Backyard Projects.

I mentioned to Homer that it was "ABOUT TIME I GOT MY PATIO".
#4 has obliged. I'm not sitting on the stool though, look at the left hand leg.





I of course was working hard, planting up the winter veggie patch. I treated myself to shiny new bean canes this year. I have recycled the last ones so often they are now a lethal weapon splitting into flying splinters the second a puff of wind hits them. Note the patented bird preventing cage over the cabbages.

Last year the pigeons waited until I was ready to pick the cabbages before descending en masses to devastate the entire crop. They were closely followed by the cockatoos which devastated the bok choi. Cockatoos may seem exotic and exciting when you first move to the tropics, until they descend like a flock of ill behaved teenagers on your fruit trees a fling half eaten starfruit to the ground. About that time you go off them. This is underlined when they repeat the act with your fig tree. Similar behaviour is the reason that minah birds are locally called flying rats.

Growing a pomegranate

I read that pomegranates would grow in my climate. I bought a pomegranate tree. It died. I bought another one. The first one reappeared. When it said in the books "dies back" it wasn't kidding. It disappeared. For three years I watched the area where the pomegranate was supposed to grow. Each year a few feeble leaves appeared and disappeared, leaving a dead twig like object poking forlornly from the ground.

I complained to Homer that my pomegranate wasn't doing anything and realised he had pulled the second plant up. It looked like a dead twig and acted like a dead twig, he assumed it was a dead twig. I went back to watching my original dead twig.


This year the dead twig has flowered. Pomegranate flowers are supposed to be carnation-like and spectacular, well it's neither of those. It stayed in the bud stage for a long long time but finally it has opened. I won't get a pomegranate from it as I think there should be male and female flowers, and this is it in flower terms, but it has made me smile. Gardening needs patience apparently, even in the tropics.


The eggplants are also in flower, it always surprises me how attractive the flowers are on some vegetables, and this is one of my favourites. Probably because of the colour.

Back-yard Camping

My frangipani...it's actually a far richer, deeper red than this, a deep blood red, so I've got to master photoshop or some such program now. Who knew blogging could be such hard work? My husband buys me a cheap digital camera and I start posting photos, now I want to make them good photos, whatever next. Probably a picture where #4 looks angelic....beyond my skills.

Number three and four wanted to camp in the garden last night. Against all my instincts ( silently screaming, NO NO NO NOT EVER EVER NO NO), I agreed.

I told Homer he had to sit up all night by the back door in case he was needed.

Anyway off go #3 and #4 to the tent, complete with sleeping bags, torches, pillows, spare shoes,(a kitchen sink) and yes, I did say spare shoes. My whole family is dysfunctional, including the cat. I blame my sister for the need for two pairs of shoes on a camping trip across the garden that will last at the most eight hours. Before leaving them for the night I did a quick check that there were no lighters, candles or home made rocket launchers in the tent.

Number three fell into a deep and cherubic sleep until the early hours when he came in all warm and toasty and got in his own bed just to finish off the night. Number four lasted about one hour. I asked Homer, " How come #3, who is known as a bit of a wuss, can sleep all night in a tent, but #4, who is the complete rufty-tufty lasts all of an hour?"

" That's easy, number three knows the worst that is out there, it's number four. He's seen his fear and faced it. Number four can only imagine."

Dear DCS: I still maintain that you couldn't decide between your pictures and your jewellery in a house fire as you'd be far to busy deciding which shoes were most appropriate to wear whilst being rescued by a fireman.

More fruit trees

I just put my avocado tree in the garden from its hiding place under the shade cloth at the side of the house. Now we wait to see if the burning sun kills it, or it decides to thrive.

It seems strange to matter of factly talk about planting an avocado tree when I hadn't even tasted real avocado until seven years ago. Avocados don't ripen until you pick them from the tree so the tree acts as a kind of larder. If you don't pick the fruit it stops producing more fruit, so you get a supply and demand situation going on, hopefully.

I have also ripped out the tomato tree, I am enjoying eating the tomatos but I can't preserve the excess in any useful way because it is all cherry tomatoes. I make lots of chutney etc, but really, life's too short to skin and de seed cherry tomatoes, and the yield is way too small per tomato. Never fear, I have back up bushes of Roma and yellow tomatoes just coming on.

The chickens are a little put out at the vast quantities of ripe and semi-ripe tomatoes they have just been presented with. (The neighbours have long since started slamming doors in my face as they see me approach with my tomato bucket.)

lemon tree issues

My lemon tree and I have issues. I want lemons, it wants, well that's the problem, I don't know what it wants so that it will give me lemons.

The first year I got one small hard as rock scabby looking lemon. The second I had two hundred percent increase in yield, three scabby looking lemons.

Finally this year we appear to have come to some sort of accommodation and it is fairly loaded with baby lemons. The only thing I have done differently is hurl coffee grounds at it in a fit of pique.

To avoid the scabby scaly lemon thing I have been advised to use white oil,( a mixture of vegetable oil and washing up liquid). Of course I went and bought more expensive washing up liquid than I would normally use in the house and special oil for the purpose, I hope the tree appreciates it, because I had seen nothing wrong with buying more expensive stuff to spray on the tree than I use for the kitchen until my husband pointed out the total lack of logic.



Here's #3 and 4 "helping". This mainly involves climbing on the fence and arguing over the spray bottle until one pushes the other off.




We found a huge grasshopper, which #4 wants as a pet, here's a shot of him going off up the garden to catch it, before I stopped him. I don't really fancy finding a huge dead grasshopper in a jar under his bed in a week when he's forgotten about it.


When Homer realised I was using a tiny little spray bottle he grandly got out his master blaster model and loaded it up. Of course I just have to hope he washed it well from his poisoning spree. He (of course) didn't read the dilution instructions for the white oil. A fact he didn't admit to when questioned, but it became obvious as he sidled off to the tap to add some water to his spray gun after I casually mentioned the dilution rate to #3, so as he could overhear it it doncha know.

Number 4, 50,0000 : the Green ants nil

As I type #3 and #4 are in the garden up a tree. Typical boy behaviour. What the non tropical readers may not know is that trees in the tropics are where green ants live. Green ants are nasty little critters that attack anything and anyone any where near their nests, their nests are in trees....

#4 made a foray up there earlier and was attacked. He has gone back, covered in bites, to get his revenge. He is wildly beating the nest with a stick and the ants are wildly biting him. Don't worry nature lovers, the ants and #4 will survive. The picture is #3 showing me another green ant nest in the lemon tree.

#1 was asked to go on the roof earlier for some aerial adjustment so I could watch the diving and refused because there was one green ant on the fence...that is how nasty the bites are, and what a big jessy #1 is.

PS:
I know it is probably a reflection of my age but one of the men in the ten metre board diving final has a belly button ring. It just seems, well, wrong.

Finally

Finally and at long last I've figured out how to download photos onto my computer from my camera, and find them again. Believe it or not this is one plant!



I call it the tomato tree. ( PS: if you need a smiley saturday post read the next one down!)

Smiley Saturday

Just this morning I picked the first tomatoes of the year from my garden. Little bursts of red sunshine on my tongue. There would be photos but me and #3 ate them all. (There were only four ripe cherry tomatoes.) In about two weeks time I 'll be going, "Oh no not more tomatoes!", and if it gets windy Homer will be going, "Oh No! not more green tomato chutney"



Last week it was " How many chickens have we got? are you sure? cos there's a lot of eggs in here!" I still haven't worked out a way of preserving eggs except pickling them so I attempted a Cool Hand Luke approach..... (That is one of my favorite films, or rather the line " What we've got here is a failure to communicate" is one of my favourite film lines.)

An invasion

We've been invaded from next door. This pumpkin plant has grown through the fence, I assume from their compost heap. I hope they don't cut it off as it will save me planting my pumpkins this year.

The flower is very similar to the cucumber flowers that I hope to be seeing on my cucumber trellis in a few weeks time, as it should be, they're in the same family.

The vegetable patch is in the early stages yet but everything is springing to life. It's weird living here. You can grow most vegetables in winter, which is summer in the northern hemisphere. When it's summer here it's too hot for a lot of things. I end up growing vegetables in the same months that I would have in England, but in the winter.

Passion Fruit

The passion fruit vine has a new spurt of life on it again. I'd say it had started for the season but it hasn't actually stopped producing fruit for over twelve months.

Last time it took off like this my husband gave himself passionfruit poisoning. Who knew they were a citrus fruit. Well we do now. (I'll leave the effects of over consumption to your imagination, but I don't think he'll be eating them again.)

This time I'll be making jam and freezing pulp to store excess, not leaving them on the side for my husband to poison himself with.

Agricultural advances

The police here have had a good week when it comes to busting pot growers. They've seized quite a lot of crops.

One was growing on an island at a popular leisure spot, another was adjoining a remote camp site at the same leisure spot, and one was growing in amongst a farmers cane crop.

The police comment....We don't usually get many seizures at this time of the year, the weather is too wet for the marijuana to grow. The larger than usual seziures this year reflect better growing practices by the marijuana growers, enabling them to grow their crop all year round.

There you go then, advances in modern agriculture are benefitting every-one.