests. 'Surperba' was created in NZ and is a long-lived sterile variety - no risk to the bushlands but also no fruit. The birds absolutely love the nectar and each year we have tons of native Tui birds visit the trees. These trees are often called the 'Tui tree'. Tuis are not rare exactly, but they are a bit of a novelty in a garden - it's always nice to see native creatures flourishing. Last year I counted 2 dozen at one time - all squabbling and bickering. They tend to over-indulge and get quite drunk. Very funny to watch! They stagger around, never quite finishing their songs, hanging drunkenly from one foot, and falling about all over the place. They're usually such dignified birds!

6 Aug '08 12:30 pm

Here's some pretty amaturish shots of Tuis in the cherry trees. Not my best photography I'm afraid Embarassed

6 Aug '08 4:45 pm

I'd say those are not such bad photos. The color of the tree's bark and flowers is nice and the bird's a looker.

9 Aug '08 10:04 am

You are so lucky to have tuis visiting the garden. We're a little too far south, have to put up with my silly bellbirds. We get a lot of native hawks - now they're interesting birds. One soars around above my chook house - guess I might be feeding him, too?

thanks for the cherry pix - such a beautiful colour, and stuff I didn't know - like the seeding of them.

10 Aug '08 8:37 am

What wonderfully early trees, Kerole! I have the odd blossom, but nothing has yet really started flowering... near our house in Johannesburg there were two beautiful trees next to each other, a white and a soft pink, flowering peaches I think, which flowered ridiculously early in mid-July. Francois always used to say as we drove past, in a mixture of English and Afrikaans (the Afrikaans word for frost sounding like 'rape') "Foolish virgins, haven't they heard of rape?"

I love the thought of your drunken birds not quite getting through a song...

The Cherry Garden

The Cherry Garden

Spring so soon?

The Tui Tree.

Drunk Tuis.

Are they really drunk?

Early blossoms!