Africanaussie

As you know there has been flooding further south of us, and that seems to be where most of our vegetables come from.   The supermarket shelves are either bare or filled with very expensive vegetables, so it was with some urgency that I began planting out some seeds this weekend. ..... This was the jungle that I started with....  During the wet season only certain plants will grow and so I had let them run rather wild.  The loofah had started heading over towards the fence.  Normally we don't started planting regular vegetables until about March, but with the prices in the store I want to get an early start. It does seem a little cooler lately - definitely less humid, which is a good sign.  I cut the loofah away from the fence and threw it up onto the shade cloth.  It can grow there and then back in a line on top of the pigeon peas towards the back fence. These vegetables are going to listen this time - lots of straight lines anticipated - haha. No mucking about creating too much

This is the first time I have spent some time out in the garden since my holiday and I really did a lot of cutting back and weeding. It shows :) I hope you enjoyed a wander through the garden..... word seem superflous.

How exciting! Malay- Kadazan girl has invited me to partake in the seed exchange she runs on her blog.  this is her blog   sunflower seed exchange   and she has the most beautiful bronze and different coloured sunflowers.  I have not had much success with sunflowers in the past, so hope I win some of her seeds to give them a try in my garden.  The plant I have had success with is loofahs!  I was most excited to hear that they would grow in this area and last year I grew the angled loofah.  This year I planted them to grow up the pigeon peas and they have now entangled themselves into the shade cloth and grown off toward the fence - taking over the whole area.  They have  a pretty yellow flower. Last year I grew them along the fence and they took off high up into the tree in the neighbouring telstra yard, and I harvested quite a few dried loofahs.  I did have trouble peeling them, but have since discovered that the trick is to soak them and then the peel just flakes off.  I sent a fe

The weather is hot and spicy and so hot and spicy  is what is growing at this time of year. The birds eye chili are prolific - very hot - they say the smaller the chili the hotter it is and these are tiny.  These bushes pop up all over the place - one has climbed tree next to my office at work - it is about 20ft high!   The birds love them - they must not have taste buds like we do!  This is a close up of fresh juicy ginger bursting through the wet soil.  You might remember when I was getting this ready to plant.... planting ginger      Now I have a huge bed of it - gone are the days of buying ginger from the supermarket.  I do like growing things that are difficult or very expensive to buy from the store.  They say that eating spicy foods cools you down, and right now I can make nice spicy laksa with all the ingredients (except for the prawns) straight out of my garden.   Then of course I also do like growing plants that looking at them make me think of coolness.  This white caladi

Everytime it stops raining and the sun comes out, so do the butterflies!  The bright sunlight is a bit rare these days so the colour is a bit off, but I wanted you to see the little dangly bits hanging from the lower wings.  arent they cute?  Butterflies love the geisha girl flowers, and this time there was a ulysses butterfly that I thought I might be able to capture on film.  It is very hard to get them to sit still long enough to catch them, and maybe the essence is the flitting bits of irridescent blue that you catch darting from flower to flower.  I think you have to be there to see it, but I will continue to dash out with a camera everytime there are butterflies in the garden.....  Here I caught one just closing the top section of his wings. I also got lots of shots of flowers - where the butterfly had just been :)

There was this little yellow butterfly flitting around - too fast to get great photos, but I did like the way it looks next to the purple geisha girls flowers... Not a very inspiring post, but with this constant heat and humidity it is all I can manage for now.....

I have already done lots of weeding, but there is still more to do. at this time of year everything grows so fast.  Its a jungle out there.... Lots of variety at the base of the tree now that the bromeliads have been moved.  I like it. Just a few little lipstick flowers, but it is growing like mad - I will have to lift the pot up soon. The crotons are hidden behind the coleus.  the coleus seems to need cutting back at least once a week. The path to the beehive gingers is staying nice clear though easy to go through and harvest passionfruit by the bucketful.   Passionfruit nectar and iced water is my drink of choice at the moment - very refreshing in this hot weather. I like how this leaf is red on the underside - and they are all curling together for some reason. After the cyclone there were lots of fallen leaves and I have heard that they can pull nitrogen from the soil, but I have a nice thick layer of mulch under them so think we will be fine just leaving them be.... My tho

One of the first things I did on returning home was clear some of the weeds in the vegetable garden.  The lemongrass had become monstrous, and so I chopped enough leaves away to clear the path.  Some went into the compost where  they are a great compost activator.  The others were just laid on the bare earth (now that the weeds are gone).  They are a sort of mulch, which I also hope act as a bit of an insect repellant, being lemony and all.  I had put up a small shadecloth before I left, and in my absence a pawpaw tree had grown right up under it and was beginning to bend sideways.  I couldnt remove it as the loofah has got all entwined with it, so just changed it to a different angle to allow the pawapaw tree grow up alongside it.  I do hope it is a female pawpaw.  I have quite a few new papwpaw trees shooting up at the back of this bed, and those should be the red pawpaw, so am holding thumbs.  Hubby didnt pick any asparagus so we have lots of thick ferns, but I will start harvesti

Joy of joys! When I left a sunbird had been building a nest from the hanging pot outside our bedroom window.  I wasnt too excited as I had heard they often build decoy nests. as they had last year see sunbird nest. Upon returning from my holiday though I discovered we have little babies:  (I think 3, but one seems more adventuresome)  Look how it is just hanging by a thread!  Isnt nature awesome?

One thing that I am always trying to grow is gemsquash, and here they are, but in my brothers garden - not mine (yet). They are just as delicious as I remembered. we enjoyed the elephant garlic that is planted amongst the strawberries.  The strawberries are not quite ready yet. the butternut is almost ready these almonds are so easy to eat - they pop open when ready I can see some apple crumble in their future Even pommegranates!  Great job you are doing in your garden dear brother and I really enjoyed all the yummy food you cooked for me!

I am home again at last, but while I was away there was a cyclone just south of us and it dumped a  lot of rain and wind.  My garden is going to have to have some work done on it before it can face the camera again.  So in the meantime enjoy some photos of my moms garden..... I will have to research to see if I could grow some of these alstromeria.....I love how they look combined with the pink splash. Unfortunately my suitcase was not big enough to bring back some of these iron birds. every day there are breadcrumbs for the birds this one seems to be saying - "hello there Mr Dove".