Colorful fruits

I was just playing with colors :)

Graffiti

These pictures were taken during my recent walk walk along sea seafront in Alexandria:







And the same closer:


The left graffiti depicts pyramids and oil derricks on fire. The right one reads "Free forever."



This graffiti reads: "Welcome to new Egypt" and "25 January" that is the day when the Egyptian revolution begun.

Cairo Flower festival in pictures

As I wrote few days ago, the annual plant and flower exhibition has been undehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifr way in Orman gardens, Cairo. I heard about this event before but the reality exceeded my expectations. During the entire month of April many nurseries bring, exhibit and sell various plants and flowers. Each nursery orange its own landscape and flower display.


Some created something simple. Other invested in more sophisticated displays.














In addition to plant and flowers, you can buy various pots (plastic or clay), fertilizers, insecticides, seeds, decorations.

I was mainly looking for succulents – the easiest plants to grow in the Egyptian climate. They thrive under heat of sun in summer and easily survive windy winters on my open balcony.

Cacti:















Portulacarias:



Interestingly, many sellers do not know scientific names of their plants and call them by their "common name." For example, this succulent was introduced to me as “buttons” while it’s real name is Crassula conjuncta:




And this one was named “noodles” while it is Senecio herreianus:


Each of them went at price of 15 Egyptian pounds (that is $3).

Bonsai. There were been plenty of them on displays! The cheapest, regardless of the plant type, were for 200 Egyptian pounds (that is $40). Like these ones:







This was for 500 Egyptian pounds (that is $125):



This was for 2000 Egyptian pounds (that is $400):



I did not want to know the price of this one :)


By the way, I had been for special bonsai pots everywhere in Egypt. So this has been a great opportunity for me to ask where I can find them. As I expected I learned that nobody produces this kind of pots in Egypt. The bonsai growers order them from Holland. The also added that if I want then – mafish moshkele – they’ll order for me too.

There was a very big number of various fruit trees: mango, papaya, all types of citrus trees. Here is the bunch of kumquat small trees:




There were gorgeous bougainvilleas and pelargoniums in all imaginable colors. And much-much more...

Cairo flower festival

For anyone who is passionate about planting and flowers: in Orman gardens, annual flower festival has been underway for two weeks and will run until the end of April. You can find there a huge variety of plants, flower pots, fertilizers, insecticides and so on. They are open from 9 am.

I was there few days ago, spent couple hours wondering, asking gardeners and bought some new plants for my collection. I am mainly focusing on succulents.

My report in pictures is coming....

Last day of December 2010

The day was wonderful: partly sunny, partly windy, and slightly ruff water.

Orange trees planted by someone right in the center of the city between tall concrete buildings exude a magical aroma.

We have been living in Egypt for one year only. Still a clear picture of what to expect from each season of the year has not been formed. Sudden change in weather caught us unprepared. Within just one hour from the start of the first December storm the temperature inside the apartment dropped to plus 17-18 Celsius that was too cold for me. In Egypt, buildings do not have any centralized heating system. Some people install AC with dual function – cooling and heating. Some people buy heaters that can be easily moved from one room to another. But what we really had to do was to seal the windows (they are single pane windows, by the way). Just a minor wind allows airflow to come inside the house reducing temperature immediately.

Anyways, a sudden winter made me wonder: if December was chilly what will be in January? February? I found on the net some very interesting info with monthly averages for Alexandria. According to it January will be colder than December. The same pleasant warm temperatures as there were in November we will reach only in April. Sad… From the same source: in December, on average only 6 days are rainy. Taking into consideration that the first storm lasted three days and there were also couple days with light rains – the monthly norm has been completed. That is a good news.

The first storm of this winter

Up to the middle of December the weather was lovely: sunny and warm. I could venture into long walks wearing just a light cotton shirt. Meanwhile, hearing about extreme precipitations and cold elsewhere I was wondering when and what we shall expect our portion of misery.

Finally, past weekend the storm struck us. It started on Friday with strong wind. The wind had been howling and screaming for three days. The rain showers were hammering on windows. In fact, rain lashed so strong that the wall of one of our room got soaked in water. We will need to repair it in spring. All the first night I could not sleep: pounding and pulses of wind, falling and banging of chairs and flower pots on our balcony.

Next morning – the second day of the storm - the wind was still strong. So, I was confined to my apartment. I went out to see what was left of my plants. Luckily, thorough preparation for winter paid me back and the loss was not too bad. Only two plants – mint and basil - were softened by the wind. But they are both easy to grow and they will recover soon. After this brief inspection happily I went inside. And then I heard a sudden horrible bang followed by loud metallic rasp. I thought that our building was about to collapse and run to the balcony to have a look. Guess what? Somebody’s satellite 2 meters in diameter dish landed on us! Luckily, it did not make any extra damage.

Well, this was our first winter scare. What to expect next?

Below is the video of the first day of storm in Alexandria.