Daily a picture of the garden of B&B Petra Fig Tree Villa

Within a stone’s throw of the entrance of Petra, one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, lies this nice big garden with in the middle a cosy B&B. I have the pleasure to live in this house, run the B&B and work and enjoy the garden. Since I’m not used to gardening in a Middle Eastern garden, it takes me some time to find the ‘rules’ in such a dry and extremely sunny climate. To remember and follow how plants grow through the year I started taking many pictures. That gave me the idea to (try to) post a picture every day!

If you would like to stay in the B&B you can have a look at the website. The B&B has four nice guest rooms and if you like you can also have your dinner here. And if you are lucky, some ingredients will come from the garden!

Green Grasshopper

It is so amazing to see how many different kind of Grasshoppers I meet in my garden! This one was just watching me when I was taking a picture of a tiny Praying Mantis. (I will post that picture tomorrow).

Emperor dragonfly

Waterday. In the early morning I jumped out of bed to water the garden before it gets too warm in the sun. I disturbed this beauty as he/she was sitting on a low shrub. It flew to another tree.

There I could capture the beauty of this Emperor dragonfly. Every day again I am surprised by all the beauty we can see in nature. And even in my garden, there are so many different creatures with their own characteristic shape and behaviour! I still discover new ones!

Eastern Olivaceous Warbler

In the morning this handsome one was having it’s breakfast, catching little flies.

Sparrow drinking water

Especially on these hot days it’s so important to have water around your house for the birds and insects.

This female sparrow is having her morning drink.

Hummingbird hawk moth

All of a sudden we have temperatures close to 30 and over! And nights with 24 degrees! And this in April! So I bring the rubbish early in the morning to the container. On my way back, I walk through the garden.

On the pinky flowers of the Geranium I see something moving very fast! A closer look tells me it’s a hummingbird hawk moth!

How long will it take to learn my lesson to always bring my camera, or at least my phone, with me when I go to the garden?? So I run to grab my camera and luckily the moth is still hovering around the flowers of the Geranium. It’s not easy to ‘shoot’ a moth fast like this! I guess this was best what I could get today. Maybe try it next time with the flash to stop the motion of the fast wings.

Who doesn’t love yellow flowers?

These yellow flowers are sooooo attractive to the insects in the garden. These two wild bee’s, from different families as I have a look at their striping, enjoy their visit! They look like paralyzed by all the sweet gifts of this flower.

Beautiful butterfly

And there is number two!

This morning there were two little chicks with Collar kipje!

Collar chicken is mother!

A little shorter than a month ago Collar chicken was gone. She went out with all her sisters and brothers about an hour before the sunset. Normally they start going back to their coop when the sun is about to set. The same are always first and Happy one and Wittekip are the last to go in. These two ladies like to hang around the compost a little longer. I close the door of the coop when it’s almost dark. Most of them are already asleep in the night coop so I couldn’t count them.

The next morning I noticed that Collar kipje was not there. I made a round in the garden, looked over the wall. Nothing… A little sad I went through the following days.

A few days later, to my big surprise, she came running to me when I came down the steps after feeding the chicken. She cackled out loud and it sounded to me like: give me some food, I’m hungry! So that’s what I did. Then she did a very big poo, stretched her legs, shook her feathers and started taking a sand bath. That behavior is the behavior of a brooding chicken. So I realized that she must be somewhere sitting on eggs.

I watched her enjoying her sandbath and another good stretch. Then she ran down the stairs, to the back yard and the huge Rosemary bush. She ducked under the low-hanging branches, made some soothing sounds and was quiet again.

And this morning I heard the the squeak of her chick.

KUL JOUM A PICTURE