Observation Note 108: I need pots. So this gardenia geranium loves to grow. In the gutter facing North, in a pot facing South. It is hardy as you can see here.
In March last year, my sister-in-law gave me a clivia. She put it in a plastic shopping bag so it wouldn’t drop dirt in my car as my husband drove it home. Carrying many items into the house, he left the plastic bag in a corner, leaves popping out the top. The plant seemed happy enough so I threw some water into the bag, thinking that I need to go out to buy a pot for it. A year later, the clivia was still in that plastic bag. It had flowered in the Spring, I had moved it to the backyard, it dropped its flowers, and it survived the cataclysmic rains of La Nina in February. Then a few weeks ago, I noticed that the plastic bag was disintegrating, so I finally transferred it whole and (nearly) healthy into this pot.
Shallowreader 
[Drifts back in, having decided that you weren’t lying about the pistachios since they were around the blog, just not on the page. Sees your first photo, thinks it looks just like our geranium, sees you’re calling it a gardenia and is re-bamboozled. Drifts off again, thinking about whether it would be a good idea to look up plants online, but then remembering the bamboozlement caused by US plants which look like UK ones but aren’t the same.]
Oh noooo! This is what happens when I blog late at night! I blame being vague. And I feel so embarrassed. I did not aim to bamboozle!
To be fair, today the clover in a window box at the front of our house managed to bamboozle me by having one stalk which looked a bit different from the others. So, I’m very, very easily bamboozled by plants.
Every time I think a stalk in my pot plants looks different it is because there is a weed in there. Rather than bamboozled, I am resigned to my gardening ineptitude.
Oh, we have weeds too. But this one was bamboozling me because although it had clover leaves which were quite obviously clover leaves, I was convinced that the stalk looked different. It’s probably just a newer stalk or there’s natural variation between stalks.
On the topic of weeds, though, there was actually a campaign this year to encourage people to leave weeds to grow. Well, maybe not all weeds, but they specifically mentioned dandelions: https://nomowmay.plantlife.org.uk/what-is-no-mow-may/ Not sure if any of that’s relevant/applicable to Australia, though.
Oh I have seen these photos! They are all mini-meadows. Such a lovely idea with huge impacts. As for dandelions, my mum’s yard is deliberately overgrown with them because we use dandelion leaves for a boiled salad that I adore. Sharp and tangy. Mnom!