A New Year, Scorching Temperatures and Chinese Lanterns

The new year has certainly made a grand entrance.  Temperatures of 40 C plus were experienced over the past few days. The dam level is getting lower and the landscape is dry, very dry. Gum leaves carpet the ground as trees shed them at an alarming rate. Into the second month of summer with more hot weather to come.

It's a battle to keep plants alive. Needless to say that work has not progressed on the garden. Plants bought in spring are still in pots. They will not be planted out until the worst of the hot weather passes, which could be around March/April. So much easier to water pots grouped in the same area than drag the hose around the garden. Most established plants are left to survive with no watering. It is only the ones planted in spring and some of the small trees showing heat stress that benefit from extra watering.

However, all is not gloom and doom. The morning was cool and I enjoyed breakfast out on the patio, accompanied by birdsong, while kangaroos fed on whatever they could find near the orchard.

A stroll around the garden before the sun broke cloud cover revealed that there are still discoveries to be made: like this flowering Chinese lantern or abutilon.

A compact hybrid abutilon, called Patio Lanterns Passion, it grows to approximately 60 cm x 60 cm. As you can see, it has lots of flowers and buds about to open. The colour is a vibrant red and, if the information on the tag is correct, this display should last until autumn or if I want to achieve all year flowering it can be planted in a pot and placed in a protected area on the patio.

I have two other Chinese lanterns growing in pots: abutilon flamenco and abutilon pink swirls. These shrubs are very hardy, enjoy full sun to part shade and can tolerate most frosts. They grow to a height of about 2 metres and a width of 1.8 metres. Lots of flower buds on both, but only abutilon pink swirls has one open.

Abutilon pink swirls

As I was writing this post (on Friday 2nd January) a bush fire emergency occurred and it was put on hold until today. Fortunately the bush fire did not impact on us, though we did have a very tense 48 hours.