Working in the garden

Our garden has been neglected - sort of - over the last 2-3 months.

Living on a tropical island, with its rainy- and cyclone season, means at this time of the year we are supposed to gardening almost every day because everything grow too fast!

But that is not the fact this rainy- and cyclone season. Mauritius is suffering severe drought; the reservoirs are on less than 40% these days. Many places on the island does not have water; trucks with water are distributing water to those areas several times per week. We are very lucky; still no water cuts in the area we live.

Well, I was not going to write about water shortage & drought, but a little bit about our garden and share some photos with you. The drought has an impact on our garden too, of course. Not that we need water  (from the hose) for the garden; the area we live is quite lush and humid. We try to be very careful not wasting water by re-using what we can for the plants in pots on the porch. The drought also means plants, grass and weeds have not been able to grow as fast as if it had been a "normal" rainy season, that's is why gardening hasn't been very necessary over the last months.

I was thrilled when I discovered those lemons! I can't remember how old the lemon tree is, but it can't be more than 6-7 years. This is the first season it gives lemons - wonderful! We are not quite sure what kind of lemon it is, but we believe it is what we here call "Rodrigues lemon" - from the neighbor island Rodrigues - which we believe is lime.

A couple of weeks ago we started out cleaning up on the rear of our house. Four years have gone since we moved in, and this part has never been cleaned properly. "Nobody" look at the rear of a house - do they?, so does it matter how it looks like there - hm?! :)) The grass where quite long, creepers hanging over from the neighbor's garden, we had thrown quite a lot of coconut shells there (silly us!), indeed it was time for a thorough cleanup! It looks much better now, and since this photo I have added some small plants on the right side next to the wall.

My muscles were deadly sore after doing all the work - it felt like another walk/climb in the Black River Gorges! (If you have not read about that trip, click on the link to go to my other blog).

After a few days rest, DH did this;

trimmed the vacoas tree! It was needed, because many branches were on the ground and not airy enough around it.

The latanier palm had to be trimmed too!

Wasps love to build on the underside of the huge leaves, to stay protected from rain.

I can't remember DH said anything about wasps attacking him while he trimmed off some of the leaves, perhaps they had other things to do... the wasps!

I have always wanted to grow passion fruits. Last year we got some small plants from DH's uncle. OMGosh how fast they grow! I had put one to climb on one of the neighbor's wall - with permission - but it overtook his wall, his and our plants on each side of the wall, so after some time I had to eliminate it!!! I cut it all down and transferred the root to another place. I thought it didn't make it, but it has a few new leaves - poor thing! :)

Passionfruit flowers are just stunning, aren't they?! Looks like they are made of porcelain - amazing!

We have two passionfruit trees climbing on our porch. They give quite a lot of flowers, but sadly no fruits! Perhaps there are too many leaves, not full sun enough, no bees - I have no idea. After the flowers are done - they fall off.





We've got only one fruit! It fell off before even getting a slight yellow color...

With all the flowers over the last 3-4 weeks we should have had fruits almost every day. We have no idea what causes the flowers to fall off - any of you who knows?