October Garden

I have been out of time these past weeks and have had a house guest arrive this morning.
So I'm again saying sorry for such long delays between posts.

But I did want to show some of what is in flower today in our garden.  Weather is warm and sunny and after some rain, everything is growing wildly.  Here are some photos I took just a couple of hours ago.

I hope everyone has been having a good weekend.

Like most people I know I was also glued to the television watching the miraculous rescue of the Chilean miners.  What an unbelievable feat of faith and determination combined with the engineering expertise of all involved and the leadership of the head man in the mine who kept the men alive with his belief that they would be rescued and his knowledge of survival procedures.  It was such a happy ending to what could have certainly been another tragedy and more sad news for the media to report..  Sometimes miracles do happen!

Thanks for dropping by...so until the next one...hasta la vista!

88 ~ Spring Weather

Wind, sun, rain and all at the same time. Our Tenerife weather feels like spring. Some mornings are chilly enough to see the steam rising on my tea.

Bibi watches the birds through the open window.

They are waiting for their food and when there is none they take it from the cat's dish outside. Or come close to my window and look inside, waiting for me to fill the food tray.

An interesting sight for a cat, and so close.

Later when the rain has stopped I can go out into the garden.

Canna

Brunsfelsia

Stag's Horn

Bibi follows me and gives a morning kiss to her friend Tigger, who lives in our garden.


We're so lucky to have such mild temperatures and next week they will be between 23 to 26°C (mid 70s F). Makes one feel sorry for those up in Europe where there is still heavy snow and temperatures below zero.

But I'm so pleased to see that my former city of residence, Vancouver, Canada is having such wonderful sunny weather for the Olympic games. The usual Vancouver rain has stopped for these exciting events allowing the world to see just what a beautiful city it is. I'm enjoying watching the games on Eurosport TV.

There is a good link here on Eurovisionsports.tv for watching them on your computer if you live in Europe, and you can catch up with podcasts on everything from the opening ceremony onward, with many of them in HD and full screen.

Wishing you a good coming week and ¡Hasta la vista!

41 ~ This Morning's Garden

(click to enlarge photos)

I couldn't resist running back into the house for my camera while strolling through the garden this beautiful Sunday morning to see what had changed, if anything, since last evening. It's so good to see the sun after our rain and cloudy days. Everything growing is responding with such vigour that we have to cut back masses of bougainvillae and hedges just to be able to pass by. But this is the month when flowers are at their best and I have one particular rose which is putting on an outstanding performance. Anabell, a cluster-flowered floribunda has put out thirteen blooms on a single stalk.

Here you can see from the side, that enormous cluster rising from one cane.

I think that might be a record for my garden. I've had this one for over ten years and it seems to be perfectly suited to our warm climate. It's a rose created in 1972 by the German breeder Kordes and the catalogue name, if anyone wishes to know is KORbell.

So I will show you the rest of what I saw this morning. The dark mauve blooms are Brunsfelsia, a lovely little bush that puts forth masses of my favourite coloured flowers.



The white rose is Iceberg, a faithful and popular floribunda which creates masses of white blooms on a medium rounded bush which also does well in this warm climate.



The pink rose and bud were a gift to my garden and came without a name. I have that bush in a flowerpot where it does well in full sun.

The cala lilies spread so easily, we now have a whole bed of them. They started as one plant that was given to us by a neighbour.

A moth alights on a white osteospermum.

And learning to keep watch over the dish of dry cat food, is one of our baby blackbirds. He makes sure the cat doesn't climb the tree to steal breakfast!

(I'm buying more dry cat food for the blackbirds than I am for the cats!)