CATCHING UP👍

As my Amaryllis obsession took over I was busy scouring over garden web sites to procure as many cultivars as I could. The bulbs started coming to the door in boxes and it was pretty exciting to open the boxes and looking at the gift of flowers to come. 
As the bulbs began to bloom it kept me busy with my flower photography. In eight years since my last post I have become much much better photographer. It is a double pleasure to combine my love of flowers and their photography.
The first of the blooms to appear are the white multi-petaled blooms of 'NYMPH'  This time I counted sixty blooms enough to make any one who cannot grow them outside envious.

Next to come was 'Lemon Star'. Even these have multiplied over time and the 4-5 blooms/stem is simply gorgeous.

 The pink blooms came next.I have lost the label. Need to find out the name of this cultivar.

All the images are by the author and copyrighted. Please do not use in any form or fashion without my explicit permission.

                Born Again gardener

  Just looking at my garden blog that was penned in 2011, I can say that I have missing from the garden for the last five years. Somehow photography took over and I was MIA for 5 long years. What a tragedy.😢
But this year I have goten my mojo back  and I have been feverishly attending to my garden. The year started with a grand plan of planting lots of trees.I live on 2+ acres of land and the front lawn is 500 yards long. So in came 7 Vitex aka Chaste tree which produces purple blooms from summer to fall. This is one of the underused native trees. Takes a lot of heat and humidity. 
Then came 14 Crape Myrtles called 'Arapaho' which are more mildew resistant and bears red blooms.
And one 40 G Mexican Plum another native Texan that bears cherry like blossoms before the leaves come out.
A small rose bed was created with just 6 old roses.
Last but not least was my attempt to relocate all my Amaryllis bulbs to their new bed.
Bamm. A new obsession/passion has taken over as I rediscovered the gorgeous flowers that grow with no care whatsoever.  Multiplying over time.
How could I have neglected these beauties ? Specially when they are so photogenic and each cultivar has  blooms that are spectacular.

All the images are by the author and copyrighted. Please do not use in any form or fashion without my explicit permission.

 

                        FORGOTTEN BLOG

Just stumbled upon my blog 'Le Jardin Jacaranda' that I started in 2008 ! Wow ! What happened ? Why did I stop writing ? I enjoyed writing so much. With the beginner's enthusiasm started three blogs! And now all three have closed shop.












 

                       
Life has a way of catching up and I must catch up with writing. Some one called it their excretory system. What an apt definition ! Way of letting it all out, catharsis or just plain old excretion.

I have always loved the art of writing and forever regretted that I didn't have a knack for writing. If I could be granted one wish in this life that would be to write in glorious prose and make words dance on the paper. What an incredible talent it is ? Height of creativity to weave a web of words that so sweetly trap the reader who gets entangled in a world of fantasy and angst. Simply love that gift which has of course eluded me.

This was supposed to be my gardening blog. But the heat has killed the plants and the desire to garden as well. The winter killed a lot of the plants. Only one surviving Jacaranda.

The fruit trees seem stressed. "Knock out ', 'Belinda's dream' and 'Valentine' are still going strong but the blooms have gotten smaller. To water the pots is getting to be a chore. Frequent travels have taken a toll on my gardening and my garden.

May be blogging about my flower photography may be in keeping with the spirit of this blog ???

I almost caught the fag end of Daylily season. They are at their peak from mid May to the end of May. I went to Yosemite exactly at that time to catch the water falls in the park.

I ambled over to Loris Garrett who has a nice collection of Daylilies. It was quite windy and very hard to take some pictures. Needless to say I didn't have many keepers.

                       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.