How does your garden grow?

I can't decide if my favourite season is Spring or Autumn.  The gardens are just beautiful this year, and the best the roses have been for years.  I am not a propper gardener, I just plant things and hope for the best.  My grand-father was a great garden, so I have learned a lot from him.  My DH is big on the fertilizer, but he is not aware of the old saying, that sometimes less is best.  He fertilizes too much and the wrong times.

 The hollyhocks are out so early this year, but some of them never actually stopped flowering.  Must have finally got it right.

This red one is my favourite.  I tried for years to grow hollyhocks and they simply died.  I would travel around remote and dry parts of the state, and see them growing wild by the sides of the roads!  Why can't I grow them in that case? 

So I took this attitude.....I  took seeds from these hardy unloved plants, and scattered them about the garden like in nature, scraped them in like the birds do, did not water them - just the rain when we get it, and there you have it!   A thriving hollyhock garden.  All the plants are now self sewn, and they are everywhere!  They pop up in the cracks of the paving, and in the lawn, and sometimes I move them, but not often.  Too much fiddling about and they don't like.  I ignore them and they grow.

 The other thing we "non gardeners" can have success with are climbing roses.  This rose is called Albertine.

 It nearly died the second year I had it with the drought, but now it flowers A LOT in October to November.  The whole fence will be covered in the delicate pink blooms.  They are a bit early this year as well.

 This climbing rose called "Gold Bunny" is less than 2 years old!  and to the top of the fence.  I got it for Mother's Day last year.  The blooms are on long stems, so you can pick them and put them in a vase.

Not sure what the real name of this plant is, but we call it Bird of Paradise.  I have about 3 of them in the garden.  They grow without help and so BIG!  It really does look like a bird, dosn't it?

We went to the nursery today and bought a Blood Orange tree.  It is going into one of the pots on the front verandah.  We have limes and lemons in pots so far, and orange, peach, nectarine, and mandarin trees in the back yard.  If they all survive the summer we should be ok for fruit in the future.