Well, it's that time of the year again where Mother Earth is showing me her grace and good fortune. It's really been the first time where I have seen the fruits of some effort that I have been maintaining for the past year. Flowers, shrubs, fruit trees, Are all coming to life—and abundantly so.
Where do I begin?
There's so much life an activity in the garden that with this blog, I thought I would just give you a major photo dump and let the pictures speak for themselves.
Poppies have finally bloomed, all sorts of colours: pink's, peaches, whites, deep reds, magenta's etc... and the insects love these also. These poppies are the result of me collecting seed from last year's stock and they have just scattered throughout the gardens.. Lots of seed collecting this year!
Caterpillars will often be found in the inside of the flowers before they bloom which can hinder the flowers ability to open properly.
There has been predominantly lots of self sowing of seeds, scattered throughout the gardens naturally blown by the wind, but I have also added some new additions into El Noor and they are doing very well right now. Salvia, Linaria, Rainbow Chrysanthemums ...they are so pretty!
These have worked so well together, who would have thought that such lovely, affordable seeds could create so much beauty given the right conditions? Lots of moths and butterflies and insects love these too.
The seasons are shifting so rapidly and today in particular is 36°C. This is very strange and unusual for this time of year and the plants need constant watering already...... Not to mention the poor animals and birds! Maghdela has been doing her daily rounds, always grooming/singing to herself. Such a treasure! Mama Magpie also sometimes accompanies her, as seen below with some of my hair from a recent trim.
Beardy is also a frequent resident. He loves to eat mulberry leaves, rocket and loves nothing more when the water is flowing in the garden to have a little bath. I could not work out why my mulberries were not looking so good, until I found beardy in the act eating its leaves!
It is such a joy to finally have roses blooming in my garden again. The many challenges of dealing with hungry kangaroos has seemingly come to an end. The fence around the roses has been holding up, and I have now seen my first blooms in a long while.
The one above is a David Austin "Othello" the one below is a rose that I have grown from seed.
Below is one of the first poppies that bloomed. I had been waiting for weeks to see what colour it would be. It is certainly one of the biggest with its lovely red ruffles. Statice is such a winner in a very hot and dry climate. Can always be guaranteed to have some colour in your garden with statice. They self sow and come up in different colours depending on how they are pollinated.
Snapdragons have also been a great producer. They have coped very well with extreme heat last year, and after going dormant in winter, have finally come back for another summer!.
This was a beautiful site! To see native blue banded bees finally coming to my garden. They particularly love blue coloured flowers, especially borage, which is in the picture. They usually come in the morning and then disappear all day (if it is too hot), returning around sunset. They are solitary bees, and roost in trees, or nests made out of mud. Sometimes clusters of them will roost together.
Below is a self sown Californian poppy! So glad to be seeing this again in my garden!
I have about eight orange trees, scattered around my garden. Oranges are a huge staple in my diet and the trees conditions are varying at the moment. This one is the strongest one, and I hope it has some little fruit coming next winter. The blossom is so fragrant and stifles the air.
Some of you may know that I had built a steady fence around my garden in the hopes of salvaging, the remainder of my garden from kangaroos destroying it. The fence has held up, but one morning I noticed two kangaroos in the far back of the yard, and as soon as they saw me, they scattered, ripped down the fence and took off. Thankfully, they did not eat anything, which surprised me greatly! Although I did ask God to provide his best gardening angels to shepherd my garden as I slept at night.
Disaster below!
It's that time of year, where we are looking forward to some rain. Although we have not had any yet, the weather is very strange-- every day, it is something different. Just look at these clouds.!
Very ethereal and visually impressive!
Delicate little fluff balls in amongst alyssum, have no idea what they are!
Lavender thriving finally!!
Paper daisies everywhere... Mainly in pinks and whites, they are also self sown and have scattered everywhere which is lovely.
Everything lovely, and looking green for a change!
Blossoms on the plum tree, unfortunately they did not set, and I don't think I will have plums this year. It has been very windy.
I'm so pleased to see blossom finally on the apple tree, and unbeknownst to me there is one apple on the tree! A few months ago, the tree was barely thriving, so I'm glad to see that once I shifted it, It has now become much happier..
It has been a long time coming to see worms. Finally! I've been waiting for worms to come. I even thought about buying some, and then one day they just magically appeared. For such a dry place, I am perplexed, how they can just magically appear out of nowhere when the conditions are right. Now I have so many worms in my garden.
Something that also magically appeared out of nowhere was this beautiful pink dove. I am assuming it's a racing dove because she had tags on her. Shahad stayed for five days and sat with me in the shed while I worked on jewelry, and she was so comfortable around me. Every night she would leave right on sunset and do the most majestic flight circling around and around in the sunset sky, until the 6th day, where she did not appear in the morning...moving onwards to her destination. Racing birds will often have a much needed rest if they are travelling or migrating from somewhere else, and I'm very privileged that she picked my house to come and rest. The other birds must've told her there was plenty of food and love!!
Until next time
~ A
xx