Friday, September 17, 2010

What season is it?

I get confused by the seasons in California.  Right now, I'm looking forward to the rain coming, in much the same way I used to anticipate spring time in Ireland.  That's because in many ways summer here is like the winter in terms of the native plants.  Many go dormant, waiting for the fall rains to spring everything back to life.  Rain has been forecast for Sunday - if it comes - and if this is the start of the rainy season, I'll be rejoicing.  I can't wait to plant my natives in the front garden.

In the meantime, I'm harvesting from the back garden.  To say it was a bumper harvest would be exaggerating. But we get enough from the garden to feed ourselves five nights out of seven.  It lightens the grocery bill a lot - though the least said about the garden center bills, the better!

However, it seems that even the plants are confused - so many of them are blossoming and fruiting at the same time.  It makes for an interesting Blooms Day post to link in with May Dreams Gardens.
Aubergines (Eggplants) have beautiful flowers, and the fruits are delicious looking too...

Okra flowers come just before the fruit - it's hard to keep up with these guys as they ripen in a matter of days.

The flower is beautiful.  Next year I'm going to plant them in the beds nearest the house - in a row - as they are very ornamental too.

The pumpkin and the melon (small yellow flower on the left-hand-side) is still flowering too.

As is  the zuchinni (courgette).  I don't even know if this is normal because I haven't grown either before.

And here are some flowers I have at the moment.

Petunias...

Lobelia...


Crepe Myrtle...
 Begonia...

Geranium...

Back to the harvest though ... I thought the beans were over, but I hadn't pulled them out.  It's good to leave the roots as they fix nitrogen in the soil when alive, and I consider them 'green' fertilizer.  This little guy surprised me the other day.  One bean pod.  We ate it!

Also, I just had to enter for the Gardening Gone Wild Picture this competition this month - the theme is harvest and this is a photo of one of the three seed heads I collected from my very poor sunflower crop!


And to finish I'll leave you with a photo of the farm... not my farm - the ants farming aphids on my okra flowers!  Prime real-estate...


Byddi Lee