All these vibrant hibiscus are flowering at the moment in the old gardens adjacent to the residential village where I now live …
Most of the residents living in the old village have gone but their gardens live on. Seems to me from this show that hibiscus are hardy and forgiving.
Oh hail this magnificent hibiscus flower on this gloomy day …
Yesterday a friend staying at Carinya temporarily, walked me through the almost abandoned buildings and overgrown gardens.
This is one of the most vibrantly colored flowers I have seen. Without its flowers the shrub is insignificant, no more than a meter tall, with every millimetre of its bark covered with lichen.
I know people will tell me lichen doesn’t hurt tree bark. That may be so. But the lichen by creating little pockets, draws water to itself and that allows other, unfriendly, organisms a foothold. Rot is the next step.
When I see a shrub or tree bedizened with lichen, I see a tree in trouble, planted in the wrong place and or climate.
When I was out the other day, after I had sat down in the civilized new-ness of the one year old addition to the village and found it too structured for my mood, I walked into the old section.
This village started in the the 1980s with a field of little villas surrounding a community facility. About half the villas remain along with the old communal areas.
So I crossed the vacant block along the concrete path. Weed central but with more flowers than the sculptural resort style gardens in the newer sections …
There’s even a lone fungal fruiting body. Further on, as I come into the streets, the vacancies and their bewildered gardens become obvious. (A pun there)
Can barely see the villas for the overgrown gardens. A riot of flowers though. More varieties of hibiscus that I’ve seen in one small area.
There are some beautiful trees and shrubs, five to ten metres tall. I can’t imagine they’ll be kept when the building program continues.
Finally, in a derelict corner I see a clump of fungi. I had been wondering whether these gardens were maintained by the establishment or cultivated by the residents themselves. The fungi speak for the latter.
Three, possibly four species I make that. What do you think, mycophiles?
Rita de Heer 