Africanaussie

Having done two overseas trips this year, and suffering drought conditions which led to water rationing for a year means my poor little garden has suffered.   My hubby did his best to keep watering at prescribed times, but we have had high winds, and then also visits by plenty of bandicoots.  They find a way in through the smallest possible little gap under the fence. This has of course been very frustrating, and I began to wonder if in fact I really do love gardening.  It is all so hard.... miserable .... depressing......Oh my gosh I got myself into a deep place of miserableness.  "Hello"  said the flowers on the dragonfruit, cheering me up a bit, and the golden candles seem to be thriving in this weather, Plus ....Yes!  there are lychees ripening, and I am sure there are other creatures watching for the minute they are ready to pick, just as I am!   After having the family over for  a breakfast out in the garden, hubb...

One of the first things I did after returning from three weeks away was to survey the garden.  The lychee tree is full of leaves, and most of the plants underneath it have recovered quite well from the sudden blast of sunshine. Luckily we have had a little rain to ease the way, and my darling hubby has been watering. Of course it also allowed a spate of weeds to grow up everywhere!  Among the weeks are plenty of cherry tomato plants which I have left where they volunteered. They fill in the gaps and hopefully will give us some tomatoes.  This has not been a good year for tomatoes - maybe not enough sunny days to ripen them.  We often have cloud cover and I think they like clear sunny days, or so they tell me!  It is warm though - I have not stopped swimming all through the winter, other than when I was away. The gardens seems quite happy.  In the veggie garden the kale, lettuce and carrots have come along well...

Look at the big branches of the lychee tree! - there are new little branches shooting up all over the place :)  Aren't they cute?  I moved the ponytail palm out from under the gazebo to give us more room for entertaining, and it too seems to like the sunshine.   We have had some rain, and the skies are mostly cloudy, but  that just means the plants have had some time to adapt to more light, and gosh they all seem to be loving it.  There are still plenty of ratty looking leaves, and bare spots, but all in all I think recovery is good. The caladiums are also popping out all over the place - they were trampled right down during the tree lopping, but seem none the worse for wear.   This one I got from my neighbor - what a huge leaf!  I love this native ginger - it doesn't seem to have any flowers but with the underside of the leaf being red it actually ...

Our units are going to be painted, and in preparation for the work, excess vegetation needs to be cut back.  Our rather large lychee tree is going to have to be pruned back.  The leaves clog the gutters, and in a cyclone the branches might snap and cause some damage to fences or break windows. I love that tree - I love all the birds that hide in its branches and call out with their different songs.  I love the cool shade that it provides to the garden - on a hot day you can feel the temperature drop the minute you walk into the back.  I love all the free leaves I get for my compost bin and I imagine those will be drastically reduced.   My hubby, often the one to mulch all those leaves is not so sad about it :) I love the lychees that we get to eat. I don't love the bats that came very night when the top half of the tree was filled with lychees nobody could reach to pick them. I do...

Friends came to visit on Saturday and helped us harvest some lychees.  He was up on the roof and she and I were scurrying around picking the lychees as they fell.  We got knocked on the head a few times, but all in all it was great fun.  After trimming the branches and separating out those that need to ripen a bit more we ended up with six buckets!  Wow, and the tree is still loaded!  I have since read that they will not ripen any more after being picked, so reckon we should just go ahead and peel them all.  There are not a lot of green ones, just some that got knocked off in the process, and those are just a little sour. We have been busy peeling, and hubby worked out a good way to peel and de-seed at the same time. I blended up the de-seeded ones and packed them into small containers to freeze. These I will use for lassi.  a marvelous drink- equal parts lychee pure...

Great excitement in our house at the moment with the lychees ripening.  Unfortunately it is not us gorging on the ripe fruit yet.  The bats move in at night and you can hear their mad chattering as they devour the fruit.  You can see the fallen skins and seeds lying around on the ground. They are ripening from the very top of the tree, and there is no way we could harvest those so high up. Lower down though, we will be able to reach them, and so in order to keep them to ourselves, we have got a couple of mosquito nets to stretch over them.  The only way to reach up there though is to get onto the roof, and I am not game to do that.  The same friend who gave us the mosquito nets also said she has a long handled picker and I am thinking if we  could  just pick the ripe ones, we  wouldn't  have to bother with the net.   Mmmm I hope she gets it to us soon, and we will soon be enjoying juicy lychees, instead of leaving the...

The lychee tree sprouted these lovely lime green leaves a couple of weeks ago.  Very pretty, I thought, until this week when something attacked them!  Yesterday afternnon we spent all day blowing and mulching up dried shrivelled brown leaves, and I did put them into the compost.  Hope I am not spreading diseases.  I remember this happening last year and we found lots of little catterpillars. Not so many catterpillars this year,so the other option is it could be a  fungus..  Reading up about it online I discovered that the only way to treat either problem is to spray the whole tree. If all it means is that I wont get lychees that is ok and preferable to spraying.   This tree is really too big to harvest the lychees and without covering it with netting there would be none left for us after the birds and bats have their share.  We will just keep looking at it as a lovely shade tree. The thick snake beans just keep producing. And my g...