Cherry Guavas, the Side Yard, and a Lilac Rose

The Last of the Cherry Guavas

These fruits are known both as cherry guavas and strawberry guavas.  I think they look more like cherries than strawberries, so I tend to call them cherry guavas.  I picked the last of this year's fruits, yesterday, and ate them all for breakfast!  The whole fruit is eaten; there are small hard seeds that are generally swallowed whole.

The cherry guava tree grows in my side yard.  Side yard is actually a fancy name for a strip of land,  barely 5-feet wide, which runs along the side of my house and the wall that separates my property from my neighbor's:

 

The Side Yard

Currently, there are two trees which grow in this side yard (at one time, I had 3 or 4 white oleander trees growing here, but I had to remove them when I needed to replace the sewer line which also runs along the length of the side yard; later, I had a clump of sugar cane growing, but it died during the 2nd or 3rd year of the drought).  The tree in the foreground is a feijoa or pineapple guava tree:

Feijoa/Pineapple Guava Tree

The ripe fruits fall off the tree and lie on the ground until I pick them up; there are still more fruit on the tree:

Feijoa Fruit

The cherry guava tree grows in front of one of the dining room windows:

Cherry Guava Tree

It hasn't done too well since my new neighbors raised the wall from about 4 feet to 6 feet - too much reflected heat, I think, although the privacy is much appreciated.  And this drought has been really hard for it.  There were lots of fruit:

Desiccated Fruits on the Tree

 But they are all desiccated on the tree!

 

More Desiccated Fruit

 And lots of dead branches:

Lots of Desiccated Fruit and Dead Branches

But, there's new growth, which is encouraging:

Fresh New Growth

I will discuss pruning the tree, this winter, with my gardener. 


Further down, between the side yard and the front garden, there is another feijoa/pineapple guava tree.   This tree was showing signs of stress from the drought and didn't bear any fruit, this year, but I've been watering it and it seems to be reviving.

Another Feijoa/Pineapple Guava Tree

There is a third feijoa/pineapple guava tree, growing in the back garden.  The side wall used to be only as high as this metal fence, about 4-feet high. 

The side yard looks very stark, doesn't it?  At one time, I wanted to grow wild flowers, here, but that didn't work out too well.  Another time, I thought of landscaping it to resemble a dry creek bed, but never did it.  Need to think about doing something here.

But, just to show that it is not all desiccated fruits and dried up branches:

Lilac Rose

The lilac rose bush in the back garden has a new flower!  :)

Do you have a side yard?  Is it a narrow strip of land like mine, or something wider?  Do you have anything growing there?  Is it landscaped?  Do you have any suggestions for my side yard?