The build up garden

It's the build up... hot and humid with occasional thunderstorms, the monsoon doesn't usually arrive until after xmas - last year it didn't arrive properly at all... Inspite of the heat, and thanks to some decent downpours, some things in my garden are thriving.

Coleus thriving in the shade with amazing flower spikes.

I don't really have a garden plan, I like to grow some food and I've been learning by trial and error what can survive my not very green thumb! I grow a lot of things in pots because of the poor soil, and so that I  can move things in and out of the sun depending on how stressed they're getting.

Hard to make them out but here are basil, thai basil, 

mint, parsley, sweet leaf, lemon grass

pineapple and cherry tomatoes.

I grow a few flowers to attract bees and other pollinators, and so that I can paint them in still-lives!

I only tend about a quarter of the garden - the rest is established palms that fend for themselves (except for piling the palm fronds on the compost heap), and lawn, which my partner mows.

Some of the flowers at the front fence, and lots of

mulch, newspaper and palm fronds to try to

keep the weeds under control.

Lately we have eaten a beautiful pineapple, and another one is ripening. Now and again I fry up some sweet leaf and parsley in an omlette, a treat for me as the kids are not that keen on my garden greens. I  would love to be growing more and cooking more from the garden, but at least it's a start!

my tropical garden

Gardening in the tropics is challenging! In simple terms there are two season - the wet season, when it's hot and humid  and rains a lot - and the dry season when it's a little cooler and doesn't rain from May to October.

In the front yard I have pineapples which only need watering once a week through the dry and can fend for themselves in the wet! In the backyard I have a little flower patch!

I planted this mainly to bring pollinating insects to the garden after the year I couldn't get my eggplants to set fruit.

My veggie patch is in planter boxes because the soil is so poor and full of the roots of surrounding palm trees. I'm growing lemon grass, perennial coriander, tomatoes, parsley and Thai basil - which has these amazing purple flowers.

 I'm not a great gardener, and don't have a lot of time to spend on it, but I do enjoy the 15 minutes or half an hour a day I spend pottering about, watering and seeing what's thriving and what's not, and how many tomatoes are there? (5 so far!!)

Here's a painting of one of my gardening failures - I've tried growing sunflowers a couple of times but they don't get much bigger than daisies, and nothing like the gorgeous blooms in Van Gogh's paintings! I've listed this little painting over on my etsy shop - I'll be adding something each month now I have a computer that works!!

School holidays have just begun here, hooray! Hope you have a good week!