Spicy weekend!

Are people who keep a gratitude journal more blessed or just more likely to notice their blessings?


















I am always amazed at how like a gratitude journal this blog is. Once I start peering around the garden looking for new things to photograph I discover so many things that might have just slid by without being noticed.
Driving in from work on Friday afternoon I glanced up to see LYCHEES! Admittedly there are only about two dozen on the whole forty foot tree, but there is a lovely pink bunch about twenty foot high! Now how do we get them down, and what will I do with them. I once had a lovely salad with soft butter lettuce, lychees, and avocado. Magic combination.



















Now on to the reason that I named this blog post spicy weekend:
It just took a little bit of rain for the turmeric to decide that the wet season has started. Lots of little green shoots coming up around last years rhizomes, which I got from a neighbour, and then toward the end of the wet they will start to form new turmeric rhizomes. This spice is great in curries and is very good for the digestion, especially in diabetics. I like to grate some into plain white rice, and it turns it a lovely golden colour. Then I throw in a couple of raisins and serve it with my bobotie, a traditional South African dish.

I find it best just to "store" it in the earth - when I need a little bit, I just go and break it off.


Eventually my ginger has come up again. I have tried many times to get my store ginger to send out long shoots so that I could plant it, but each time a little shoot would send out a pathetic little shoot and then the whole thing would shrivel up and die. It didn't matter if I kept them wet or dry. These I just buried into the ground and they seem to be doing OK, maybe they prefer to do their own thing and not be messed with....... give them warmth and water and they will grow. I will be so happy to be growing my own ginger, and I think once it is established I can leave it in the ground and keep harvesting from the same plant, the same as I do with the turmeric.










In other news around the garden - I took a few close-ups of the bromeliad flower. The thing I love about all the tropical flowers is that they stick around for so long and they just look so luscious and colourful.




















The red mandevilla vine is going crazy climbing up and twisting around the neighbours fence
I should ask if she minds, but I don't think she will.
She has some lovely hibiscus plants and will often poke a bud through the gaps in the fence so that I can also enjoy one of her flowers :) These gaps in the fence are quite useful for plants to hang onto instead of a flat close together fence, but I heard of another reason they put these gaps in the fence: During a cyclone the gaps in the fence will cause the wind to disperse and so often the gaps will save the fence being knocked right over. I hope we never have to try it out, but it sounds like the gaps might have more than one use.
























Just when I thought my weekend couldn't get any better I noticed a flash of lime green...... venturing round the side I saw this!
























These bromeliads were given to me by my neighbours on the other side. I cant say I liked the look of them, - I wasn't sure if the spots all over were a mineral deficiency, but they filled a gap in my little front garden. I had to keep propping them up as the bandicoots seemed sure there was buried treasure underneath them, so they really were falling around like drunken spotted aliens. Now I am going to
straighten them all up and carefully tend to them, and hopefully be rewarded with a dozen of these beautiful flowers!

These colours remind me of my daughters wedding last July - hot pink and lime green.

Here is the cake I made for her - isnt it an amazing likeness?

How grateful I am to God for my garden, my family, my friends, and of course my wonderfully supportive hubby who takes care of so much so that I have lots of time in the garden.