BLOOMING BEAUTIES

I had ordered three Amaryllis bulbs from a mail order company. The bulbs came from Holland. Since Amaryllis bulbs have done well in my yard rewarding me with huge blooms and multiplying year after year I thought of adding some exotic varieties. One bulb which is called 'Papilio butterfly' has  sent two shoots with these pale chartreuse beauties.

They are unusual in color. Hoping they would multiply and bloom happily in my garden. Just the other day I was complaining that the heat is brutal to our flowers.  These blooms are like breath of cool and fresh air ! At least I got to wield my camera to immortalize these blooms.

This evening I was just glancing outside and saw my Champa Alba bearing flowers ! The smell was intoxicating.  I got transported to India where whenever we passed these trees they assaulted us with their heavenly fragrance.

I left India 31 years ago but the fragrance of flowers have never left me. The unmistakable smell of Jasmine, the indescribable smell of old roses,tuberose and of course the Golden yellow Champak  have stayed with me. They are forever stamped on my olfactory senses.

This association of certain smells and fragrances with a particular geography is what makes one go back in time and revisit those places in one's mind.

The past is forever embedded in the present blurring boundaries between time lines.

And I don't need a time machine to go back and forth between my native land and my adopted land !

                   THE DOG DAYS OF SUMMER

The dog days of summer are here. The heat of Texas is not at all kind to people let alone the delicate temperament of flowers.  I have forever moaned and groaned about our choice to move to Texas.  For a lover of flowers what a place to choose ! I can only drool over photographs of gardens in magazines !

And all those gardens are in Oregon,Seattle,Northern California !

Kaydee suggested planting 

Salvia and periwinkle which will take this heat.  I am watching even these so they don't conk out on me !

Today as I was prowling the garden in the morning I spied these Dragon flies shining in the morning light like fire flies. As there are not many subjects(read it as flowers) to photograph I focused my lens on these beauties.

Documenting all things small is also a gardener's privilege. How else will we notice these ephemeral creatures that grace our yards only briefly !

I got such a thrill when I got a comment left on my blog !  Of all the three blogs this was a blog that I put least effort on.  And someone was so gracious to complement. This of course came through a web site called Blotanicals that I came upon and enrolled as a member. This website is dedicated to gardening blogs and it can keep one occupied for days going through each of the passionate gardeners' blogs.

As we were beginning to lament about losing our writing skills as computers took away our mode of communicating through letters, blogs have opened up a whole new world.

We are writing again and now more consciously. We want to be appreciated !

Thank God !  We are communicating again with more people than we can imagine.

Imagine if all us became busy with our blogging mania what would happen to the problems of the world!

Cheers to all of us bloggers who have added this new activity to our curriculum vitae !
All the images and text are by the author of this blog.Cannot be reproduced,copied in any form or fashion without my explicit permission.

                            I LOVE THEM ALL.

We get some other kind of guests that visit our backyard. They show up in winter and leave by spring. The trees are studded by these visitors. These are Anhingas - a blackish bird of southern swamps,shaped like a cormorant,but with very long,slender S-shaped neck:a long,spear like bill and a long fan-shaped tail.
Their habitat is fresh water ponds and swamps with thick vegetation,especially where there are large trees.
Breeds near Atlantic and Gulf coasts from North Carolina to Texas. Winters along Gulf coast north to South Carolina.
Also known as the "snakebird" the Anhinga often swims with its body submerged and only its head and long slender neck visible above the water. Its long,dagger shaped, serrated bill is ideally suited for catching fish,which it stabs and then flips into the air and gulps down head first.
Cormorants and Anhingas lack oil glands with which to preen and so must perch with their wings half open to dry them in the sun.

I think it is fun to document these frequent visitors to our backyards. So much can be gleaned by their behavior and makes one wonder what would the world without these marvelous creatures that co exist with us.

The other day I was saying to hubby that I may be able to give up desserts but not fruits. I love fruits and dreaming of growing a fruit orchard on our expansive yard. I grew up literally on a fruit orchard ! My dad built our house on a fruit orchard that belonged to Maharaja of Mysore.
It is still called Palace Orchards.

So it is fitting that I make a Villa Orchards here in Texas ! We have planted figs,persimmons,guavas,orange,kumquat ! The figs have a lot of small fruits on them. Hopefully they will ripen and we will get to eat them soon.

Here is a little tidbit about nutritional value of fruits.

Fruit Composition per 100g Vitamin Composition
Food Calories Protein Fat Carbohydrates Fiber B1 B2 C
Banana 100 1.2 0.3 26.1 0.6 0.03 0.04 14
Guava 69 1.0 0.4 17.6 5.6 0.05 0.04 132
Mango 62 0.6 0.3 15.9 0.5 0.06 0.05 36
Orange 40 0.8 0.2 9.9 0.4 0.07 0.04 43
Pineapple 47 0.7 0.3 11.6 0.5 0.06 0.03 22
Papaya 45 0.5 0.1 11.8 0.5 0.03 0.05 73

As can be seen Guavas have the highest level of Vitamain C

Our sonny boy calls us monkeys the way we go through fruits in a day !

Let us hope the fruit trees do well and we get to eat home grown fruits !

                    

                      GARDENING CHORES

Today our Sunday morning sleep was frequently interrupted by Owsley's "Avva Avva" cries. When he calls me Avva avva of course I can't ignore him and got up reluctantly to attend to his needs ! Once I got up I realized that the plants in pots needed watering.

Hubby joined me and we both did gardening chores for a few hours until the rising sun's heat made us quit.

We planted a Red Jatropha at the entrance to the gate. Jatropha is a genus of approximately 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees from the family Euphorbiaceae..

The name is derived from (Greek iatros=physician and trophe=nutrition), hence the common name physic nut. It is native to Central America. and has become naturalized in tropical and subtropical countries like India,Africa and North America.

The mature small trees bear separate male and female flowers and do not grow very tall. As with many members of the family Euphorbiacea , Jatropha contains compounds that are highly toxic.

The Hardy Jatropha is resistant to drought and pests,produces seeds containing up to 40% oil. When the seeds are crushed and processed the resulting oil can be used in a standard diesel engine,while the residue can also be processed into biomass to power electricity plants !

I got all this info from wikipedia !

I also planted Rangoon creeper near the gate hoping to see the fence straddled profusely with its blossoms.

Did you know that Rangoon creeper is called Quisqualis meaning "which? what ?'. This name was given by a Dutch Botonist called Rumphus to express his astonishment at the odd behaviour of the species.

It is a charming plant, a native of Burma and the Malayan archipelago. Of course for me it is essentially an Indian creeper.

Already the creeper is profusely blooming on the metal arch at our old house. The creeper is a stunner when it bears loads of pink and white blossoms. On first opening the flowers are white or part white and part pink,but later they become completely pink and darken considerably before withering.

I want to grow a lot of plants that are familiar to me from India. We have named our house Villa Jacaranda after Jacaranda tree that we see in India. These are one of the first harbingers of spring when purple plumes appear and cast their spell. An avenue of Jacarandas is an unforgettable sight when from end to end every tree is swathed with blue.

My early days in Mysore where each avenue was lined with different blooming trees and we used to walk on a carpet of these blooms is etched forever in my mind.

Jacaranda is a native of Brazil and its fifty species are widely distributed in the caribbean islands, South America,through to Florida and Mexico.

It is a handsome tree of of medium height with big leaves divided into such tiny segments that it has the finely cut appearance of a fern.
All the images and text are by the author of this blog.Cannot be reproduced,copied in any form or fashion without my explicit permission.

 

       MY GARDEN- JACARANDA

 Well looks like the blogging bug has bit me ! Since it is such an easy way to keep a journal on anything even with photos it is the way to go. I have tried to

maintain garden journals and I am misplacing them always.

Now that the garden is filled with all kinds of flowers it would be ideal to start a gardening blog and keep track of all things green and otherwise !

When I looked out this morning the morning sunlight cast a beautiful hue of green in the backyard.

The sky was overcast and the thought of working outside was very enticing. As I started weeding the garden beds in the front I had an exotic visitor. The absolutely enchanting humming bird paid a visit to the blooming Buddleia...

The front atrium garden is abloom with purple blooms of Butterfly bush, orange tubular blooms of Cigar plant, yellow and orange blooms of Canna lilies, red blooms of  Double Knock out roses. Enough nectar to welcome all the butterflies and humming birds.

The mix of purple,orange and red was looking beautiful in an odd combination.

I added Amaryllis bulbs I have received in the mail to this part of the garden. I had ordered One bulb of Papilio butterfly, one bulb of Rembrandt Van Rijn and one of ' Nymph from Royal colors.com
Rembrandt Van Rijn is a large flowering Amaryllis with beautiful iridescent colors. Papilio butterfly has this burgundy throat and Nymph is a double flowering Amaryllis.

Sine the bulbs have done well in my garden I hope to see them multiply and reward me with gorgeous blooms.

Knock out finished the initial round of blooms and getting ready for the next round. Agapanthus is sending long stalks of periwinkle blooms. Dianthus are fading away. Celosia is not doing well.

Mimosa is flowering well and the deep pink blooms are very pretty.

Magnolia is blooming but the leaves have black spot. I bought some soil amendment for sick trees yesterday at Southwest fertilizers.

All three varieties of figs Banana fig, Celeste and brown turkey are producing fruits already.

Amaryllis bulbs have finished blooming. I pulled out snapdragons and planted salmon colored Impatiens in the back. The Caladium bulbs I got from Sams have all come up.

Curry leaf plant is sending new shoots. We have not planted the Barbie pink Gauva and Strawberry guavas. Even the Champa Alba needs a home. Mondo orange got planted near the driveway.

I will take some photos of the garden and post them on my web. This is Rembrandt Van rjin Amaryllis.

All the images and text are by the author of this blog.Cannot be reproduced,copied in any form or fashion without my explicit permission.