These are sesame plants. They are planted in Egypt during the summer and the stalks are saved after the harvest to use for fencing and thatching.
The Moringa tree is a miracle. Almost every part of the tree is edible and it is well-suited to our climate. A friend of mine brought seeds from east Africa and another friend with a nursery is growing seedlings to be planted in the countryside here. The only specification is that they cannot be sold but must be given as a gift. Their lacy foliage is beautiful and will be a welcome addition to our farmlands and gardens.
The Moringa tree is a miracle. Almost every part of the tree is edible and it is well-suited to our climate. A friend of mine brought seeds from east Africa and another friend with a nursery is growing seedlings to be planted in the countryside here. The only specification is that they cannot be sold but must be given as a gift. Their lacy foliage is beautiful and will be a welcome addition to our farmlands and gardens.
The flame trees (poinciana) are in bloom now and they light up the roads, countrysides and gardens. They provide beautiful shade all summer and then the leaves fall in the winter. A perfect Egyptian shade tree.
I have one of these trees in my garden here because they are simply magical looking. Although they are often called acacias, they actually are Albizia julibrissin, commonly called a Persian Silk Tree. They aren't terribly large trees and here are dwarfed by the enormous mangoes behind them.
These gorgeous lavender flowers are a form of morning glory. They grow in bushlike bunches rather than on the climbing vines that most morning glories have. The bushes grow so readily that green sticks pushed into the mud at the edge of a field quickly give rise to a flowering hedge that can be cut in the fall and dried for firewood. The roots immediately put forth new growth and the trails are rarely lacking in floral accompaniment.
The Sahara Desert literally means the "desert desert" and it's aptly named. I spent time in North American deserts when I was young and they are amazingly green compared to the Sahara. With cactus and desert plants, they are veritable gardens. But once in a while the Sahara blooms as well. In this case a heavy rainstorm about 48 hours before we went riding brought a small burst of daisy-like flowers and succulents in what ordinarily would be a sand dune.
Serendipity! The orange bougainvilleia exactly matches the cotton batiks that are hanging in the courtyard after their first dye job.
A shop selling silk flowers is partially shaded by strings of flowers hanging like a screen.
We haven't really had a winter, unless you count a random hail storm last Thursday. The temperatures have been in the April range all of January and February. This gorgeous mimosa tree in full bloom on the road along the road by the lakebed at Dahshur is eloquent testimony to the off-season warmth. Photo by the Photography Elf...I'm on a horse.
The Photography Elf has done it again with a lovely photo of one of our sunflower heads. Sunflowers are grown here for oil or for snacking, although we grow them for the parrots. The lines of seed radiating out from the center are mesmerising.
A flotilla of white bougainvilleia gather in the corner of a pool on a sunny August afternoon.
Yasmine Hindi (Indian Jasmine) or Frangipani grows in many gardens here and blooms in early summer. The scent is wonderful and the flowers are lovely. There is also a red version that is gorgeous.
A friend arriving at my birthday celebration with an enormous bouquet of flowers was looking for a suitably large vase and found an aluminum jug used for collecting milk from the water buffalo.
Visitors to Egypt are often taken with a deep red drink that is served either hot or cold and has a tangy citrus taste. It is a tea made from a variety of hibiscus flower and it contains a lot of vitamin C. For years I would look at the flowering hibiscus bushes in gardens wondering if they were the source of the tea, because the petals used to make the tea are heavy and thick. Finally I found this small bush that looks a great deal like a peony and has rather small pink flowers. After the bush flowers, a seed pod develops with thick dark red petals covering it...the Karkade!
I love flowers. I love gardening. While most of the visuals that people bring to mind when Cairo/Giza/Egypt are mentioned are things like sand, camels, pyramids, and maybe traffic, the fact of the matter is this is a place where things grow amazingly. Add water to the soil and the sun does the rest. Many of the plants here come from other places, like this bouganvilleia that drapes lushly over a wall.
A large section of Khan el Khalili is set aside for the herbalists and the oil merchants. They sell the essential oils of flowers grown here and oil distillations of herbal remedies. An oil mixture to encourage the growth of hair includes such oils as those from the seeds of basil, arugula and a number of other plants. I can't say if it worked, but it smelled interesting.
I had to take some photos of the farm for a guidebook and was walking around at sunset when I saw this sunflower that we had planted alongside the corn between the house and the paddocks. The more slender corn stalks will be feed for the goats, donkeys, and water buffalo, while the corn and sunflower seed is a treat for horses and parrots.
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