Some days I forget to relish the view. Today I feel double gratitude, for the place that I live and for the partner who likes to sculpt a little surprise and delight.
shakkei
Tag: garden
freshly picked
Psidium guajava
I’ve never grown common guavas—this tree is in my MIL’s yard—so I don’t know if this growth pattern is normal. I don’t see it on any of the images that a quick search pulls up. Part of the flower (a sepal?) persists as the fruit grows, forming a tough ”hood”. Looking at variously-sized fruits on the tree, it seems that this hood stays the same size as the fruit enlarges. Presumably it eventually falls off. What is the purpose of this phenomenon? Is it unique to this tree?
flower finches
From the kitchen window, I can see the huge creeping rosemary bush on the hill above the house. While I sip my morning tea, I watch flocks of finches swoop in to eat the flowers for breakfast.
tomorrow’s salad
fun times in the garden
Option 4: remove the plants to make space for something that rodents don’t like to eat. Kale?
Ipomoea batatas
The gardening calendar tells me that August is the time to plant sweet potatoes, and this specimen in the veggie basket agrees. It’s going in the ground today!
Domesticated sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) have been around for a long time; they were present In Central America at least 5,000 years ago. The tuberous root is long and tapered, with a smooth skin whose colour can be yellow, orange, red, brown, purple, or beige. Its flesh ranges from beige through white, red, pink, violet, yellow, orange, and purple. Sweet potato cultivars with white or pale yellow flesh are less sweet and moist than those with red, pink or orange flesh.
Although darker sweet potatoes are often referred to as “yams” in parts of North America, the species is very distant from true yams. I love the name “kumara” (emphasis on the first syllable) which I learned from my Kiwi friends.
Pieris rapae
Our most common garden butterfly is one that does not delight me. The cabbage white has a natural range across Europe, Asia, and North Africa. It was accidentally introduced to Canada around 1860 and spread rapidly throughout North America. Estimates show that a single female of this species might, in a few generations, be the progenitor of millions.
That’s a lot of caterpillars eating my brassicas 😖
en plein air
It’s a jungle out there.
succulent wall
Our friends gave us this vertical planter some time ago, and I filled it with random succulent cuttings. They’re now nicely established and spilling out in a most satisfactory fashion.
hashiworks 