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Clump-forming perennials

Dianella tasmanica is a clump forming perennial which grows to about 50cm in height.

It has strap-shaped leaves and at a glance it can be confused with the New Zealand flaxes (phormium). It is very much smaller, however, and comes in creams, yellows and greens only, whereas there are pink and red varieties of flax.

There are two easily obtainable forms of dianella, the one a minty green and creamy white and the other a bright, light green and yellow. These both bear spikes of tiny blue flowers, quite attractive if you examine them closely, but rather uninteresting from a distance.

Dianella is able to tolerate fairly severe frost, but dies back completely during cold, dry winters. Even here at the coast it will die back considerably if it is not well watered during winter.

Dianella is versatile in that it can be used on its own as a small accent plant, or en masse to fill larger expanses.

Alstroemerias, commonly called Inca lilies or Peruvian lilies, are very rewarding both in the garden and as cut flowers.

There are not that many colours easily available at the moment, but as time goes by the local nurseries will build up sufficient stocks and make more colours available.

Alstroemerias form substantial clumps, and I have seen well tended clumps standing 1.5m in height -- but such tall plants definitely require staking or the stems flop down to the ground and the flowers are more prone to snail damage, and also become dirty during rain or irrigation.

Alstroemerias will tolerate a semi-shaded position but are healthiest if they get full sun for at least half of the day. Because the stems are brittle at ground level it is not advisable to plant these lovely lilies in a windy position.

They enjoy generous watering, and will sometimes grow throughout the year if they are well watered throughout the dry months.

Alstroemerias grow throughout the country, but do die down in cold winter regions. A good layer of loose mulching material such as straw or lucerne will protect the dormant roots from frost damage.

Dietes grandiflora is a plant I am always going on about.

It is indigenous, it grows anywhere from deep shade to full sun, and it will tolerate anything from copious watering to extended dry spells.

Commonly known as the peacock iris, this plant bears graceful arching stems of white irises with yellow and blue markings on the petals.

Dietes grows in severe frost zones as well as at the coast, and it is a valuable filler under trees where root competition is fierce.

Agapanthus is another firm favourite -- there are white and blue forms available, and there are tall and dwarf forms of both.

They grow in sun or semi-shade, but flower best in the sun.

They flower in the hot months, but at the coast the dense green foliage is there throughout the year to fill the gaps. Inland the foliage is frosted down, but the plants are fully hardy, and regrow each spring.

I have had a special request from the Gonubie Garden Club, to publicise their annual Spring Show. This is a lovely little show, but usually not well attended by non-Gonubie residents.

There are many categories -- at least one to suit every keen gardener -- and copies of the schedule are available at the Gonubie Library.

Anyone can enter, and the more support they get from browsers at the show, the better.

The show is on October 4 this year -- I'm not sure what time it is, but I will let you know next Saturday.

Do support this event.

Ten steps to a slim Oprah

Make the Connection by Bob Greene and Oprah Winfrey

Century R89.95

MAKE THE

For the many fans missing their daily fix of the Oprah Winfrey show, and for those who need to get into shape for summer, Make the Connection comes just in time.

With her usual candour Oprah opens her diaries to reveal a yo-yo dieter's cycle of despair.

The guilt induced by the scales followed by determination to beat the flab. The many diets tried; the weight lost -- sometimes just for a day -- followed by a binge and weight gain.

Back to the guilt.

She keeps her sense of humour. After her initial success as a chat show hostess she winces when a writer praises her as ''nearly 91 kilos of Mississippi-bred womanhood''.

At a boxing match she listens to the weigh-in figures and realises she weighs as much as Mike Tyson -- 99 kilograms.

Her worst moment comes when she wins an Emmy but all she can think of how unsuitably she is dressed at 108 kilograms.

The following day she meets Bob Greene, a personal trainer and co-author of Make the Connection.

He takes her walking, hiking and later jogging. This leads to a half marathon and later the rash decision to do a full marathon.

With her work schedule this meant training at 4.30 am, no excuses accepted.

The marathon experience is told in emotional detail. Oprah admits this was her physical high point (and lowest weight point) but the demands of marathon training were beyond her time limitations and she gained a few pounds after this.

She admits to working hard to maintain her weight at 68 kg; this is her body's set point.

Greene sets out a 10-point programme much of which will be familiar wisdom.

Point two is interesting: Exercise in the zone level.

The intensity is the key here -- not the time spent but how hard you exercise. Take note all those who chat while on the stepper or running machine.

Greene allows no slacking and humour is in short supply. A glass of wine knocks this New Man off kilter for three days.

Make the Connection may prove a little hard to comply with in its entirety but it is motivational and Oprah's honest reaction to weight problems and exercise will endear her to many.

Even if you don't maintain all ten points some fitness improvement is almost certain.

AndrŽ Louw

patterson

Sordid and surprising psychological study

SILENT WITNESS

by Richard North Patterson

Random R74.95

I CANNOT say that this rather sordid, though very well written novel, provided this reviewer with hours of enjoyable, comfortable reading.

Tony Lord is a San Francisco attorney who, at the age of 17, was forced to leave his home town, Lake City, after being accused, though never convicted, of the rape and murder of his girlfriend, Alison.

Twenty-eight years later he is asked to return to Lake City to defend the friend of his youth, Sam, a sports instructor who was with him on the night of Alison's death and who is accused of raping and murdering one of his 16-year-old students.

The two events, though so many years separate them, are remarkably similar in some respects.

Both took place in or near the same park, and the girls involved were violated in a similar way, but whereas Tony and Alison were of an age, Sam's victim was many years his junior, and her body was found not in the park near her home, but at the foot of a cliff some distance away.

Did she commit suicide -- she was pregnant by her instructor -- or was she thrown down the cliff? Was the fact that both girls were sodomised a significant factor in the case?

Was there someone else involved, a young black man whom some in the town are only too eager to accuse, just as the townsfolk were only too ready to accuse, and condemn the young Tony Lord when he was in the dock?

This is an extremely complex psychological study, involving many unusual factors, and the ending certainly surprised me.

Pip Smith

Light-hearted and furry

LOOKING at the world through the eyes of furry critters is nothing new.

From the by turns quaint, by turns terrifying, world which Beatrix Potter created, to the New Age mystic seagull who's name was Jonathan, Jonathan who lived by the sea ... animals have given writers a fresh perspective.

House of Tribes by Garry Kilworth, is no exception.

Kilworth who has burrowed for himself a tidy little niche with novels about foxes, wolves and hares, now turns his attention with a great deal of skill, and not a little wit, to the world of mice.

The bulk of his latest book is set in a 1930s style English country house, where six tribes of mice have been living, fighting and observing nudniks (humans) for generations.

All is well within this mousey world, well more or less, until the competing tribes call a truce and decide to drive the nudniks out.

The novel's hero, Pedlar, a country mouse and newcomer to the house, is eventually chosen to lead the disparate tribes once their strategy has run its inevitable course.

Tribes include the likable but terribly pedantic Bookeaters who live in the library and literally digest nudnik (human) wisdom with amusing results and the Savage Tribe who inhabit the kitchen under their tyrannical chief Gorm-the-Old.

Ranged against the mice are nudniks, cats, a roof rat, an owl, a senile spaniel, a sadistic boy and his pet white mouse, and a caged cannibal called Little Prince.

Wonderful material and characters for a Walt Disney animated movie abound, such as the members of the Stinkhorn Tribe, two reprobate rodent drunkards, Phart and Flem, who live in the cellar and are the first house mice to meet and mislead Pedlar.

But then again perhaps not. House of Tribes is too witty and the tale is also without an obvious moral or lesson from which to hang a Disney production.

Kilworth probably knows as much as any fiction writer about the minutiae of the mice world, but wears his learning lightly, weaving an entertaining plot which never leaves the reader feeling like he is sitting through a Zoology 101 lecture.

Although House of Tribes may not be on a par with the acknowledged pillars of the animals personified novels -- Duncton Wood (about moles) and Watership Down (about rabbits) -- to its credit it also escapes the relative gravitas and some of the spiritual pondering which weigh down the mole and rabbit books.

House of Tribes then, is a light-hearted read for children of all ages, particularly those who don't mind seeing themselves through beady rodent eyes: as horrible, great, big, clumsy, dirty, greedy vermin.

Matthew Hattingh

Editorial Opinion