Early morning gifts

 

Another hot day .Still bad ear infection - seeing doctor again this afternoon  . Took a walk over the meadow . Smells sweet . I can hear the tractor coming up the lane as I write this . I think to twizzle it one more time , make sure it's all drying nicely in the hot sun .

Then to share out two cans of water ....I can't carry any more  . Just the beans and courgettes .

The Brussels-sprouts  can jolly well get their roots down .

                    I can see the first immature fruits coming . Yellow courgettes .

                                        Zucchini "Bolognese" 

On my way up to the shed I notice the Blackcurrant bush loaded with berries . I'm thinking Blackcurrant crumble and clotted cream  mmmm ...

In the shed I'm growing salad things . I gather a bunch of lettuce , coriander and onion leaves .

The salad leaf bed out in the veg garden is very slow and erratic germinating . I seem to do better and it's easier to keep things watered in the shed and there are no slugs .

I have a couple of Epiphyllums in the shed which are having a bit of intensive care at the moment .

 Back in March , I took a chance on a couple of cuttings that someone was selling on Ebay ...it didn't have a proper name but they said it was a yellow one . Now listen to me , this is usually not a good idea  because very often the resulting bloom will usually be red ...which is the most usual Epie that people will have and even the red ones are not that commonly found . They are not rare but they are unusual . Normally I would only spend money on named varieties with a picture of the flower . . . the reason I was tempted by it is because my grandmother had a lovely yellow one and I was given a piece of it . Some years later I gave it away to someone by mistake and was too shy to ask for it back .

 I know , I know , there has got to be more than several yellow varieties out there and my grandmother's one will be an old variety or even a rare species type , but anyway , I thought I'd take a chance on this one .

Anyway they sent me this picture of the mother plant . It didn't have an open flower on it but it was on at a reasonable price and looked good to me !

 So I received the two generous unrooted cuttings and quickly potted them up .

Note that these were both unrooted cuttings . 

  They must have settled in and got their roots down very fast indeed because the next time I looked , I saw two buds ...one quickly dropped off but the remaining one is really swelling up now .

  I am really looking forward to seeing this flower bloom in the next few days hopefully .

 Watch this space ! 

My other patient in the intensive care unit is this Epiphyllum oxypetalum  also known as The Brahma Kamal . I need to take the top off it to encourage it to branch out lower down . It has suffered from a bit of sun scorch , so now I've moved it and it is recovering nicely .

Epies prefer shade - like me ! 

                   It is said that prayers are answered when this one blooms .

72 degrees F right now   ...ugh ! Need rain !