We rarely get more than a fig or two for ourselves, but this year there’s quite a few on the tree, so maybe the birds will share more?
babies
Tag: garden
Aceria aloinis
Some of our aloe plants have “cancer” 😩
chard roots
Lamiaceae
Lavender and oregano are both in the same family, Lamiaceae, along with about 7500 other species. This family of flowering plants is commonly known as the mint, deadnettle, or sage family. Many of the plants are aromatic in all parts and include widely used culinary herbs like basil, mint, rosemary, sage, savory, marjoram, and thyme, as well as other medicinal herbs such as catnip, salvia, bee balm, wild dagga, and oriental motherwort.
How many members of this family are growing in your garden?
Linum usitatissimum
Flax, also known as common flax or linseed, has been cultivated as a food and fiber crop in temperate climates for over 9,000 years.
Linen is made from this plant’s fibrous stems, and the seed’s oil is known as linseed oil. Humans first domesticated flax in the Fertile Crescent region. Use of the crop steadily spread, reaching as far as Switzerland and Germany, China and India, where it was cultivated at least 5,000 years ago. It was grown extensively in ancient Egypt, where the temple walls had paintings of flowering flax, and mummies were embalmed using linen.
The seeds and their oil are highly nutritious, and the oil also has industrial uses. It is often blended with combinations of other oils, resins or solvents as a drying oil finish or varnish in wood finishing, as a pigment binder in oil paints, as a plasticizer and hardener in putty, and in the manufacture of linoleum.
A most useful plant indeed. And pretty!
Phlebodium aureum
The plants in our fernery don’t get a lot of attention apart from watering, but could probably do better with some TLC.
In other thoughts, I got curious about the etymology of ‘emergence’ and ‘emergency’ two similar words with very different meanings. They both come from medieval Latin emergentia, from Latin emergere ‘bring to light’ or ‘arise’.
aloe on the rocks
riot of greens
Got to get these seedlings into the ground in the next day or so.
Pittosporum tenuifolium ‘Marjorie Channon’
Whenever I notice something for the first time, it makes me wonder what other beauty I am obliviously missing.
Ocimum basilicum
I find describing flavours to be very difficult. What does basil taste like? Hmm, tastes like basil.
I notice that the hydroponically grown plants from the supermarket have a milder flavour than my homegrown basil. I expect the direct sunshine and intermittent watering brings out the spice.
hashiworks 