on the sunny side

After my last post, my younger daughter said "People who read your blog will think our yard is so beautiful." She is a "the glass is half empty" sort of person. There are ugly bits for sure, but why would I concentrate on them? She sees mostly the mud and weeds.

But I love the lush greenness of spring. I love the weeds.

If you get down close, they are spectacular. (The picture below was taken from under the tree in the picture above.)

There is this ugly fence all around the front yard. I try to keep it out of my pictures most of the time. See that bush hanging from the wall on the right?

It grows there every year, right out of a crack in the wall.

The flowers are amazing. In 2 months it will look entirely dead, but it will grow back next spring, inshaAllah.

I have been trying to get a good shot of these blue flowers for years, but I have such a hard time convincing my cheap, point-and-shoot camera to focus on them.

One is almost in focus! These flowers are about the size of my little fingernail.

There are so many cool shapes. Look at the little heart shaped seed pods.

Weird and cool.

Some of the flowers are bigger, and it is hard to believe they are wild.

This definitely is a weed, it has vicious thorns on the tip of each point on the leaves, but the pattern is cool.

So I have to be careful of those while I am roaming around trying to get eye level shots of tiny flowers.

I have a horrible time with the yellow and white flowers. They are always over exposed.

So I have to darken the pictures a lot to get any detail in the flower.

And the majority of the flowers are yellow.

I have tried taking the pictures on a cloudy day, but the white still over exposes.

Like so....

See these big leaves? That's khubaysah. The leaves are cooked and eaten, a spring treat my husband loves. I usually wander around taking pictures while I am picking the leaves.

Umm Farouq mentioned khubaysah in a recent post, so I made a point of getting a picture for her. It grows all around the trunks of the olive trees. It doesn't seem to like growing in the open as much. I wish you could come pick some with me Umm Farouq. There is more than I can use.

MashaAllah,

wa alhamdulillah.

I am still here

I don't know how to begin. I feel like I ought to write some long, angst-y explanation of why I suddenly stopped blogging but I don't feel up to it. I get the blues and withdraw from the world sometimes. Thank you to each of the lovely people who wrote comments to ask where I was and if I am ok. Sorry but I don't think I will respond to each of you individually. Will you forgive me if I offer you a few pretty pictures?

I have been mostly looking at spring through my windows this year. This is the view from my bedroom window.
I really need to get out more, get a little fresh air and sunshine. Today was beautiful, and since the next couple days have rain forecast, I figured I ought to have a look at my yard while I can.The plum tree by my kitchen window has started to bloom. I can't look at those flowers and not feel cheered.
The garden is full of weeds and badly in need of some TLC. Those geraniums should have been pruned back last fall. I hurt my knee in October and haven't done a bit of yard work since.
Things are springing up all over the place. These snapdragons grew by themselves in the crack between the house and the sidewalk.My camera's batteries need replaced. They don't hold a charge for very long. I charged them over night and then ran around the house snapping pix quickly before the batteries went dead.I don't know why but I can't get a good picture of how the wildflowers look except as closeups.

What just looks like grass in this picture contains thousands of tiny flowers.The cat divides his time between chasing butterflies in the flowers and waiting at the door for my husband to feed him.
Stupid kitty.This all will need to be dug by hand. The plow can't get in these narrow parts of the yard without trampling the plants I want to keep.
Everything looked pretty today.The field behind the house is full of pretty red flowers, but they don't grow much in my yard. I love to look at them, but it never looks as nice in the pictures.Luckily, my youngest picked me a hand full of them on his way home from school, right before my batteries went dead. (The color here is totally wrong. They are a deep, true red.)
Bye for now. InshaAllah it won't be another 6 months before I post again.

It's gone

I have tried to be so careful with the water this summer. I let a lot of the garden die, because I was trying to save the water from the cistern for use in the house. I always use it to wash the clothes and floors, and when the water from the main runs out we use the cistern water to flush the toilets and wash the dishes. I have gotten used to having the garden hose coming through the salon window and running to the kitchen or bathroom. The kids are even used to using it for their baths, after heating some on the stove.
Today it was cloudy and on the cool side, but these pretty yellow flowers we beginning to get wilted looking. (I took the pictures a few days ago.) The orange ones have almost finished for lack of water. I am trying to train them to grow over the ugly chain link fence.So I decided to go out and water the garden. Before I got even half way finished, the water stopped. It's empty. We have got about a month before there is a chance of any substantial rain. And then this evening, the water containers on the roof ran out. So no baths tonight, no toilet flushing. I PRAY the water will come on tomorrow, inshaAllah.

June blooms

My garden isn't as nice as it has been in previous years. It got too hot this spring, and water has been a problem. And to tell you the truth, I have been neglecting it on purpose for the last year and a half or so because we were talking about moving. When the wall went up and they made a checkpoint on the only way out of our little area, my husband started talking about moving. My kids all thought it was a great idea, especially the older ones, so they wouldn't have to cross the checkpoint every day to go to school. My first reaction was to panic. I didn't want to leave my garden! I mourned my garden as if I had already lost it, planned which plants I would dig up and take with me if our new place had a yard, and which ones I could grow in pots if it didn't. I got used to the idea, I got comfortable with it, and then my husband decided we would stay. He decided we should stay right when I decided I wanted to go. My life feels very confined these days. I hate that checkpoint, I hate that wall. I only leave our little enclave once or twice a month. Anyway, I didn't plant any annuals this year, but there are still some perennials hanging on. There are hollyhocks all over. They are hard to get rid of actually. They self-seed themselves, and they have a foot long taproot that is hard to pull up. They are beautiful, but I wish they would stop growing in weird places like in the crack between my front steps and the sidewalk. I love how the light makes the petals glow.The oleander bushes bloom prolificly. The flowers are large and showy.Even the mess they make on the sidewalk is kind of pretty.
We have several varieties of geraniums.
If (or rather when) they don't get enough water they lose their bottom leaves, but if I cut them back they grow right back.
I love this purple one. We add a leaf from it to freshly made lemonade. It gives it a wonderful taste.
These pretty bells are blooming now too, although this picture is from a couple years back. I have no idea what they are called, but the plant is a succulent and tolerates a dry soil.
I have exactly one carnation blooming now. They are not at all happy to tolerate the lack of water this year. That's an old picture again.
The only wild flowers that bloom at this time are thorny and dangerous looking.That one is pretty weird, isn't it?How did he get in here? This cat follows me all over the yard while I am taking pictures. But he is hard to get a clear picture of, since he is always moving.