spiceoflife's Blog

I have this side yard that last year I let get taken over by volunteer tomato plants.  This year I decided that since I wasn't paying much attention to it anyway, I might as well just grow wildflowers and attract the birds and the bees.  So I cleared the area out and took a few packets of seeds that I had laying around - mixed wild flowers, foxglove, lupines, etc., (etc. you get the idea) and scattered them over the spot.  done.

Well, the other day, after what seemed like days and days of rain, I decided that my yard needed to have a little weeding done, just the beds, a little tidying up.  I worked my way around the house, slowly, taking my time, and suddenly I realized that I was in my sideyard pulling up all my new sprouted wildflowers.  Dummy! We'll see what hapens.  I left a bunch, but in all honesty, since I have never grown these before, I won't really know which ones are weeds and which are the "flowers" until they get around to blooming.  At least I'll be surprised.  lol

Oh, and something is eating some of the wildflowers.  The ends and tops of the plants are gnawed right off.  It's got to be that freakin' groundhog.  well, that's okay for now.  I really don't care all that much about the flowers and he's apparently pathologically afraid of stairs because he's yet to make it around to the front of my house wher eall the "good stuff" is.  I've decided to call him Gorca - half gopher and half orca, killing my plants by partially eating them, just for fun.  The jerk.

I think the third mango seed is dead, but I don't have the heart to pull the plug on it yet.

Opuntia (prickly pear) leaves are still doing nothing, not even rotting. Still weird.

Nothing yet on the mangosteens, I'm not optimistic here.

Two Avocado pits are sitting happily in small pots full of moist peat moss covered in a sandwich bag. I'm cautiously optimistic on these only because of how long they took last time.

I'm not sure what's going on with the lychee's/longan berries.  They are apparently very closely related and I have about half a dozen seedlings now and I didn't keep careful track of which seeds where in which pot.  So now I have what might be lychees and might be longan berries.  I'll let you know if I figure it out.

Sassafras is doing great. I'm going to need to up-pot it soon. 

My two walnut seedlings are doing great, too.  I was going to try bonsaiing them, but after doing a bit of research I found out that they don't respond well to the techniques.  I've decided to keep them anyway for now. 

That little maple seedling is doing GREAT in it's new bonsai soil and pot. I hope it works out. 

My dragonfruit plant that I put outside is looking horrible.  :-(  I'm going to need to give it a serious pruning.

Oh, and I almost forgot.  The malanga coco and the malanga blanco all didn't make it.  They rotted in the ground.  Good thing they didn't cost much. 

But what DID grow, and now looks pretty darn cool, is the sweet potato.  Cool color leaves.  I like this one a lot.

Pictures soon. ;-)