Subtropical Garden Journal

Monkeys in the veggie patch

After a few reshuffles, I live, for now, in a very tiny home with a very large vegetable garden - which is just how I’d chose it to be, if one had to be large and the other small. I’m feeling grateful, and even more so that this particular vegetable patch comes with a dear friend who gets just as excited by spotting our first green tomatoes as I do!

As always seems to be the case, there are many trials and tribulations in the garden but -

In between the mornings we open the creaky gate and realise the monkeys have stolen our ripening sweetcorn cobs, and strew half eaten husks in pathways like naughty children.

In between my bouts of overwhelm at the seasons being upside down here (we’re heading into autumn as you embrace spring) and a completely new subtropical climate - even Google has to be tired of my endless questions by now!

In between the noticing we’re losing countless troops of lovingly nurtured seedlings as they succumb to the elements, yet again! (Mostly on bad planting judgment on my part.)

I look over at the scattering of cheery marigolds and realise just how far we’ve come.

A garden is a nursery for nurturing connection, the soil for cultivation of practical reverence. And its power goes far beyond the garden gate - once you develop a relationship with a little patch of earth, it becomes a seed itself. Something essential happens in a vegetable garden. It’s a place where if you can’t say “I love you” out loud, you can say it in seeds. And the land will reciprocate in beans.

- Robin Wall Kimmerer

The passionfruit vines entangling the wonky fence are laden with dark globes filled with bright orange taste bud tingling pulp.

The turmeric has her first flower on full display.

The transplanted bananas saplings have survived their big move.

The steaming sacks full of horse manure transported in the car on sweltering days (you can imagine the smell) are working beautifully as a mulch.

There are papayas on the young papaya tree!

The cosmos, calendula and sunflowers we started from seed look like they might just make it!

Over the weekend we spotted our first tomatoes!

Our rather precarious garden arch which sways dangerously in the wind, is still upright AND has beans growing up her! A double win.

Our aubergines are in bloom!

So it turns out, in-between those busy minded moments of worry that the beetroot seedlings have died (again!), and only 10 of the 100 onions we planted have taken, all is quietly well here in the vegetable garden on the hill.

It’s seed starting time in the northern hemisphere and I’m wondering what you’re planning to grow this year? I spotted that Sarah at Wildling Studio has planned a Seed Swap this weekend which I’m wishing I could teleport to!

Sending you much love curled up and cuddling on a rainy morning in Eswatini.

Camille, Dingo and Taffy