Subtropical Garden in Carmel Valley

Passion Fruit (Passiflora edulis) As the weather gets warmer, the purple fragrant flowers start to appear on the vine.  The unusual flowers with purple-white delicate filaments are very pretty and distinct.  In a few days the flowers drop to the ground and egg-shaped small green fruits get bigger every day.  Pretty soon, the fruit will turn purple and ready for consumption.  I wait until the fruit drop to the ground before collect the fruits. The passion fruit flower Young passion fruit Ripe passion fruit I usually cut the fruit in 2 halves and scoop out the fragrant, acidic-sweet orange pulp and eat it directly, spitting out the black seeds.  Some people may prefer to add a pinch of sugar to lessen the acidity.  Another option is to combine the content of 30 to 40 fruit, pour the combined pulp into a blender and blend it at low speed to separate the edible pulp from the seeds, filter the mixture with a wire mesh and collect the pass...

Plumeria A smell of plumeria's warm fragrance and I am back to Hawaii.  The beautiful plumeria lei and the trees full of yellow, pink and white flowers with fragrance hanging in the warm, moist air forever linked the plumeria with tropical Hawaii.  I liked the plumeria so much that I bought a small branch of plumeria in a plastic bag in the Honolulu airport.  The branch rooted in a pot and happily sent a few leaves and next year yellowish-white flowers appeared.  The plant was transplanted into my yard and it is 8-feet tall.  It blooms profusely every year and the sweet smell fills the garden.  I also bought a "Rainbow" variety with hues of pink, yellow and white on the same flower in a San Diego Plumeria Society exhibition at the Balboa Park.  It grows side by side with the yellow-white plumeria.  The"Rainbow" flowers are also fragrant, but not as strong as the other tree. The thick-petaled flowers  arrange themselves in a pinwheel fashion...