Around a Summer Garden

 The midsummer garden

 The ground is brown and dry. Still, some plants are loving the sun....... and surviving with constant watering 

This was a good start. 

I'm picking a handful every day

All the tomatoes this year seem to be cherry varieties. Most of the plants came up by themselves from leftover salad I buried in pots. 

All the skins are very tough. They're not great eating. I remove the skins and make relish. 

While my brother and sis-in-law were here they bought a 750gram tomato from the supermarket.  One tomato 3 greek salads.  Nothing unusual for green fingered Rainy.  She's grown a 650 gram tomato in her garden in New Zealand

My pot of basil is lovely green and bushy

These tiny lemons are falling off the trees already rotten.  Not a good year for lemons.   

Only good for the compost

My bonsai bougainvillia.  I clip the new shoots every day.  It grows like mad and if I leave it a few days the branches have thorns long enough to rip my arms to pieces.  I already get attacked by the roses and the lemon trees. My right arm is a mess of gashes and bruises.

This bougainvillia is white and doesn't bloom till about mid September.  Even though I keep on clipping away at it the plant will be covered in thick white blossoms till the end October

Scarab beetles love watermelon rind.  

Here they're known as GoldenFlies.  They're great big clumsy things.  They fly around us at dusk and often end up on their backs when they fly into something.  They are easily traumatised and have to be turned up the right way very carefully.

Pumpkins are slowly growing all over the garden

Cicadas start their shrill noise at 5.30am.  Their noise increases till by midday its deafening.  They finally go quiet just after dusk.  Then we can hear the soft burr of the crickets.

Temperatures are rising again. It's going to be a week of blistering heat.