Golden Harvest

The citrus fruit are miraculously good this year. There’s a bit of fruit fly damage here and there, but our haul of golden treasure is beyond miraculous. For a start, the satsuma tree excelled after “resting” in 2017:

Peeling the fruit sets free an intense fragrance… eating them is a blessing. 

The Raised Beds Lark

Before I started gardening in New Cairo, I had a dream… It had to do with a series of raised beds, filled with lovely, crumbly, richly organic soil, producing seasonal crops in healthy rotation. Rather like the many incredible kitchen and market gardens I see regularly on Instagram, where gardeners all over the world, and especially in Australia, seem to have perfected the art and science of growing anything they want.

It had rather less to do with the brutal reality of my four-and-a-half raised beds where the soil is lifeless, seeds won’t germinate – except for volunteer borage (above), the bugs and snails are having feast days, and … and … and

Wandering – again

I had intended to write about the garden and, in particular, the raised beds. There’s enough work to be done, and a number of points – interesting, baffling, despair-inducing to write about. But, as you see, I got diverted…. again!

Definitely not my garden…. The nomad spirit took over once more yesterday, and I abandoned veg. beds, borders and even the fascination of the compost bins in order to wander off to Fayyum, most lovely of agricultural regions close to Cairo and truly worth the agony of an hour or two on the Ring Road.