August September October Garden

 October .  Autumn.  

It has been an unusual growing season

My garden is a few weeks behind it's usual production.  Last week my grandaughter came up to do some heavy lifting.  She's the rower, has very strong arms.  I got her to prune back the white bougainvillia.  It's nasty spiky branches were reaching for the sky again.  Normally by the end of September it has virually stopped sprouting and is full of snowy white flowers.  No flowers so far.

Further down the garden in the pumpkin patch I was ready to pull all the plants out.  They didn't start flowering till the end of September and I couldn't see any pumpkins growing.  Little Miss Sharp-Eyes found 7 small pumpkins, or squash and now the flowers are producing more, almost daily.  Will they grow?  Is there enough hot sun to give them strength?  

Meantime K bought me cauliflower, broccoli and lettuce plants and there's no where to plant them until the end of the pumpkin season.  They are going into pots at the moment, and the old wheelbarrow.

August, season of plentifulness

Apricots were cheap.  Not as cheap as last year

I bought a few kilos and made jam and chutney

Green beans were a vegetable not seen this year in our local market.  The hot days of July burnt all the plants.  Those that did finally appear were selling at 4.50 euros a kilo against last year's price of 2 euros.

Heatwaves burnt the olive flowers in July and August so the harvest, just beginning now, is not going to be plentiful.  However, it's not as bad as expected.  Olive oil was predicted to be selling now at 15 euros a litre.  The price has doubled and is 7 euros, at the moment.

Greek housewives will be halving their use of olive oil.  My mother-in-law would put a good wine glass of olive oil, from their own olives, in a pot of, say, beans.  A lot less is used now, more for dietary reasons, though also economic.  I imagine we'll be measuring it by the tsp soon.  

September

The mint is still green and bushy in my garden.  That has usually dried up and disappeared by the end of September and the trifylli (sorrel, clover, oxalis, whatever) would have taken over, smothering anything that survived.  The trifylli is just appearing, very tentatively.

The basil is still green and very healthy. That has normally died out by now as well.

August

We were stricken with hordes of locusts, grasshoppers, crickets, katydids, anything that jumped and hopped and leaped.

Some were very small, some were huge.  Some seemed to stay glued in one spot for hours, days on end.  Some were green some were khaki.  Some leaped, or leapt, onto  me at night, clinging to my hair, landing on a bare leg or arm, bringing a moment of terror and then a very angry shaking and throwing-off.  I always gave the washing a good shake when  I brought it in from the line and often shook my clothes as well before getting dressed.

There are still a few of those around but they are no longer very active.  The mosquitoes have taken over.

We had no ants, very few wasps and flies.  Bees must have been around to pollinate my pumpkins

The cicadas didn't seem so loud this year and they seemed to disappear very early in the season.  I googled to learn about the cicadas song.  They only sing when the temperature is above 72oF or 23C. According to that they should still be in full chorus. 

The roses are still blooming and the plants/branches are reaching up to the heavens. I've never seen them grow so tall

Two pumpkins have grown over the wall in search of more sun. They're lucky that the water pipes have been fixed and the goats have found another water source and disappeared from our area. They would have gobbled these down in seconds

There are forests of these spindly things 

Can't remember what they're called but they have a huge bulb underneath

The wild cyclamen are magnificent this year.

Usually there are small clumps underneath the pine trees and along the side of the road.  This year there are carpets of them