Monday 2 May 2011

Planting out aubergines and finding a green lizard

We’ve planted out about a dozen aubergine plants our neighbour gave us – six of them next to a row of peppers on the left below.  We usually grow the grafted plants, bought from a garden centre, because they produce so many more aubergines than the ordinary plants, but this year we’ll try these, as well as a few grafted ones.  The Greek maize I planted out a couple of weeks ago is doing well (on the right below).

IMGP9309 IMGP9321
Sweet corn (maize) and a row of lettuce.

We also planted a row of chard, also given to us by our neighbour, next to the two rows of haricot beans which are growing quite well.  I picked the rest of last year’s chard today as it was going to seed, and we ate it this evening with pasta and cured ham.

IMGP9320

Our ‘big’ iris has started to flower (left below), later but more spectacularly than our white and mauve irises, and the red salvia was attracting a few bees (right).

IMGP9307 IMGP9304

 

And the green lizard under the olive tree

IMGP9280 IMGP9283

They’re much more shy than the brown wall lizards, so I was lucky to catch this one on camera!

IMGP9247 Our garlic is growing quite tall, but I don’t think it will ever be as good as the garlic I bought from this stall in Pézenas market on Saturday.  It’s very fresh and tastes wonderful chopped raw onto salads and other vegetable dishes.

And home to lunch….

IMGP9331 After working in the garden this morning we came home to a lunch of aubergine puréed with olive oil, garlic and oregano, some broad beans straight from the garden cooked with cured ham, and goats’ cheese from Roujan with thyme from the garden and olive oil that was milled in the village from olives from Servian, only about 10 kilometres away – all local, fresh and delicious!

5 comments:

Diane said...

I managed to catch my first green lizard on camera this year as well but it was quite far away. Diane

Jan said...

We haven't seen any green ones this year yet, although maybe that's because we're not there all the time, or maybe it's not yet hot enough for them.

GaiasHope said...

They are all so beautiful! I love spring :)

btw your corn is the bigger. This year we will try this corn in 4 different mediterranean areas. Heiko grow it in Italy, me in Northern Greece and a friend in Southern Greece. I will plant it in plot next week

chaiselongue said...

@ GaiasHope: it will be interesting to compare how the corn grows in the different areas. I love spring too!

Lisa said...

Everything is beautiful, but I think I particularly love your shy green lizard.