Bougainvillaea Parade

The Bougainvillaea Vine or shall we say 'Shrub' is native to South America. It is named however after a French Navy Admiral and explorer by a botanist accompanying the admiral on his voyage of circumnavigation in 1789. The Bougainvillaes thrive in the tropical climate. This area of Taxila is conspicuous of Bougainvillaea of sorts. At the entrance of Taxila Museum an extraordinarily large vine, red in colour riding over and hanging from a very old tree can never go unnoticed by a visitor. Of the possible 80, there are at least 6-8 different colours/shades/varieties at our Wakefield Gardens Farm. Planted along the boundary wall on the right side of the entrance gate to our farmhouse,  it's a parade of extravagantly throbbing colours ranging from violet to red interspersed by white and combinations of them, all along our driveway particularly this time  in June at the height of summer year after year. Synonymous with the hot weather, we tell our friends about the intensely flowering Bougainvillaeas, the way we do as, "our farmhouse is on fire these days".

It's a riot of colours, as we might also like to metaphorically say. The colours, combination of colours 

and varieties that we can identify at the farm are Lilac (Easter Parade), Pink (Temple Fire), Violet (Elizabeth Angus), Purple (Twilight Delight), Red (Barbara Karst), White (Coconut Pink), Bicolour 

(Flamingo or Pink) and Variegated (Pinky White).

Fruits of Season:
Red grapes:
There are both the red and green grape vines at our farm. Although the crop especially that of the red grapes was unusually good, it did not rain at all. Dry as it was, it was very hot too. That resulted in drying up of grapes in position while they were still not ripe. The birds of which we have plenty, started plucking and picking on them too. There was therefore no alternative other than to go for a premature early harvesting. The red grapes are known for making red grape juice, jam and jelly but it is not so good as table fruit. When fully ripe, the red round grapes that we have is normally very sweet. The harvested first batch was however greenish red in colour and quite often than not, also sour in taste. The (sour) grapes and the delightfully tasty cherry colour Jelly that was prepared was still a joyful experience on their own accord..

Lychee:
As with the grapes, there are two types of Lychee trees too at our farm. The Type: 1 is locally called 'Gola' and the Type: 2 'Surai'. The Gola is harvested in the fourth week of June and the Surai in the third week of July. As the time for the harvesting of Gola is approaching, we can see its colour changing from green to red. It is also getting sweeter by the day.

Vegetables of Season:

Okra (Ladies Fingers), Brinjals and Capsicum continued to flourish with enhanced production. Often there is so much that even our Mali declines taking them home. That then is bit of a disappointment!

In addition to what is there already, we are now about to have Bitter Gourd and  Bottle Gourd which are just standing there in wait for the now overdue rains.

Our Pet Birds:
Last year at about this time we lost our two dogs, Caesar and Silky both of them Labradors, on account of very hot weather that they could not sustain. They were both of them our great companions at the farm. It was so much fun to share this life of ours with them. They always eagerly awaited us to come out of our farmhouse and take them out for long walks morning and evenings. Those of our relatives and friends know what they meant to us. Now when they are there any more, we have birds as pets. Among them we have Budgrigars, Love Birds (Lutinos), Java Sparrows, Diamond Doves and Black Cheek Finches. Here we will briefly talk only about the Black Cheek Finches. They are very lively and chirpy. Three pairs of these Finches were acquired some 3 months ago and have not started breeding yet. Both the male and female have a black patch on each side of their cheeks. The male has in addition a crescent like black feathery patch on his chest.

It's always so much fun to feed them and to see them bathing in a dish full of clean and cold water in these hot months of summer. We'll introduce other birds too as we continue to talk in this blog about our life at the farm.