Garden Bloggers Bloomday November 2010

This field pond is blooming with water lilies. With the recent rains we have been getting, water lilies are popping up every where.

A sign that Christmas is near, these Christmas candles (cassia alata) are lighting up the garden.

Dendrobiums are planted in this large boulder

Hello and welcome to Garden Bloggers bloomday where gardeners from around the world show what is blooming in their gardens. 

 After experiencing my first hurricane and the aftermath, it brought home how fragile life is and how dependent we have become. Without electricity and water in some cases, we were totally helpless. Life is slowly returning to normal as normal can ever be.  Many were not as fortunate. The island of St. Lucia, the Helen of the West Indies, was devastated in many areas. Many of us assisted with food and water for our St. Lucian brothers and sisters. This was done through the local Red Cross. They are the light in the dead of night. Kudos to them! 

 To see more of what is blooming around the globe please visit maydreams garden. Have a wonderful weekend!

Almost there

 This cassia javanica will be righted soon, we trimmed off the top and hope that it will regenerate quickly.

 

This Jamaican rain (brya ebenus) tree didn't waste any time blooming even though Tomas had blown it sideways.

This yellow flamboyant will be straightened and staked

The Mc arthur and foxtail palms seem to have weathered the storm and floods very well.

my faithful vanda

Rusty here enjoying the freshly cut grass

It has been ten days since Hurricane Tomas had passed  and the clean up is almost completed. Just a few more trees to be straightened and staked and a few fallen ones to be cut up around the back garden.  It is blistering hot as well so I am working early mornings and late evenings.  To my fellow bloggers and followers, Flowerlady, Kris, Lotusleaf, Andrea, P3Chandan, Stephanie, Glenda and Gail, thank you all for checking in on me and for your kind comments.
Happy Diwali to all my blogging friends who are celebrating this festival of lights.

Tomas' wrath

fallen  Banana trees

pink cassia 

Royal palm fronds

another fallen pink cassia

 Irwin mango tree lost its middle, I do hope it will produce next year.

plumeria pudica (a victim in many gardens)  in my back garden

 

 The back garden  with the fallen electrical lines

The huge clammy cherry tree on the neighbouring lot that brought down the electrical line in my back garden

The side path to the back is totally blocked, we are trying to clear it bit by bit and avoiding the  fallen electrical lines.  I do hope the power company comes soon to help clear this mess.

 Clean up is almost completed and my phone line has been restored. The ground is still too soft to mow the grass.

Stormy weather

uploading is extremely slow at the moment so I will be adding photos whenever I am able to

this was the scene early Saturday morning

this amount of water is the most I have ever seen in the fourteen years I have lived here.

the tree that downed the telephone line

Last week Friday and Saturday, tropical storm Tomas passed to the south of Barbados. We were given warning just as the storm started to affect the island on Friday around 2.00pm. As a daughter of a  former Meteorologist, I find it hard to believe that our Met office missed this one. They claimed that it developed very quickly. Many of us were watching this system days ahead and thought that it looked enormous and was well defined. Well as it turned out Tomas' path was a destructive one.  We were affected by the outer bands of Tomas. Luckily for us we were out of power for 10 hours even though a tree had fallen on the power lines and my line is very close to the ground at the back of the house. The phone line was broken by another tree. The garden suffered very little damage,with two down trees (all pink cassias) and some broken branches. Surprisingly the shade house is still standing with very little damage to the netting. I had reordered a replacement last month and it is here waiting to be installed whenever the clean up is completed. I am using the computer of a friend, who has kindly loaned me her laptop with a wireless connection.  The storm was scary for me, we had some rain coming through broken panes that were there before. The sound of the wind was eerie, you should have seen Lauren, (my daughter) and myself trying to secure her bedroom when a shutter blew off.

Looking back it was hilarious but during the time it was frightening. My 250+ year old house passed with flying colours. Many homes around the island suffered damages, many roofs were blown off and some houses totally collapsed. Luckily there were no loss of life here but it was very damaging to the  neighbouring islands of St. Vincent and  St. Lucia.