Sunday 15 February 2015

My poor droopy daphne

Daphne flowers.  So beautiful, so sweet smelling, and apparently so temperamental.  My dad scoffs at me when I suggest I am going to grow one, as he says if he can't after all these years I won't be able to with my slap happy approach to gardening.  So naturally, like any child, even one in her thirties - I am going to prove my dad wrong.

As I have mentioned before friends of ours are about to undertake a fairly large extension/renovation - and this means they will lose a large amount of their lovely garden.  So rather than throw their plants into the skip, we were the lucky recipients of the soon to be orphan plants.  A quick trip to North Parramatta was well worth it (apart from seeing our friends and their gorgeous little girl!) to bring home the spoils - established rose bushes in two colours, agapanthus, murayas, and the piece de resistance - the daphne.

Now, Sarah swears to me they don't even look after their daphne, and it just grows happily at the front of her house.  So after it was dug up we brought it home, and immediately put it into my largest pot, filled up with dirt.  I did put a bit of manure in as I had to increase the volume of soil, and I also put some leaf mulch on.  I didn't Seasol it then and there, which apparently is an issue. I carefully watered it during the heat of the first week.  And it sort of looked ok.  I was nervous though so I continued to "kill it with kindness"....  Thanks to Twitter though I got some good advice -



Then a couple of things happened.  First, it started to rain.  And didn't stop.  so the daphne may have been a little over soggy.  And secondly my idiotic roof guy who was "fixing" our skylight (more on this later.  If I stop being angry.  Let's just say the so called fixed skylight now requires a bucket underneath it as that rain is continuing and the sky light is not stopping the water!) managed to throw our hose over the daphne bush and bent it all over when he was "testing" if the sky light was waterproof.

So now my daphne is droopy.  Decidedly droopy.  And I have my fingers crossed I can save it, as I don't want to prove my dad right!!
Poor droopy daphne - But the leaves are still green which I'm hoping might be a good sign.

Another (not particularly good) angle of the droopy daphne.

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