New Peonies and a Rose Bush
Hello friends,
Recently I purchased some wish list plants for my garden, three peonies, and a recently released rose bush.
When NZ Bulbs released their peonies for the 2025 - 2026 season, I bought Duchesse de Nemours, Dr Alexander Fleming, and Sarah Bernhardt.
Duchesse de Nemours has ivory white double flowers and the sensational scent of Lily of the Valley.
Dr Alexander Fleming is a double, sweet smelling, pink peony with strong stems and a very good vase life. A very reliable peony variety for cutting.
And finally Sarah Bernhardt has classic double blooms of deep pink petals, which are lighter toward the edges, and has occasional flecks of raspberry throughout.
I also recently bought the floribunda rose bush 'Cuppa Tea' from our local garden centre. 'Cuppa Tea' was released for the first time in 2024 as a pre-order online, and it was sold out before it even reached garden centres that winter. I was disappointed to not get one when it first was released, and was pleased to find out our local garden centre had one available for me to buy this year.
'Cuppa Tea' floribunda rose has clusters of antique platinum blooms open into changing shades of warm lilac hinted with lavender pink. Bushy, healthy growing habit with
mid-green foliage. It was bred in New Zealand by Bob Matthews from his popular for picking creation 'Cappuccino'.
Now having acquired both peonies and a new rose bush, the problem was where to put them...but luckily I had an idea about that.
At the very front of garden alongside the driveway was a small section of garden which had two problematic plants, a rhododendron and an azalea. Routinely while growing, they impinged into the driveway, and make it too narrow for us to drive our car down the driveway without brushing up against them with our car. I'm also not fond of azaleas and rhododendrons, so I was more than happy to dig them out over a number of days.
It was a battle to remove them, but it was finally done. After removing both plants, I added compost to the soil and then dug it over.
To that space I placed the 'Cuppa Tea' rose bush and the Sarah Bernhardt peony off center, so they stayed well far away from the driveway.
To even the garden bed out, I then dug back into the lawn by 10 cm, to increase the size of the front garden area. If I had to choose between more lawn, or more garden to work with, I'll always choose more gardening space.
After removing the turf, I then planted out the Duchesse de Nemours and Dr Alexander Fleming peonies into the new space in the front garden.
With that all done, there is nothing do do but wait for spring, for both the peonies and rose bush to start growing. There is also more space now for other plants to be planted into the front garden. And as for the space between the Cuppa Tea rose and the Sarah Bernhardt peony, I plan to plant two dahlias when they arrive in spring.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Yeah Yeah Yeah Yarn's The Dark Woods Solstice Yarn Advent
Hello friends,
Back in May while on Instagram, I noticed that Yeah Yeah Yeah Yarn in Dunedin had up for pre-order a winter solstice yarn advent called 'The Dark Woods'. The advent theme up on Instagram was totally in the vibe that I love, with forests, woodland creatures like foxes and owls, and deep dark night colours. Twelve days of the advent had 20 gram mini skeins of 4 ply sock yarn, and the thirteenth day was one 100 gram skein of 4 ply sock yarn.
So I excitedly handed over my money, and patiently waited until the yarn advent arrived at the end of June. With the yarn advent all packaged up in a box, I then waited impatiently for the 1st of July start date, and opened one advent yarn package each day for the next 13 days.
And I was so pleased with the yarn advent colourways as I opened them day by day. The first day started with a beautiful orange and brown fox colourway, and as the days went on, the colours got moodier and darker. By the time the advent got to the last couple of days daylight began to appear in The Dark Woods mini skeins, and the final 100 gram skein was a beautiful soft dawn.
I thought I'd share with you all the colours in 'The Dark Woods' day by day, with the top left being day 1, and the bottom right being day 13.
The first 6 days mini skeins included a really lovely gradient of brown toned colours.
And the next 6 day skeins really worked lovely together as well with deep greens merging into dark blue nights, and then the approaching dawn.
And finally, the day 13 100 gram skein of Day Break sock weight yarn was just stunning in soft shades of blues, apricots, and pinks.
I'm really pleased with the yarn advent, and thought it was well worth the money I spent. I've always wanted to do a yarn advent, but the price of the 25 day advents were too expensive for me to justify. But this 13 day yarn advent was enough to be pleased to do it just once. The colourways were just what I hoped for, and I'm especially happy with the day 13 100 gram skein of yarn.
I now need to knit up the yarn advent into a wonderful project. I would like to use all the colours in one project, but it's taking me a while to find a project that is truly worth all the beautiful yarn. I have many project tabs open on Ravelry, but for now I'm undecided...
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.
Susie Ripley Gardening Seed Haul
Hello friends,
Recently after having cataract surgery, and not being allowed to do any gardening for two weeks afterward (due to infection and high eye pressure risk due to potentially getting my eye dirty, and lots of bending over), I got bored and decided to do some seed shopping from a local seed company, Susie Ripley Gardening. I found that she has a wonderful range of not so common seed varieties which match well with my gardening style.
I bought the following flower seed packets from her:
* Coreopsis Incredible Dwarf Mix
* Cornflower Mauve Ball
* Cornflower Pinkball
* Cosmos Double Click Rose Bon Bon
* Cosmos Double Click Snowpuff
* Dahlia Susie's Mix
* Dianthus Chabaud La France
* Nigella Delft Blue
The colours in the seed varieties I bought work well with my garden colour palette. And I'm particularly excited about Susie's dahlia mix as it has seeds in it from Floret's Petite dahlia varieties that grew last year, along with others. I didn't get Floret's petite dahlia variety seeds last year, and I'm quite sad now that I didn't invest in a packet. I'm hoping that there will be some pretty Floret dahlias in the mix.
Now I just have to impatiently wait for seed sowing to begin in early spring...
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Spinning Union Fibre's Dyed Haunui Purple Roving
Hello friends,
Recently my friend Karyn was at Capital Fibre Fest in Wellington, and she knows I'm always on the look out for new fibre to spin on my drop spindle and spinning wheel, and she came across Union Fibre's booth, where Bonnie had for sale a bunch of different colourways. Karyn chose two rovings for me, in colours she knew I would l love.
First for me to spin up was a 100 gram roving of purple Union Fibre colourway (colourway not labelled on the paper wrapping), dyed with of medium Haunui Fibre.
Haunui fibre comes from a breed of sheep known as Haunui, which is grown on a family farm based in the foothills of South Canterbury, New Zealand. Haunui are known for its lustrous fibers and strong crimp, and it strikes a beautiful balance between softness and durability.
As I began spinning up the Haunui fibre on my drop spindle, the fibre was indeed soft and easy to spin, much more than Romney and Corriedale. It was such a pleasure to spin over the coming hours and days.
Once the drop spindle became full, I transferred it onto bobbins on my Majacraft Suzie Pro. I prefer to ply on my spinning wheel, as this is much easier than faster than on a drop spindle.
Once the fibre was fully spun up on two bobbins, it was time to ply the yarn as a two ply. It didn't take very long at all to ply on my jumbo plying bobbin.
Once transferred to a niddy noddy, the purple and brown shades of the dyed yarn really showed how beautiful the yarn was all spun up.
After a quick wash in some wool wash, the yarn was left to dry in the dining room in front of the winter fires over the coming days.
The final 100 gram 2 ply dyed yarn is of fingering weight/4 ply width, and came out at a total of 285 metres all spun up.
I really love how deep and cozy the shades of purple and brown look in the yarn. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the spun yarn, sometimes it's just fun to spin for the hell of it. It'll eventually find a home in a knitting or weaving project in the future. For now it's just nice to have on display, and to squish it sometimes...
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Tearing Down The Old Aviary
Hello friends,
Down the south side of our house, in the part of the garden you never get to see on the blog, is an outdoor aviary the previous owners of our home constructed to house their many birds. When we first moved into the house we used this section of the garden to host our strawberry and raspberry plants away from local wild bird life who wanted to eat our fruit.
The aviary was beginning to rot back then, and in the time since, the aviary has been falling further and further apart. Now with pieces of rotten wood falling off it, it was time to tear down the aviary this winter. The first job was to rescue the strawberry plants, and then tie back the raspberry canes to protect them while the aviary was being demolished.
Next up was taking off all the facing boards so we could access the chicken wire, so we could tear it off with brute force using hammers and a prying bar. We also removed the doors to get easier access into the aviary while demolition was under way.
The aviary was far more rotten than we expected, especially on the south side, so we had to leave some wire netting in place so that whole walls wouldn't fall down. In the mean time the pile of rotten wood and chicken netting was steadily growing bigger and bigger in our empty vegetable garden beds.
We decided that the best way to go forward was to start taking down the aviary at the most rotten end, which was the south end. It didn't take very long to remove stuff section by section. By the time we got to the northern end of the aviary, the structure became quite unstable. And considering we were due for 100 km/hour gales in the coming days, we made the decision to take an hour off work one day to drop the last of the aviary before it fell down by itself in the wind.
The last wall, which had green corrugated iron covering it, was the last to go, and all it took was a gentle push for it all to collapse. Now all that was left was to finish pulling apart the walls and corrugated iron, and begin hauling it away to the rubbish tip.
Luckily my dad has a car and a trailer, and left his trailer with us so we could fill it up over a weekend. Between that, and also filling up our car with loads of rubbish, we were able to get it all taken away. We also salvaged some good pieces of wood for other projects around the garden.
All that remains now is to clean up the area, do some weeding, and I can begin an exciting project in this space. I can't wait to show you my plans in an upcoming blog post.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.
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