A New Season For Our Family & Saffron Crocus

I have not been blogging for a while. This is because our family is expecting a new baby. We are all excited once again, especially after I suffered a miscarriage two years ago. From 5th week onwards, I was feeling nausea and strangely, depressed. I also lost my appetite and ended up lying on the couch every day. It was towards the 9th week that I was more back to myself. I ate more, had more energy but still could not do much. Currently I am going 16th week and feeling much better. Also, we are expecting a baby boy! Little Man is so excited cos he really wanted a baby brother over a baby sister.  I feel rather weird as I have lost all my interest in gardening. But I still have a fair list of to-dos before winter sets in. The garden still needs quite a bit of attention and thankfully, Hubby is helping me with most of the work.

By the way, we had Saffron blooming this year. Such beautiful flowers with edible orangy-red stigmas. I did not harvest any stigmas this year, I just admired the flowers and took in its mild fragrance.

This will be the last post from me at least for the time being.

Scorching Temperatures and Then Lots of Rain - End February

We experienced very hot scorching weather from Friday till Monday morning. It has been a lot of sun without rain this summer in my area.  And there is one casualty out of my garden. My beautiful creeping watermelon vines have succumbed to the heat and withered completely and I expect the unripe watermelons to die as well. There is a large fruit and two smaller ones. :( This year I did not put up any protection against the heat. I have not been feeling very well so have to ignore my gardening and do only the minimal for a little while.

Watermelon and dead vines around it.

My yummy grapes. A lot of them are splitting and I found out it was due to over-watering.

Sweet potato vines.

Back garden view 1

Back garden view 2

Water chestnut tub

Our recent harvest

Lady's fingers...this year's harvest has been better.

Lady's finger's flower.

Success at growing Lebanese eggplants using seeds.

More harvest.

Summer Update - Mid February

Harvesting veges :

Water spinach/kang kong, pak choy green, choko shoots, eggplants, carrots, cucumbers, chillies, spring onions, beans, lady's fingers/okra.

Harvesting fruits : figs, grapes.

The thirty figs on Figgy are not developing well. I am totally puzzled as the fruits were small, hollow and turned yellow before they got bigger. There goes hope of eating more figs this year. The tree is very tall and leafy for its pot, so I am unsure if it was not able to draw up enough nutrients or water from its potting mix.I placed a saucer under the pot and watered daily but nothing seemed to work.

On the other hand, Big Fig which did not put on any figs early this year, has finally grown some. The figs look like they are going to be fine for eating.

Big Fig (brown turkey) with its fruits protected by organza bags which I bought from Ebay. My son says Big Fig 's a boy.

We harvested some carrots. Our first try at growing them. Fantastic result!

Pesky black birds have been trying to go for my Carolina Black Rose grapes even though I have netted my vine. So I resorted to organza bags which is very effective.

These flowers have bloomed. They are called pigface.  Definitely dont look like pig's faces.

The pathetic-looking passionfruit vine outside my garage is finally growing. I think if it survives, it will be really slow-growing, I dont mind as long as it greens up this brick wall.

The other passionfruit vine next to my patio is also growing, but better.

Eggplant Bonita's 2nd fruit and several more to come.

More sweet corns at the patch in front of our garage have all been harvested. I grew lots of corns this season and am sick of eating them already.

Summer Update - End January

Since my birthday mid-January, we have not got much rain fall. The weather was dry and warm and we did have a few hot days. Finally we had a bit of rain fall last night and today, to freshen up the plants and the lawn. I love the rain because it has this magical power of making the lawn look really really green.

Out of the few seeds of yellow capsicum I have sown, two emerged and after re-potting twice, they are doing fantastic.

My little experiment to root market cuttings of sweet potato plants (even after placing in the  vege compartment for two days) worked. I planted four of the rooted cuttings into a large pot (50cm wide x 50cm deep) with loads of cow manure and potting mix. Last few days were hot and I shaded the pot with white cloth. They survived each day and are growing!

These are the same sweet potato cuttings and they are putting on new growth. I could not wait to tell hubby he was going to have sweet potato leaves for dinner soon!

I harvested our first cucumber (burpless). It is about 35cm long. It has a few bite/beak marks which I believe are from birds.

I decided to take my eureka lemon tree  out of its pot (where it was dying)  and planted it in my back garden along the fence. If it survives, I will try to espalier it onto the wooden fence. Amazingly after several rounds of watering on warmer days, it seems to be alive. It is throwing up lots of flowers and growing a few new leaves. Fingers crossed, I still have my lemon tree alive.

I commented about my galangal ginger plants in one of my previous blogs. Here is the picture showing new shoots coming out of the ground.

Gorgeous looking pak choy keeps giving us a constant supply of leafy green.

I am so happy to have homegrown cut flowers - sunflowers and white lilies.

These gorgeous white lilies have fragrance that permeate my house. It was almost bewitching! They last much longer when cut and put in a vase. Out in my garden, they wither within two days.

Woohoo! My Carolina Black Rose grapes are ripening! As the ripening is  not very consistent, I pick the ripe ones off the bunch rather than harvesting the whole bunch as grapes do not ripen once picked.  

When ripened especially by lots of warm sunshine, the grapes are really sweet.

Very happy to say that about 9 pomegranates are developing on the tree after loads of flowers.

Mr Spotted Neck Has Found a Mate! Surprise Ginger Find.

Last week's weather became wintry. Finally we had a few days of intermittent downpours. The winds were strong at times and suddenly quietened down with sunshine breaking out of the clouds. Then everything started all over again.  Temperatures have been sometimes lower than 20 and sometimes a bit higher.

This week started really hot and windy. Temperatures up to 35 deg. Then it became cooler but still no sight of a much-needed rain.  My poor plants, I wonder how they cope with the ever-changing weather and temperatures. They must be a bit confused.

Our dear Mr Spotted Neck (wildlife) up on my neighbour's roof still looking for a mate. My hubby bought me a  digital SLR camera for my birthday so now, I can take sharper and better pictures.

My two silvery fir plants produced so many tomatoes. I actually have not finished the frozen ones from last season.

We now have a flight of sparrows visiting as well and so far they are the tamest birds we had. Mr Spotted Neck sometimes bullied them but when food is abundant, they can share a meal together.

To my surprise while tidying up the carrot foliage, I found a small ginger plant growing. I have planted some ginger slips last year but only one grew (the one in front). However, another slip survived the winter and it has sprouted. Wow, I am so inspired to try sweet potatos asap!

Five cucumber (burpless) vines this year hooray! A little crowded though. The leader vine is having a maturing cucumber plus 3-4 more growing!

More pak choy green thriving under the netting along with the tomato silvery fir.

Lots of green chillies on my chilli fire.

I am so proud to announce that Mr Spotted Neck has found a mate!!! My son and I actually felt sorry for him cooing every day for a mate and we, hehe...prayed for him.  Recently we noticed him courting a lady in our garden but kept getting rejected. These few days,  we saw both of them in the garden together. This morning we saw them feeding together! Finally! Congratulations! Bird-watching is really fun!

Vegetables Update and a Very Nice Surprise.

I think I have achieved the objective I have set last year about growing more leafy vegetables in our garden. I wanted to do so as these vegetables are more perishable compared to fruit vegetables so if I can have a fresh supply in my garden regularly, it would be great. On my market/supermarket trips, I buy more of the fruit vegetables such as capsicums, eggplants, cucumbers, gourds, pumpkins as they keep fresh for a longer time. And I plant more leafy vegetables so I can harvest them fresh from my own garden.  Of course when the weather is warmer (spring, summer, autumn), I do reserve space to plant my own eggplants, cucumbers, capsicums and beans.  Also, I am hoping my choko vine produce fruits for stir-fry as well.

The kang kong/ water spinach in patch F is ready to be harvested.

Some fresh pak choy green for soup. So far, planting choy sum, Chinese brocoli and buk choy has been a failure.

I bought sweet potato leaves from Springvale market and stir-fried it with my home-made sambal  paste. Hubby loved it.

I reserved some sweet potato cuttings and stand them in water, hoping they will root and I can plant them. This idea came a bit late but if it works, I still can have my own leaves to eat. The hot weather helps the sweet potato plants grow very quickly.

I harvested a few choko shoots to stir-fry with the sweet potato leaves. Amazing! They taste really good. I read on the internet that every part of the choko part can be eaten. Also the possums love these shoots and that made me try them. A good decision! Another vegetable for the dining table!

The Kao Kee plants are growing new shoots. They get mildew easily and I had to resort to spraying the bottom leaves with fungicide as milk or bicarbonate spray did not work.

Our first kang kong harvest. for stir-fry.  Plus a bunch of edible chrysanthemum (Tung O) for soup.

Hmmm...yummy kang kong with fermented bean curd.  I can finish the whole big plate!

We have been doing bird-watching a lot.  Today we had a flight of sparrows feeding on the bird seeds.

I put out two trays so the pigeon (wildlife) will not bully the sparrows.  Each bird variety has a tray. We notice the non-native mynahs bully the pigeons and the pigeons bully the sparrows...how funny!

We were out on our front garden when my son caught sight of a plane doing heart shapes in the sky!!! I rushed for my camera.

My son managed to get into the picture by sitting on the fence, literally!

Here's another heart the plane did. What a pleasant surprise!!!