Sunday, August 17, 2008

A weekend of painting, and some mystery plants

This has been a busy weekend! All day Saturday and all day Sunday, we have been cleaning, painting, shopping for cleaning and painting supplies, or vigorously debating colour schemes. Luckily for me and Skry, we have some extra labourers in the forms of Phil and Lou, who are helping us out now in return for some free accommodation once the house is fit to live in.

I've already applied primer to every fake-wood brown surface in the kitchen, and will get some proper paint to do it up with tomorrow. I'll post the results here so you can see the before-and-after pics, but I'm already sure that it's going to look way better.

We also have some mystery plants in the garden. In fact, the only plants I can say I truly recognise are daffodils and flax. I deduce that there's an apple tree because there is a big tree with rotting apples on the ground around its base, and I think the pink flowery thing is a camellia, but that's about it. Can anyone name these for me? (The ones where you can't see grass around them are trees/bushes.)

1.



2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Sorry about the poor picture quality - I took them all on my mobile phone. If anything is of particular interest I can go back with a proper camera.

EDIT: After a variety of comments and suggestions from various people, this is what we think the plants might be:

1 – Alchemillia (Lady's Mantle)

2 - Camellia

3 - Magnolia

4 – Cordyline australis (Cabbage Tree)

5 - Pseudopanax laetus 'Five-finger'

6 - variety of Agave

7 – still unknown - I need to get a better photo

8 - euphorbia


Thanks, everyone!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

2 looks like a camelia
3 magnolia about to flower
3 NZ Cabbage tree!
5 my parents have it don't know the name but they might
7 could be a type of rhodedendron

Jenny said...

Oh, is that just a cabbage tree? I have seen them alright (lots!) but didn't realise they had all those dead leaves down the stem. Guess I just never looked that closely before :)

No.8 might be some sort of lilies. I know I have seen those plants before but just can't place them.

If memory serves, no.7 has little red berries on it, but I can't really make them out in the photo. I should go and take some better pics.

Thanks, Jo!

Skry said...

Pplant 6 looks like a cross between something from the Forbidden Planet film and Super Mario World! Kinda like a plant that doesn't really belong on Earth...

laura said...

1 looks like a geranium
2 methinks you're right with camelia
3 i thought magnolia, too, but they are evergreen, so perhaps something similar?
4 is defo a cabbage tree :)
6 seems to be some variant of aloe vera...

5 & 7 look very familiar, my gran used to have them in her garden...i will check with mother and get her infinite wisdom on the matter.

it's good to hear everything is on the improve since the dramas you had getting the house keys!

laura said...

p.s. actually, i discover that some breeds of magnolia are deciduous, so perhaps you were on the right track after all!