The bottlebrush that I pruned so radically last month is coming back surprisingly
strongly. The first photos was taken on 23 December, and the second one today; in the
meantime I've pruned away the stuff in the background, but it's clear how much things have
grown in that time.
And suddenly there's nothing pressing to do! Spent most of the day in the garden, mainly
pruning trees. I'm gradually getting to understand bottlebrushes better. The problem is that
when the flowers die, they don't fall off:
The spheres with holes in them are the remains of individual stamens. If you don't do
anything, new growth occurs on the other side. This one shows a stem grown through the
remains of two years' flowers:
I've found that there are shoots immediately behind the flowers, so I've been cutting them
off very short. Spent some time pruning all this stuff away, with noticeable results:
