A birthday ramble
January 24, 2010There was a birthday in the house yesterday. All told it was a quiet-ish day; a small pile of presents, nice food, birthday phone calls. In the afternoon the skies cleared for a while so we took a wander through the village. For once we had the foresight to take the camera with us. There’s no particular theme to these, just things we passed on our travels.
Just along the road from us is a bank of wild fennel. Actually, that is understating the case; we are surrounded by wild fennel – it is everywhere. But, just up the road there is a handily-photographable bank of wild fennel. The plants in the photo are a little over four feet tall and still growing. It is one of the first plants to make an appearance once the summer heat has gone, poking its tiny head through the soil and then growing and growing and growing as if it’ll never stop.
Wild fennel [Foeniculum vulgare] doesn’t have an edible bulb like the ones you can buy in the supermarket. A little research suggests that is Florence Fennel. Instead this has invasive, determined roots. There’s a few plants growing within the stone walls in the donkey track. When it gets too hot the plant dies back and waits quietly for the temperature to drop again. Then, it can start its growth cycle all over again.
Wild fennel
A little further along we stumbled across some winter cyclamen growing in a neighbour’s garden. Growing, not in containers or pots, but between the paving stones of the patio. These are, to all intents, weeds. But aren’t they just gorgeous?
Winter cyclamen
Earlier this month we mentioned we’d stumbled across a citrus tree producing both oranges and lemons. The photo that we had wasn’t great so we took the opportunity to take a couple more. In the first photo it is possible to see the run of lemons down the middle of the tree and the oranges on the left and the right; the second has a closer shot showing the fruits side by side.
Fruit cocktail tree
Cocktail tree, close up
Looking at these photos it is hard to believe just how wet it has been. Not long after we got home the heavens opened again and it rained and rained and rained and rained. Today has been a day of sporadic showers. Tomorrow there is a rumour we might see the sun for a while.
That would be very, very nice :-)
Aradippou Tales - A Life in Cyprus 
These pictures are very nice – I want the cocktail tree!
So do we! Isn’t it fantastic?
The idea of grafting some of our tiny lime tree onto out of our huge lemons makes a huge amount of sense. If only the rain would stop for a day or two ;-)
[…] & lemon tree so we headed back at a later date to get one or two more. They can be found here. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)The fruit trees, mid-OctoberThe garden, […]
[…] abandoned single story house. Beyond that is a field containing fruit trees, including the lovely fruit cocktail tree that produces both oranges and lemons. In that same field, close to the abandoned house, is an […]
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I love the look of that fennel – I recently cut a few stems with the intention of drying for ‘miniature dioramas’. Mine was sourced from a valley not far from Aradippou. Is this wild fennel edible?
Great blog, thanks for the thoughts!