HDYGG Summer in Dubai 2016

On my return from the UK after 7 weeks of travelling I discovered the neighbours had erected a fence at the back of our property. It looks OK and the more shade the better as far as I'm concerned but, did they really think it was ok to cut through the rope holding the Bougainvillaea upright and just leave it to cover the path and for me to sort out?

I'm NOT happy and I'm going to assume it will be a wasted activity going round there and asking them to rectify the issue, so I'm just going to tie it back up.

I've been amazed at what has grown since I've been away. Peter was only away for the last 3 weeks, so the garden and indoor plants have only been without water for less than half my trip.

Before

After

I'm going to let the ground cover take over for now, will be planing seeds directly into pots, inside the house to germinate where it is cooler and then move the pots outside.

Inside has faired a lot better but my hydrangea didn't make it, I'm planting it outside on the off chance it can be salvaged.

Empty pot where the hydrangea used to be. I'm surprised the basil has survived.

Only 1 succulent survived, the daffodil never flowered and the white pot at the back contains last years hyacinths.

I'll need to repot these plants, they're a bit wiry, but first I need another visit to the outdoor garden centre to buy some more pots.

Bringing the outdoors in, in Dubai with #HDYGG

I'm currently in the UK and enjoying the weather, to be honest it's just been too hot in Dubai since the  end of May when the temperature reached 50c. I escaped it for 3 weeks with a trip to Canada, but summer has just been so long and it's getting me down. The humidity is just awful at the moment, we wake up in the mornings to this. Condensation on the outside of the windows. 

Temperature 32c, feels like 46c and 85% humidity.

The week after the teen returned to the UK I felt like I was just hanging around waiting for my flight to the UK. I was housebound and fed up so I decided to go out, get out the house and stay indoors somewhere else. So I got hubby to drop me at the Mall of Emirates for a couple of hours while he went to work.

The mall is very light and open, it does have a feeling of being outside, with the glass domed roof, the tiles and water fountain and of course the air conditioning, but the reality is, you are still indoors.

There are plenty of flowers in the mall, but I'm afraid most of them were artificial and disappointing at that, they don't even look remotely real.

Apart from the restaurants and food halls, there is absolute no where to sit. Some of the other malls have comfy chairs, with power points where you can just sit and relax, without the pressure of having something to eat or the noise generated in the food hall.

So I decided to explore the shops after my 2nd cup of coffee and see what they had to offer in the way of flowers.

I fell in love with Zara Home, I spent most of my visit in there, but came home empty handed. I just couldn't decide what I needed, other than all of it.

Harvey Nichols window displays were pretty spectaluar and they were focusing on autumn fashions. I can only assume that their main clientele are from outside the UAE or travel frequently to colder climate. I loved the use of the roses in the displays. Unfortunatley, photography is difficult with all the artificial lighting in the mall and reflection of the other shops.

Dior are opening a new store and rather than use plain hoarding they had decorated it with beautiful flowers.

There were lots of lovely floral patterns around and I bought some of these wall stickers for another project I'm working on and almost bought one of the bags, but was saved by not being able to make up my mind on which one to have.

Of course Dubai do everything big and well. They even managed to bring a ski slope indoors.

I'm now trying to see if I can find this t shirt in a big enough child's size as i think it sums up all the hard work that is put into creating a garden.