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!

Slowly but Surely

Well, the yard is coming along, little by little. I hired my cousin to come over and do some work around the house and yard for me. Remember behind my shed? That picture in the banner at the top of this blog? Well, this is it today...

And to the right of the shed has been so overgrown you couldn't see that there was an entrance there to go behind the shed. This is a shot from a couple of years ago, and the areas still looked like this, or worse...

While the bougainvillea is beautiful, it is nothing but thorns and a nightmare to work around, and makes entering that area behind the shed impossible. So we are working to get rid of it. This is what this area looked like after my cousin finished with it today...

And now my guava tree can finally see daylight...

My Bismark Palm can now be walked under, which will make it much easier for mowing...

And the garbage guys have their work cut out for them tomorrow.

I'm hoping that they pick up the horticulture. I didn't expect my workers to leave a huge pile of stuff like that!

The sink from behind the shed was quickly picked up, but there is still a gardening table waiting for someone to snag it up.

The deck has been cleaned up and looks like a deck again. One of these days, I need to grill out again.

So a lot has been done around here in the last week or two. And I'm exhausted, even though I'm paying someone else to do the majority of the work! What I can't figure out is what this was doing laying on my bathroom floor after they left.

How did a wasp wind up dead on the floor? All I can figure is it came in on my cousin without him even realizing it.

 I'll be interested to see what happens with the yard over time...

Reverting Back to Weediness

My Weedy Garden has been reverting back to its former self. I've been in my house for nearly two years now (how is that possible?!), and I still didn't own a weed eater. A family friend has come over a number of times over the last year+ to weed eat for me, keeping the yard under control. However he has had a lot going on, so I have insisted for awhile now that he not come over and help me out. So, in the meantime, the yard has become overgrown.

So I finally went out this weekend and bought myself a weed eater. I actually bought a cheap one a few months ago, but returned it after using it once. The thing wouldn't even keep running, and had no power.

This one, however, is full of power! Today I worked on the area behind the shed. I started with this...
...and ended with this...
Much better! That weed eater (a Tanaka brand) had no trouble chomping through weeds as thick as my pinkie.

That area behind the shed is a bit troublesome. I've mentioned in the past that the previous owners laid carpet remnants on the ground back there. Ugh! I think the weeds love the carpeting! One of my future projects is to pull up all of that carpeting, and then cover that back area with shell or gravel of some sort. That should be much easier to take care of!

Hallelujah for my new weed eater! It's been a long time coming. If you are looking for a good weedeater, I would happily recommend a Tanaka brand weed eater. It's affordable, powerful, and has a 7 year residential warranty. I'm gonna wear this thing out!

Garden Update: April 2010

Jeez! Has it really been 9 months since I posted here?! How is that possible? Well, the unruly garden is still unruly. We did some work in it today.

I've decided that the large ficus needs to come down, after a lot of debate and asking others for their opinions as well. The consensus is that the roots are a liability and will likely undermine the foundation. So Tommy started cutting off the ficus branches. Now is a good time to take it down, as the hard winter freezes caused it to lose at least half of its leaves.

Mom and I did a lot of weed-pulling, filling up a large 65 gallon can. Mom also lopped off some palm fronds, which got hauled out to the road.

One thing that has been going on in the yard is lubbers. I know. I always have lubbers. Only this time, it is baby lubbers. I first spotted them nearly a month ago, when I found about 30 of them around my swing and deck in the backyard.


Then a week or so later, I spotted a second nest in the...yucca?...located near my front door.

That's a lot of lubbers in my yard this summer! When Mom and I were pulling weeds today, we kept coming across lubbers scattered around the yard. I don't like to kill anything, and I also don't like to use chemicals around my place. So I decided to capture as many as I could and I'll release them in on a vacant lot on my way to work tomorrow. So I started collecting them in a jar. It was pretty tough, because as you let one in you would often find another would jump OUT of the jar! But in the end, I wound up with a jar of five lubbers!

So tomorrow morning a vacant lot will have five more lubbers, and my yard will have five fewer. I'll keep doing this, slowly getting down the lubber population without harming them or polluting the environment with pesticides.

The yard has TONS more work to be done, but at least I am beginning to get a vision. Things that I previously loved and refused to remove I am now planning on taking out. I want a yard that is low maintenance, and low water requirements. I'm considering doing some bromeliads for this very reason, like the ones that they have out at the bromeliad and orchid center.




Beautiful!

The mango has surprised me by blooming. We'll see whether it comes to fruition and I get any edible mangoes out of it.


I noticed the other day that something is eating up my loquat. Maybe the lubber babies? Today I bought a tomato plant and some herbs to start with. Next weekend I hope to plant some veggies in the garden bed.

I spotted Black Ivy (my black snake) recently, so she is still around and survived the winter. I also spotted a raccoon a few weeks back. Doh! I hope that doesn't become a problem.

Stay tuned! More to come!