July 5, 2011

An afternoon in the garden

Our garden always seems to be neglected. It is not that we don't like or don't do gardening. The fact is none of us like to work in the garden let's say one hour per day, we prefer to spend at least half a day in the garden to get something done and afterwards have the feeling - and muscle pain - that we have done something! :) Somehow 'one hour per day gardening' seems a bit wasted to me.
Well, Sunday at around noon I decided it was time for some hours in the garden, and this is what came out after 5 hours of weeding, trimming branches and cleaning up.
Three 20-litres (4.4 gallons) buckets full of weed and leaves,


... and two heaps of branches and creepers.


Aren't these flowers beautiful?! Yes, they are! But this plant is a PEST! When the flowers are done, the seeds spread everywhere by the wind. The seeds are similar to dandelion seeds and I know those of you who struggles with dandelion in your garden, knows what I'm talking about!


This is what the birds do to fruits! We have these yummy guavas in our garden. We love them - and so do the birds! In spite the tree is young, the harvest was very good. We shared guavas with a friend, with MIL, and I even made 2-3 glasses of jam. The pink guavas are sweet so no need to add too much sugar when making jam. It can be made without sugar too.


Sunday's harvest; no more guavas on the tree for the birds - or for us - this season.


The neighbor has chou-chou.... known as chayote too. It's a creeper and it loves to climb into our trees on the border! It had climbed into a palm branch and when I pulled the branch off the creeper, one fruit fell down. (Psst.... we're going to have it for dinner!)


We have something rare in our garden.... It is a tree known as 'Pistache Malgache' by the elder generation of Mauritians and as far as we know, there are not many trees left on the island because people don't care about it anymore. The nuts are edible.


Bananas - of course! :) Before I settled here, I thought bananas were bananas. Now I have learnt there are so many varieties of bananas and even the taste is different. We have two different bananas in our garden and here is one of them. Still 'babies'! :)

Flower bud on an aloe vera.


Five hours later; a wonderful feeling of tiredness! :)



2 comments:

Nat Palaskas said...

What a productive day! Your garden has so much crops you can eat. Love the guavas. I haven't had them for a long time, yum!

busymum100 said...

Oh, I love the pink guavas too, but they are quite rare in Malaysia these days :-(