Lunch in La Belle Helene

Lunch  prepared for me by the incomparable Miss Leoni. Always delightful meals of local fare cooked to perfection. Fresh fruit juices...Soursop, Lime, Sour Orange, Golden Apple.

On the menu today battered flying fish, mixed veg, plantain, dasheen, salad with avacado and topped with Gayla Trails yougrowgirl.com  Pickled Cherry Tomatoes....washed down with Sour Orange juice Soursop juice and a Heineken.

Fall surprise

This was a great surprise this fall a new Chrysanthemum cultivar "Matchstick" the handiwork of Rika Bronsther of Hempstead, Long Island.I purchased this plant from www.garden import.com

A Visit with Vita

Sissinghurst : A Clearing in the Woods

 Vita's Private Study in the Tower

Under a cloudless sky and 29C...in the Kent countryside I had the special opportunity to visit Sissinghurst. It was the highlight of my 3 weeks in the UK. This home and garden was the passion of aristocrat Vita Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicholson.From a dilapidated Saxon / Elizabethan manor rose a garden and personal home in the 1930's that rivals and sets the standard of innovation in garden design. It is a garden I could visit again and again....food for the mind and soul.

THE NIGHT BEAUTY

If only there were smellovision...the scent of the this night flowering Cereus (Hylocereus undatus), is heavenly, filling the entire house. This is the first blooms of a year old division.

Surreal Sunrise

Magnolia sieboldii

Taming the Serpent

These are some examples of the " beasts " I have tamed into behaving, except for the young one above that has been well behaved......so far.



This one grew along the ground for 50 feet as well as up a neighbours fir tree the same height.It was always a dependant bloomer but this year has been an exceptionally good one. Some of the ground runners were layered and are now growing in pots on their own.



Several years ago this one was never pruned for a dozen or so years growing up above the second floor windows and eaves. Its now happily tamed back onto its metal frame.