All tucked in

I spent yesterday removing a ton of weeds from the veggie garden that had become quite overgrown. That is what happens in the tropics.  Then I lugged in a couple of bucket loads of mulch - that is pretty much the end of the pile now.  This should keep the weeds at bay and since the rains seem to have started everything will stay nice and moist.  There are regular mint and lemon balm in pots, spearmint in the front bricks, and a few struggling parsley and one struggling strawberry.  Basil, tropical coriander, and mother of herbs doing ok.

 This is the view of the veggie garden from the very back corner. This middle bed has a few pawpaw, a struggling yakon (got some little white bugs, so I cut it right back)   A couple of good eggplant, winged beans, chinese long beans, and few rosella, a few pigeon pea, a cape gooseberry, onions, spring onions and garlic chives.  The bed to the right has asparagus, mushroom plant, Galangal, lemongrass and turmeric.

 The bed against the fence has ginger, jicama and sweet potato.

A plant that a neighbor gave me at the end of last wet season has risen from dormancy.  (I told her it was just going dormant but she was convinced she had killed it)  Doesn't it have pretty flowers?

The calathea is settling in and sending out new pink backed leaves.

So that is it! I am off on my holiday and the garden is on its own.  I am interested to see just how much growth happens in three weeks in the wet season.

Happy Christmas

As I have said before we have a very small unit and garden, so storing things like Christmas trees for 11 months of the year has never really come into the equation.  We picked up a Christmas tree outlined with lights and suspended it on our reading lamp stand.  The family have looked at it with derision.... until now!  A package arrived in the mail from my dear mom and she sent all these lovely little wire and bead ornaments and it has taken my Christmas tree to a whole new level.  thank you Mom!

 Look at the detail on this little star!

 and this one  - I love how they have the circle bits in the middle

 and I have an angel - I love angels - how beautifully she reflects the lights.  My mom is an angel - always visiting others and taking care of the "oldies (she is 87!)

 Look at this tree with a star on the top :)

 I put the other colorful angel right on the top!

 Here is my nativity scene on the coffee table - I love their cute faces and we can move them around to tell the Christmas story.

After having Christmas here in Australia, I will be off on a wild adventure with my two daughters.  We will be in Malaysia for three weeks!
On my return I will post some photos on my travel blog - starting the first week of February.  I will post a link from here.
Thank you to my wonderful readers - I know I have not always been very regular, and I thank you for hanging in there when I have not been able to think of anything marvelous to say, or too lazy to get out the camera. .

Happy Christmas everyone -
I hope your day is spent with friends and family,
and I hope your New Year is filled with many blessings.

Ice cream grows on trees in the tropics!

Even though I did not grow this in my garden (one of my customers brought it to me at work) I thought I would  share it with you.   It grows on a very large tree, and is part of the legume family, so fixes nitrogen into the soil. It is called the ice cream bean.

 You twist it to crack the hard shell open and inside are fluffy white pods that fit together perfectly.

Here you can see how big the seed is - you just eat the fluffy coating around the seed, and the best I can describe it is like candy floss but not so sweet.  Quite refreshing.

 Some of the seeds are already sprouting, but this is a huge tree so I wont be growing any in my garden....

Since it is so hot and humid here I popped some into the fridge to see how they would be cold, and they do taste good cold.  I don't think they taste like ice cream though even when cold.
Funnily enough, I had been thinking of ice cream since I discovered a very tasty recipe for banana chocolate ice cream on a blog I follow littleecofootprints and think this might be my very favourite thing this summer to beat the heat. She just takes frozen banana, plain yogurt and honey and blends it together  I love ice cream, but not the sugar and fat (not to mention the other undesirables that make it creamy and yummy)  that comes along with it.   Gosh I am thinking of some of my frozen lychees, mixed with my home made nonfat yoghurt and a little honey if necessary.
Funny how being hot and humid leads to thoughts of ice cream, but being part of the world of blogging can make that a healthy treat!

No more lychees for me!

I have been toying with what to title this post.... I never thought I would get sick of lychees!     The last lychees that I can reach have been picked.  There are plenty still high up in the tree though and every night the bats come in, and they bicker and fight like naughty spoiled brats. All night long the fruit is dropped on the roof, on the gazebo, on the garden.  Ping... ping....thud..... crash (that was a branch).  It is a flying fox party and the invitations have been spread far and wide.    The next morning, the area underneath the tree looks like this:

The ones that split open or have been trodden on, squeeze their sticky sweet juice into the ground or the stones and then they attract green ants, fruit flies and mozzies.  It not so nice out in my backyard right now :(  Every day we are out there (mainly my poor hubby) picking them up and putting them into the compost bins.

The lychees are just one of the types of tropical fruit in my little garden.  The other fruits are not quite as demanding and dramatic though. Since I lopped the top off the tallest papaya tree it sent out much lower branches, so the ripe ones are easy to pick, and that mixed with passionfruit (which drop to the ground when ripe) makes a lovely fruit salad. I think this is my favourite combination of tropical fruit.

When lychees are added it takes the fruit salad to a whole new dimension.  If I could only reach all the lychees --- mmm could I lop the top of that tree off?

 Some readers have never enjoyed the deliciously sticky sweet nectar like fruit of a fresh lychee, and I realized I have only shown you the unpeeled lychees. .  You have to pierce the tough skin to get started, and then it just peels away, and by this time the juice is running all over your hands....

 There really is no clean and easy way to peel the flesh away from the smooth pip in order to add it to your fruit salad. Best done over the sink, but the best way to eat them is out in the garden where you can just pop it into your mouth and spit out the pip!

I have lots of frozen lychees put away. I guess I will yearn back to being able to go outside and reach up and pluck one of the juiciest tastiest little treats, but for now I am done.

Rising from dormancy

Lots of things spring to life in my garden once the wet season starts.  My ginger bed is erupting with little green spikes and I know under the ground lovely juicy ginger tubers are forming.  The sweet potato bed is doing the same, and turmeric is popping up in a couple of places, where I knew I had planted them.  The torch ginger and this lovely beehive ginger is flowering, although the leaves never totally die back during the dry season.

 My neighbor gave me a plant with a beautiful flower at the end of the last wet season.  She said it had died and I tried to tell her it was ok but just going dormant.  No, she wanted me to have it, insisting I was the one with the green thumb.  Here it is rising up in all its glory six months later.  Behind it is kampheria, another plant that completely disappears during the dry season.

 This one I know is Siam ginger, with a lovely pink flower - I picked it up for a song on clearance - clearly the nursery staff had no idea that the plant would come back year after year.

  Elsewhere in the garden I often think I have an empty spot and then remember that is a spot where one of my plants is hibernating!  I wonder if I should put some sort of marker there to remind me that I have a plant sleeping underground?  I guess those gardeners in the northern hemisphere that plant out bulbs in the autumn don't do much gardening until they sprout in the spring.  My lovely lipstick plant is blooming again - such a bright spot in the garden...

 I love the little red tops peeping out... is it warm enough and wet enough to come out ?- I am a delicate tropical plant you know...

 Oh and great excitement - I have a little lime slowly maturing....

Definitely this is a time of growth in the tropical garden

Red backed foliage

I have recently developed a love for leaves with red backs....  In the shady garden I thought that a lot of plants would not flower and began to look or more interesting foliage,and that is where it all started.  I picked up one of these little plants at the orchid show last year, and have already subdivided them once.

  I volunteered at the local markets on Saturday and  found a few plants I just had to have. The one was this variegated leaf Calathea. I have admired the Calathea with red undersides, and on looking it up discovered that the first plant is also a Calathea, or peacock plant.

 Some plants like this cordeline start off pink and then turn a darker shade as they age.

This one has even more color distinction between the old and new leaves.

I think my favorite foliage plant though has to be this grey leaved rex begonia.  From one little slip I have subdivided it many times and each area you place it in it adds a spot of brightness and color. 

I particularly adore the sun shining through the leaf viewed from behind.  Isn't she a gorgeous plant?

The other plant I got was another Rex begonia, so now I have two varieties.

 It doesn't matter which angle you see the Rex begonia leaves from, front or back, they are still pretty.     Hopefully the new one is just as happy.
I fully intended to have this post ready to go on the 16th for foliage follow up, but I didn't make it.  Oh well.
I did link to Pam at Digging in the end - here is the link Foliage follow up 

Grand entrance

I am really liking the way the entrance looks from the front now.  My hubby took this photo.

 This green tree frog lives on our front veranda.  He seems to be giving me a little smile here :)

 Just look at his feet! - no wonder he can climb up the wall with no trouble.

Hopefully he is eating as many mozzies as he can!