I am forever harping on about the camellias in my garden as an enemy force of stumps needing to be destroyed. But there are actually a couple of camellias that I like and am keeping. Part of their appeal is being in a good position and the other part is their colour. Pink camellias are so common and are one of my pet hates. Thankfully, there are other colour options.
From our dining room window we can see the white camellia. It has a cascading (or semi-cascading) form and white flowers throughout winter; an extra bonus as it’s nice to have something pretty to look at in the cold, gloomy months. Not that it has been overly cold and gloomy this winter. I’m actually quite enjoying winter this year.
Further down the same fenceline we have a red-flowered camellia. In spring its fat red buds burst forth into large, single red blooms. I am more of a single flower person than a double flower person. Double flowers often look too poofy for me, while single flowers look more natural, whispering quietly of their wild origins. This camellia is a nice blue-red, not a gaudy hot red, and it attracts native tui, which feed on its nectar and chortle in the trees.
My favourite camellia of all is Night Rider, with its small, waxy, dark red-black flowers, but I haven’t got one at the moment. I’ve been meaning to get one or two, or 20, but I still have a lot of ground work to do in the garden; weeding and pruning, bushwhacking if you like, before I get too carried away with plants.
I don’t know what cultivar either of my two aforementioned camellias are, but I intend to find out. I hate having plants I don’t know the name of in my garden! This post just about got sidetracked by my Googling fingers. I didn’t know there were so many red camellias around. Anyway, my Googling fingers are themselves going to get sidetracked now because I have something very important to do. I need to watch Alaskan Bush People. It’s more than likely you’ve never heard of this TV show, but I discovered it and I really love it. It is about a family doing life in the remote bush on an Alaskan island. Hard work, different and entertaining personalities, creativity, innovation, wilderness, bears: what’s not to love? And now that The Little Fulla is actually going to sleep in the evenings, I have a little bit of time for a luxury like watching TV. Hellooo Alaska…
Wild Hope Homestead 