California 5 Scotland 0 (Garden Paradise #2)

To be fair, then, here's what's happening in my garden today.

There are tiny wee green tomatoes on the Sungold tomato plant:

And since it's a Sungold tomato plant - ie yellow when ripe - green is halfway there.  So, to recap for anyone who hasn't had their heart smashed to rubble and their hope ground to dust gardening in Scotland, there are tomatoes on the way to ripeness, in May, outside, in the ground (not in a greenhouse or in a Gro-bag on the landing window).

Also, this:

Unimpressive, you say?  Small and boring?  Sidey-ways?  Okay, I'll give you sidey-ways, but this - gardening friends -  is a row of sweetcorn.  And for Scottish people old enough to remember when sweetcorn grew in tins (like peaches) this is a choir-of-angels kind of thing to see outside your back door.

Not to mention this:

It's an orange, in a tree, and unlike in my childhood it didn't get there because someone sneaked it out of the fruitbowl and flung it into the branches to see if it would stick and then got a bad row for wasting food.  For instance.

Which leaves the two big ones.  Beyond exotic, the closest gardening ever gets to glamour, worth immigrating for, I give you . . .

 . . . a prickly pear cactus, newly transplanted from a rooted cutting, bursting into blossom.  A prickly pear, I tell you.  A fruit so exotic it was never even tinned.  A cutting not withering in the May frosts.  A plant blooming days after being moved (instead of paying you back for your presumption by rotting and stinking and giving you something to skid on and break your ankle).  I'll report on the pear harvest in ten days, I expect.

And finally. . .

. . . okra.  [fanfare]  Okra!  It should always have the exclamation mark, like Oklahoma!  Okay, I only eat it once every five years when it's on a no-choice menu and I have no idea how to cook it and every time I've ever had it's been slimy.  But . . . Okra! 

Toto, we're not in Kilmarnock any more.