I really, really regret not having my camera here right now. The garden is so intensely in bloom, it's a feast for the eyes with all the gaudy colors around.
The calendulas are bright orange, and next to it there's a succulent plant with thousands of cyclam blossoms, followed by a geranium in bright red. Ah. So beautiful. My white rose is in a romantic mood; her flowers have started blushing recently. And the huge blue German irisses (growing wild on the island, but I redirected them into my garden) are producing flower after flower (an actually amazing process; the flowers open, stay a day or two, then sag away, while the next one underneath it is on its way up, leaving behind a crumbled parachute with a rather large seed on its end. Yes, I'd show you, if only I had my camera.....argh. Can you become addicted to a camera? No need to answer: Rhetorical question.)
But despite this prosperous description I wasn't born a gardener and more accurately haven't been one for the first, uhm, thirty-something years of my life, so I'm still prone to many mistakes. Here's what happened:
Last year all of my newly planted fruit trees and shrubs died of numerous reasons, the drought, the salty water, the monilia disease our old almond tree developed, and so on.
Because my garden is very open on two sides, I'd like to grow some huge plants to at least cover the insight a bit, so dirty old nosy neighbours won't get all improperly excited when I'm lying there on my camp bed reading a book about, let's say, 12th century monastic poetry, or so (it happened, believe me; the former, I mean).
Anyway, a year ago a plant started growing rapidly in my garden, that had gummy blueish-grey green leaves and small trumpet-like yellow flowers.
I liked it, but it stood next to our lemon tree, so I replanted it a bit towards the center of the garden. All fine, the plant grew quickly, being green and flowering all year round. I still like it. But we had no idea what it was. I googled it, I called in my classification books, nothing.
Next case: Last year, I saw a beautiful tree with red, green and bronze colored palmate leaves and prickly, reddish round fruits. It reminded me of a kind of sycamore tree, or a maple tree, but looking for it was as fruitless as the one before. It sure was neither of it.
The seeds I collected from that tree were beautifully marbled, and I managed to grow three trees out of them.
One is planted right next to our veranda now, the other two are growing in large buckets, awaiting their final destination, as we haven't finished shifting the soil in our garden, building walls and generally doing work where a newly planted tree would literally stand in our way.
Now comes the surprise! I recently bought a book (the
one book, I should say) about the flora and fauna of my island. And bingo!, both trees were in there: Number one is
Nicotiana glauca, or the tree tobacco (no, they don't make cigarettes of it), the second one is called
Ricinus communis, or the castor oil plant (yes, where castor oil is made of).
All fine with you? Seems like I got me some trees with fab names and interesting agrocultural value? Sure do.
But please guess: What is
wrong with them? Hm?
Yes! They are both
highly poisonous for creatures of whatever kind, thank you!
Nic and
Ric, the fatal duo. Can't miss with a newbie like me.
The price for most poisonous plant goes to
Ricinus, as he's equipped with irritating leaves, highly poisonous seeds (eating 1-3 seeds can kill a child, 8 seeds a grown up), and is generally so dangerous for
everything that I wonder how we have survived so far. We, that's me, and hubby, the four dogs, the ten cats and Mr. Hedgehog's family. Not to mention all the birds or insects.
So, what about
Nic and
Ric? Does this mean I have to rip them out?
I don't know. I'm torn, because they look so beautiful, and are easy to maintain, and quick in growth. And
Ric is known to keep the snakes away, while
Nic does the same with (unwanted) flying insects.
The dogs are in kennels. My cats usually don't nibble on new plants. And I believe that they instinctively know which plants are edible and which are not, although the ability of that remains a miracle to me. They eat catmint and a flower, whose huge orange blossoms are good for their stomachs, nothing else.
What do you think? Shall I stay cool and look more
relaxed at the matter?