STATE OF THE GARDEN: 04-14-13

Well, progress in the yard still continues incrementally.

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.

And even after cutting it up and filling a 55 gallon can with debris, you still are left with this mess to deal with in upcoming weeks.

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 yellow pear tomato continues to fruit like crazy. However the tomatoes aren't my favorite. I need to get some seeds off my mother for the wild tomato she was growing last year. Those things were like candy!

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 love Roma tomatoes!

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.

Now I bought a Papaya awhile back. I hadn't put it in the ground yet, as I figured I'd wait until I got the bougainvillea and the fence done. Well, the other day I noticed all of the leaves were wilted on it. I have to assume that it was due to overwatering, but am surprised, considering it is said to like a "moist" environment.

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...

By T.Voekler (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

And this is what it looks like at a Dragon Fruit farm...

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.

STATE OF THE GARDEN: 1/28/13

I continue to deal with the bougainvillea that have taken over my fence, and are pulling it over with their weight. Since I worked on the other one for a couple of weeks and got it down to a quarter of its previous size, I decided to start on the one over by the mango.

Only the half free of the mango is in bloom. The rest hidden under the mango looks dead, but most is very much alive.

This bougie is growing into the mango.

While working on it, I discovered a bird nest from last season.

I mostly filled my 65-gallon horticulture bin with bougie debris, and removed perhaps a quarter of the plant.

It's a start. After that I cleaned out the bed over by the shed where I planted the grapevine, and put down some mulch. I started with dirt and weeds, as well as the rubber vine that grew from behind the shed and rooted down into the bed uninvited...

And my poor pitiful crape myrtle, which was also being taken over by the rubber vine. (Note that I believe the crape myrtle goes dormant in winter, and therefore looks dead right now. Usually it gets leaves and flowers in spring. It only has a few leaves right now. However I don't know whether it should be this bare. So we'll see whether or not it "springs" back.)

You'll also notice that all around the crape myrtle is this weed that grows in a carpet...

It's amazing that as you go to grab a handful, you find it is growing by runners, and a whole strip will come up...

And before you know it, you discover something like this cement pad is growing beneath it...

When I was done, this is what the bed looked like.

And this was my pile of debris (I have to be careful to not cut down more than the garbage guys will pick up. Last time we did a large amount of work, we had to bribe the garbage guy with $20 and load the debris into the truck ourselves to avoid paying hundreds to the claw truck for pickup.)

I also came across leeches in/on my bag of mulch. It was the first time I've ever seen leeches, other than in horror movies. They are creepy!

Otherwise this is what is going on around the yard:

My bean and pea seedlings continue to grow, but I had this one little guy that was slow to make an appearance.

But once they appear, they sprout up so fast. This was the next morning...

My yellow cherry tomato is growing like gangbusters right now, and more flowers are coming in.

My jalapeno pepper is growing, and a few flowers, but the plant isn't growing that much yet.

Same with the Better Bush tomato. The plant hasn't really grown, hasn't really flowered, and the two tomatoes on it haven't shown any obvious increase in size. Yet the Brandywine tomatoes that I sprouted from seed are growing around the outside of the cage.

The passion vine is loaded with new blooms every day, and still smells like grape juice!

I had put columbine flower seeds in this decorative vase. I keep checking for some sign of it doing something.

Now the other day I spotted a couple sprigs of green popping up. Trouble is, I can't know that they are columbine flowers. They could be weeds! Only time will tell.

My grapevine is doing well so far.

It's beginning to twine around the trellis.

These pictures were taken before I laid down mulch, and I swear that the vine looks to be a deeper green today, after the mulch and a good watering. Or maybe it is just the contrast of seeing it against the dark mulch that makes it look darker.

I also have a prickly pear cactus that was stuck against the back fence behind the shed, and I noticed yesterday that it is flowering as well.

I've started collecting the pieces from my mahogany seeds, hearing that they make good mulch. So I figured I could use them as mulch in some of my potted plants.

I also had to do a round-up of lubber babies. The nymphs are making an early appearance this year, thanks to our warm winter.

This was my third batch removed from the yard. I've already removed a few dozen. Smaller batches than I usually have, but earlier in the year.

The whole time I worked in the yard, Zook waited patiently.

By the time I was ready to go inside, he was falling asleep.

Such a good boy!

So I am slowly making progress on the yard. I dread when they rains begin, as that will mean mowing the yard at least once a week, and I'll have quite a time trying to keep up with the mowing and the weeding and everything else that is needed. (Mowing in 95 degree temps is absolutely no fun!) Ugh!