I am still slowly cutting down the bougainvillea. This is a slow process, not only because it is hard work cutting through thick branches with a hand saw and then trying to pull down 8 and 10 foot lengths that are wound all over, but because I can't leave a large pile at the road, or I'll have to pay for the crane truck to pick it up. So it needs to be done in manageable batches.
You can't tell in this picture, but there are three large branches cut clean through here. But this plant is so wound around on itself and thorny that it is a challenge to pull those branches out. Grab hold of that big one hanging in the middle, plant your feet and PULLLLLLL...
... and there's a chance that nothing will happen. So you cut another and another and try to remove the smaller ones and clear it enough to allow the big ones to pull free. Then you wind up with stuff like this sitting in your yard.
After working on it for an hour or two, I have it down to about a half of it's beginning size yesterday.
And there is the other one I worked on a few weeks ago. I got that one down to about a quarter of it's initial size.
Once I can get these cut down, I'll try to kill the stumps. Then hire someone to come reinforce the fence, as these devils are pulling the fence down!
And last weekend I finally did something with the bed around the mahogany out at the shed.
I believe that I've correctly identified this vine as Virginia Creeper. It keeps popping up around this tree, and I worried it was poison ivy. Hopefully I'm right, as I will be digging around here a lot.
So I planned where my flowers would go. I got some colorful cosmos to put around the tree trunk, and yellow lantana for the rest of the bed.
While digging around, I turned up some old egg shells from my snake nest that got raided by the raccoons or something else.
I used mahogany shells as mulch in the bed.
In the end, I was left with a slightly more cheerful landscape than before.
(That shed really needs pressure washing!)
Now it's just a matter of keeping it watered well enough to become established. Both of these flowers are considered drought tolerant, I believe. So we'll see how they do. I did this last weekend.
As for my little veggie garden, a couple of the dwarf snow pea plants have suddenly decided to bloom.
My passion flower continues to bloom non-stop. It smells so good!
My new pimiento sweet pepper plant that I got last weekend is full of peppers.
I have a few strawberries coming in. Since putting up some red Solo cups as a distraction, the birds have been leaving my fruit alone.
My sunberries hadn't been doing much after sprouting up a few inches. Then one day I thought, "Hmmmm. They're called "Sunberries". Maybe I should put them more in the full sun!" I think after doing so they began flowering within a week and had grown another inch or two. Now they are continuing to bloom and continuing to grow, probably about 6 inches tall now.
I imagine I would have some pretty small berries if they begin to fruit when they are still so small!
My cilantro is turning into a rangy weed! It's large and flowering like crazy! I may try cutting it back, and see whether I can get anything out of it, or if it is kaput.
My Better Bush tomato plant is finally fruiting, after remaining almost dormant since the last couple of tomatoes got eaten by the birds. Right now I have four tomatoes growing.
I also bought a little Roma tomato plant last week which is flowering and has one small tomato now growing.
I planted a couple of Big Red Ripper Pea plants here when I planted everything else. These plants have suddenly started to really grow, but have yet to flower and produce anything.
While right next to them are two of the most pitiful bean plants you've ever seen, brown and leafless, with a single Garden Bean dangling.
So I moved it into the sun and it seems to be coming back. We'll see how it does. Then I want to get a couple more to plant alongside it.
And yesterday my mother and I attended the annual fruit tree sale. I didn't buy any fruit trees, but I did walk away with a Dragon Fruit cactus, for which I've had my eye out.
I've never tried Dragon Fruit, but it looks interesting, and it is supposed to be easy to grow and care for. This is what the fruit looks like...
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| By T.Voekler (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons |
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| By Dragfyre (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons |
Now I just have to figure out what I want to do with my cactus, and how to grow it. It grows up with stalks that get too heavy to support themselves. So you need to grow it on a support like a vine.
Otherwise my jasmine is beginning to bloom. In the next couple of weeks, it will smell so strongly of jasmine around my place that you'll be able to smell it out at the front of the house as you walk up (even though the vines are at the back of the house).
This little self-introduced pothos likes my old ficus stump. I have no idea where this thing came from. It just popped up after the tree was cut down.
My gardenia is looking big and healthy, but a little rangy. I probably need to prune it, if I can figure out what it should look like!
It currently has a single bloom...
...but dozens of buds are just waiting to open. So soon it should be swimming in blossoms!
My next big project, after finishing with the bougainvillea and repairing the fence, is to rip out this old raised bed that came with the house, and the rubber vine growing on the fence behind it.
Then I'll try to clean up this area a bit and turn this into my "fruit" area. This is the sunniest spot in my yard, and it is too hot to grow vegetables. But I think it would be a good spot for citrus and berries. I've also thought of trying to get rid of the grass and weeds as well as I can and then planting some peanuts here as ground cover. But I don't know how possible that would be.
So it all continues slowly. Two steps forward, one step back.
