Africanaussie

I just tried to make some sense of the assortment of photos on my desktop waiting to be posted, and I can see no theme, so will just post them all and hope you enjoy them! I have the flu and that could be why I just cant summon up any clever commentary. This is called the African mask, and is slowly recovering from all the extra sunshine after the pruning.  The details of a bromeliad flower stalk was intriguing.  This little coleus is a great groundcover. the garden has recovered, but lots of weeding is needed.  Geisha girl is a wonderful attractor for butterflies and bees.  Another bromeliad bloom - very short life though - no more than a week.  I never tire of sunshine and cordelines.  Inside the bouganvilla are teeny tiny flowers.  This broad leaved cordeline has pretty colours. Crotons are quite slow growing but add some wonderful colour to the garden.  Cosmos make themselves at home all over my g...

While I was watering the garden the back light behind these burgundy and red plants caught my eye - not sure that the beauty of the scene really shows up in the photo.   The rex begonia are beautiful when they flower, but then the leaves themselves are a delight too - not sure if the back of the leaf is even prettier than the front.   I love the red stems on this pink and green variegated plant.  It was pretty much crushed when the tree was pruned but has come back better than ever.  this is such a pretty little coleus - it keeps popping up every where and I don't mind one bit! This caladiums leaves are the biggest I have ever seen, and I love the curly edges. The sunshine on the reddish pink leaves of the cordeline were just waiting to be photographed. I am in love with the red and pink foliage in our garden: I thought since I eventually got around ...

A while back I decided to permanently close one of the big gates and create a new garden bed behind it.  That was one of the best ideas I ever had I reckon....   I hung my orchids on that bamboo bar which has slowly sunk down on one end and looks a  bit tacky.  I think what I would like to do is get an arch to put into that corner.  I will hang the orchids from it and hopefully the stephanotis will trail over it. The stephanotis is a rather straggly vine, but the flowers are gorgeous.  Since the lychee tree was pruned and this area got more sunshine it has really flourished.  Great big bushes of  impatients, caladiums going wild, and this lovely little plant called balsam I got from the local markets.  It seems to be the same family as impatients, although the flowers are up the stem, rather than on top. Interspersed among the flowers are lots of cherry tomatoes the project for the...

I have been waiting for the  Harlequin carrots from MrFothergills  to raise their shoulders above the ground,  and then the other day I thought I would take a peek.... wow!  huge carrots, and so straight!   Funnily enough all the purple ones seem stunted and I seem to have lost the straight rows - even though the regular carrots were planted evenly with carrot tape.  This is a great time in the garden - cucumbers are struggling with downy mildew, but there are four different kinds of lettuces - plenty for a daily salad.   I thought the white carrots looked a bit insipid but they have the nicest flavour.  I haven't cooked any -  they make great snacks to munch on - even hubby has been known to do that.  He commented the other day (after I cooked the pumpkin vines) that as long as it grows in the garden I will eat it.  I  said  "well honey I don't eat the grass", but then I thought about the f...

Continuing on from my last post I have been hankering for baby vegetables.  This weekend I decided to pull out the eggplant bush that seemed to develop some kind of wilt.  I am not sure it is bacterial wilt as another one is growing up right alongside it.  This one has produced nonstop for about 18 months but definitely suffered some sort of malady, and since there is another one on the way I ripped the entire bush out..  It was covered in tiny eggplant - yeah!   I also had to hack away some of the pumpkin vine which is trying to overtake my entire veggie patch rather than stay in its assigned spot.  I cut some of the tips and then went researching where I had read that they were edible (and tasty!) I found the information I was looking for - I had read it in a marvelous book called Tropical Cuisine, by Claire Richards.  See details  here .  I also threw in al...

One of the things I always enjoy so much when I visit South Africa is the mini vegetables.  I think growing them is a very well kept secret, and have come to the conclusion that  most of the time they are just picked early.  That might be very helpful in my climate - fraught with humidity and lots of bugs.  Searching on the internet has come up with two different options - hybrid seeds bred to produce smaller varieties or growing the plants very close together and harvesting early. One thing the mini vegetables are used for is to cook in a potjie.  This is a cast iron three legged pot and it is cooked for a long time over a fire - or in reality just a few coals mounded around and some laid on the lid.  My brother cooked a marvelous chicken potjie, flavored with ginger, scallions, lemongrass and coconut milk.    Once the chicken was almost cooked a layer of mini vegetables were...