What's new Pussycat?

We may be past the longest day, and thus officially heading to Autumn, but DAMN its hot. To be more accurate its hot but its also incredibly humid, as always in Auckland, which is good for plants....well most of them, but can leave people feeling a little squirrely, not least cos of lack of sleep. OFC come 4 months on and I'll be moaning about the cold or the rain lol. That notwithstanding, once ive written this post im back off to bed.

My first "Pat Austin" flower

This morning when i went out to look at the garden one thing caught my attention immediately, It was the first flower on my new "Pat Austin" rose, and its stunning! It literally GLOWS, a beautiful flame copper colour against the green of the background foliage. The picture doesnt do it justice by a long way!
The flowers are a little smaller than the "Pat Austin" s that ive seen before but most roses produce smaller blooms in Autumn, and it is still in a nursery pot (note to self to rectify that asap!). Im just blown away by the colour though, Its a burning ember of a flower. Once again Mr Austin, you have not let me down, shes a show stopper!
"Pat Austin" is one more ticked off my list of Austin roses that i want to acquire, but the list just keeps growing, as the nursery keeps putting out more
and more lovely roses.

"Ebb Tide"

With the other roses, my dusty purple floribunda, "Ebb Tide" is flowering again. I love the colour of the blooms of this rose. Theyre not as flamboyant as some but they have a lovely subtle richness of colour  which ofc, works beautifully with the brilliant gold tones of "Graham Thomas" and "Golden Celebration" with which its planted. It also has a lovely sweet, what id call "old rose" fragrance, and i love the flower form.

"Paul Gauguin" & "Faithful Friend"

Packed with petals, with just a touch of the golden stamens showing when fully open, it has a real charm about it, and is something that was for a long time, missing in modern rose breeding. I can remember when the only roses you could buy in mainstream garden outlets were stiff, formal HTs, that were designed for formal, rose only gardens and rose shows, and not really for the home garden at all. Then there was a period not long gone when you couldnt find any roses at all save for (the rather boring) "Iceberg" because everyone was trying to grow "architectural" plantings with yuccas and palms. Not really my cuppa tea i have to say, and i was very glad when the "home garden" made a resurgance, and along with the growing of food for the table, came the growing of flowers for pleasure. It would be a poorer world without roses like my "Faithful Friend" and the gorgeous "Paul Gauguin" in it, i feel.

Passionfruit

Elsewhere in the garden, the passionfruit has set another fruit and im ecstatic!! Its flowered like crazy this year, but set no fruit up till about a few weeks ago when i noticed a solitary fruit. Not solitary any longer, and as the vine is still flowering, im hoping there will be more still to come. This is great news as i love passionfruits, and theyre a great ingredient in cooking too. Melting moments with passionfruit filling, passionfruit curd, cheesecakes with passionfruit....the list goes on, and id love to do something with my own fruit some day.

tomatoes

Speaking of fruit, i have FINALLY managed to get some (mostly) ripe tomatoes that the birds couldnt reach. Its not much yet, but the big beefsteak types arent showing colour yet, so atm its just the little fellas. The yellow ones i think, are yellow "Roma" going on the shape and the meatiness. They were among the seedlings that i planted out after they started coming up everywhere and theyre fruiting well....i just dont always beat the birds. They taste pretty damn good too if i say so myself! The little red one is a "Tigerella". You cant really see the stripes in the picture as theyre quite subtle when the fruit is ripe, a kind of pale yellow orange on red. Hopefully ill get a few more of them, but because of the red colour the birds hit "Tigerella" pretty hard.