The garden, mid-June

Ahhh June, the start of summer proper.  Long, hot, sultry days … lazy lunches under the shade of the bougainvillea … moonlit dinners in the cool evening air.

Well, that’s what should be happening.  Instead we have a house full of builders and, honestly, they have more stuff and spread it further than your average teenager.  The garden looks like it has been bombed.  The parts that should be unaffected aren’t because things such as the BBQ, dining tables, chairs and the like have had to be moved to accommodate their stuff.

The original plan was for the dodgy garage (which isn’t a garage, see here for an explanation) to be rebuilt.  Then we discovered that the house roof, which we’d previously believed to be sound, was in need of work.  The roof didn’t need to be done now, but once the winter rains come it could become urgent.  So, the builders are here to do both of those and a couple of other small jobs.  All told the work is expected to take four weeks.  Four weeks!

In amongst all of this the garden is getting on with things.  The lemon tree has a health crop of new lemons, the orange is sulking after we removed two thirds of it.  The pomegranates are growing at a fast enough rate to make the rats happy.

The clementine tree has surprised us some; this year we had a crop of hundreds of fruit.  There were so many we struggled to give them away, there were certainly more than we could ever hope to eat.  It was only last month that we managed to crop the last of the fruit and now, when the tree should be covered in new tiny fruits we have absolutely none.  Is it possible that the tree won’t blossom if the previous year’s fruit hasn’t been completely removed?  If so that behaviour is entirely different to all of the other citrus trees.  But honestly, we’re still getting used to all of this and whilst keen we really have little idea.

The arum lilies have finished for the season.  Now is the time to try and lift the remaining rhizomes from around and under the pithari so they can be relocated.

None of that is particularly photo-worthy so, just this once, we’ll forgoe the plant photos and give a fair indication of the state of the place this month.

Enjoy!

The garage pre-builders

The new, improved, garage

Temporary re-homing of the garage contents

Hard to believe but there are a couple of small fruit trees hidden in there somewhere.

Scaffolding on the front of the house

The orange ladder, on the left hand side of the photo, goes up to the scaffolding boards at roof level.  From there the builders climb onto the roof and up and over the apex to access the other side.  This is the route they are using to remove both the existing roof tiles and to get the new tiles in position, ready to be used.  At a rate of four tiles per trip they will be making in excess of 1000 trips up and down, one-handed whilst carrying roof tiles.

Mands has done the trip once.  It’s possible that her nerves may recover some time this month.

View from the bedroom window

All being well we should be back to normal garden photos next month.

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