a delightful surprise

Our side yard is a wide expanse of weeds, grass, and wildflowers. One midday walk in my garden, I happened to see a lonely plant in a sea of weeds and grass, sporting brightly-hued flowers.

My first instinct was to dismiss it as a wildflower, but something about the beauty of the blooms drew me close. When I got near, what do you know! It’s one of those lantana colors I’ve been wanting to have.

To tell you frankly, there’s a dense jungle of trees and bushes near Cousin A’s place and at the edge, wild lantana bushes are thriving robustly. I’ve been meaning to, er, steal some cuttings but I was too shy to creep up to it and snip me some, heh.

Once I saw these beauties, I immediately saved me some branches for my island garden. :)

what plant is this?

I got the seeds of this heretofore unknown plant from a friend’s house. It’s got pink blooms, has soft brown branches, grows like a shrub, dies in winter but returns in spring. What is it?

Until it flowers, I won't be able to identify it. Le sigh...

after the rains

We’ve had two days and nights of intermittent downpours and my little vegetables in the garden, as well as my ornamentals, are loving it.

My second crop of green beans has consented to come out of their snug soil covers...

...hot peppers sown from seeds harvested from, well, Asian peppers bought at the Oriental store in Orlando, are a-fruiting...

...and okras only a foot or so tall are flowering. 

(The last one’s leaving me scratching my head, with their diminutive size and all. The first time I grew okras, I didn't have any blossoms until they were more than a couple of feet tall. But wth! My family’s been itching for some fresh okras—another one in our longish list of favorite veggies—so I’m not complaining.)

Oh, and my bitter gourd (the much loved ampalaya of Pinoy diabetics) has just sent out its first fruitling. Ain’t that grand?

(I think one of these days, Sis-in-Law R will be wanting to harvest some of the bitter gourd leaves to put in our monggo stew.)

eggplant flowers emerging

Are those eggplant flowers?

Those are flower buds, right? I'm really not sure. Could be just leaves emerging. Let's wait and see.

A day later (today, that is)...

It is a full-fledged eggplant flower!

Dayum! Those were really eggplant flowers I saw the first time. And here's another one for tomorrow's full bloom!

I think eggplant flowers are one of the most colorful, most beautiful blooms in the whole wide world, sniff.

Can't wait to harvest my first ever eggplant fruits grown from seed...in fact, the first eggplants I have ever planted my whole, entire life! (Exaggerated cheer, I know, but don't mess with the glee of a brown-thumb-turned-obsessed-vegetable-gardener at achieving another vegetable gardening milestone, heh.)