What Compost Does....

I have worked really hard for nearly 4 years at producing sawdust for our composting programme. All that compost had gone on the gardens out the front. People have donated plants and sowed seeds, and people have regularly stolen plants and flowers (today someone cut all the roses, just as they were coming into the best display we have managed yet and I reckon it wasn't cats that did it; we make more deposits than withdrawals).  However no one can take away the change we have made to the soil.  It even has earthworms now. 

Despite all, or perhaps 'because of all' the garden has filled in. The trick it seems has been to find plants that most people regard as weeds, or too common to put in their own garden. One happy accident had been the 'volunteer' vegetables that grew out of our compost - tomatoes, chilies, melons and pumpkins. The melons and pumpkins spread fast with big leaves that shade the earth and slow evaporation of soil moisture.  They even climb up into the oleanders and later pumpkins will hang from the branches.  Our neighbour waters it a couple of times a week so we can't really complain about him waking us up at 0430 when he does it.  At last it has a kind of lush feeling to it and there are even splashes of eye searing colour, so we will share some with you

F hates the cactus but it is one of the first things the Crete lady put in after F cleared the scruffy grass and dug the soil. Crete lady loves the flowers and to be fair they are spectacular on their best days, and the thorns possibly discoursge total human predation of the plants that grow near them. 

Red Oleander

Cannas (we have both yellow and red)

Common red geranium - really tough stuff and looking good this year.

A lady with orange hair sowed sunflowers everywhere this year. We see her checking on them every time she returns from the beach.

Bits of coleus came from a pot on our balcony

This stuff is prickly and invasive and F is trying to discourage it. It has a habit of grabbing passersby and ripping chunks out of them.

 

Nice colour/texture thing going here.

Tagetes among the Mexican primroses.

Common pink oleander. These guys were the only thing in the garden when we arrived

Smug. I did all that.