Bananas and more bananas

Yesterday I went to cut another bunch of bananas and I saw that some creature has been eating some! They are not ripe but I guess they still eat them. I hope it is not a rat! I am scared of them and if I know there is one in the garden I won't be able to go out. Anyways, it looks like I am going to have to cut the whole stalk and bring them into the patio. I am hoping to cover the bananas with chocolate and nuts and freeze them.

I saw that the middle banana tree has another flower and some small bananas. This will be the second time if flowers and now we have bananas in all 3 trees. The one that has the big stalk has another one but they are still young.

The little bananas are good!

Two days ago I went to check on the small bananas and I saw that a couple were starting to turn yellow. I took the stalk to hold it while I tried to cut one bunch and the whole stalk came out the tree. We have been eating them and they are very sweet. They are very small and fat, much better than the bananas from the middle, tall tree.

Chaya and more bananas

I don't know if this passion fruit is the edible kind

My healthy chaya tree. I think this one is chaya also.

Bananas!!

It is too hot for me to go outside and work in the garden. Things don't look too bad but I need to work there one of these days. I need to cut back the cotton plants, the branches are very long. They are not flowering now so it should be a good time.

I saw that the banana tree had fallen to the side because of the weight of the banana stalk. I can't wait to eat them. I also saw that there was a flower bud in another tree (the same tree but another trunk?) I love them!!!

I also decided to eat some chaya. Lisa from GardenWeb gave me the cutting last year and it has grown very well. She told us how to cook it so I did it yesterday. You need to boil the leaves for 10 minutes and then discard the water and boil again. The leaves have some toxic substance that evaporates with boiling. The leaves were very thick and I didn't think I was going to like them but when I tasted one it was not bad. It doesn't really have a flavor and I liked the consistency, it felt like I was eating something substancial, not a green.

I looked for recipes online and found out that they use chaya in Mexico, in the Yucatan peninsula. I think it comes from there. I need to try some of those recipes. I ate some boiled chaya with olive oil, salt, pepper and some okra that I had cooked with tomatoes and onions. It was good. I liked it a lot. I had some chaya left and some brown rice so I decided to make a rice salad for dinner. I chopped the chaya, shredded a carrot and mixed them with the rice. Then I put some walnuts, mayo, mustard, lemon juice, honey, garlic powder and pepper. I liked it a lot. Later I put some curry powder and I liked it even better.

It is already August!!

It always surprises me how fast time goes by when I see that I havent' posted in a couple of months. We left for Guatemala on June 14 and the garden was all by itself for almost a whole month. I put all my potted orchids and house plants among the garden plants and just hoped for the best. I imagined some of the plants were going to die but I could not do anything. We were still only allowed to water the lawn and garden 1 time a week so the only thing that could help was rain.

Well, as soon as we came back from the airport on July 12 I went to see the garden and found almost everything in great shape. Everything was so green and lush! It always amazes me how well the plants do without my supervision. Maybe they like it better this way. It looked like it had been raining quite a lot. One of the orchids was about to bloom so I brought it into the screened patio but I left the other plants outside. It was too hot to do anything else. That is one thing I am still missing from Guatemala, the wonderful weather!!

We had a couple of surprises! The banana stalk had fallen and it was just resting on the ground but the bananas were still green. I cut one bunch and brought it inside. It took them 4 or 5 days to ripen. Don didn't like them much but Titi and I thought they were very good. We cut some other bunches but at the end I did not realize they had all ripen at once and some were too soft by the time we cut them. Well, the surprise was that the other two banana plants had bananas in them too. The one on the left has a lot of them and they are bigger in size. The one on the right has only a few but they seem to be small and fat ones, very different from the ones we just ate. I did not know we were going to have success in all 3 plants!!! Very happy about it!

Hydrangea!

My small Hydrangea is blooming! I moved it to the north side of the house and I was afraid it was going to die but it seems to have survived. It is still pretty small but it has pink flowers now. I love it!

The blackberry lily is blooming too! It looks great next to the Firebush (Hamelia patens) and the birdhouse. Well, it is more like a lizard house. I got the idea from Nicki from GardenWeb. She has some beautiful birdhouses in her garden. This one I got at a thrift store and Don attached it to a wooden post that I got from HD.

I think we are going to miss the bananas. We will be leaving for Guatemala on Thrusday and I am afraid they might be gone by the time we come back. We did get two figs from one of the potted figs. They were delicious. Titi and I shared them. I could eat hundreds of them so I hope they new fig cuttings I got from Lisa will take. The mulberry cuttings from Tony seem to be doing well. They looked dead but I just saw some green coming out.

I planted some okra seeds and they are starting to grow. The Swiss chard is growing again. They are in the small window boxes and they looked dead but they are growing again!! I might have it for dinner tonight.

What's new in the garden

I have been watering by hand the plants I got at Ricky's plant swap last Sunday. The mulberry cuttings I got from Tony don't look good but I am hoping they will survive. I also have 3 fig cuttings that look almost dead but hopefully they will recover. There is also a Rose Mallow that I got from Treefrog and it keeps loosing leaves. I am hoping it will make it.

I also got 2 bananas and the fig cuttings from Lisa, bromeliads from Tony, a Kaempferia, orange jazmine, a begonia Nelumbifolia and even a staghorn fern!! from Lady, a small Hibiscus Acetosella from Cindee, some cute coleus from Kat, a Jatropha and scented geranium from Lorraine, a couple of walking yellow iris, coleus and brugs from Wannarun and Stokes Astor from MsMarion. I was able to plant somethings last week and I am hoping to work more later in the day.

Here are some pictures of plants in the garden.

Broccoli. I planted more seeds but only this one grew large. We should be able to harvest it soon. I don't remember when I planted it. I am going to plant it earlier this fall/winter.

Bromeliad bed

My little hydrangea.

Rain!!

The garden is happy because it finally rained for two days. It is such a relief! Everything was looking so sad.
The bananas!


The last amarillys flower on the stalk.

A new cane on this ground orchid. It has been blooming since January.

I have purple passion fruit flowers in my trellis. They are so beautiful. I think they are the edible fruit kind. I wish I could keep better track of my plants. I think Lisa from GardenWeb gave me the small plant but I am not sure (like always!).

I have lots of volunteer cherry tomatoes everywhere, even on the sides of the compost bin. They are fruiting and I have been eating some when they ripe. I have had to cut them when they are green and let them ripe in the kitchen counter because if not the birds get them first.

I finally worked in the garden for a while yesterday. I trimmed the banana trees and most of the plants around the pool enclosure. We are going to have more water restrictions and starting next week we will only be allowed to water the lawn and plants once a week. Now I wish I had more drought tolerant plants in the front.

My plants need water!!

I have neglected the garden and it doesn't look good :-( We need to hire somebody to redo the sprinkler system because it looks like it is not working in many areas. We haven't had rain and there are water use restrictions so everything looks very dry. We are only allowed to water the lawn and garden on Sundays and Thursdays and I was not here on Sunday so I did not see if the sprinklers were working. I can't wait until tomorrow when I will be able to water everything.

I have been watering the plants in containers from water I have been collecting in the kitchen. It is a lot of work but it is worth it. Yesterday I got the box of vegetables from the farm so I washed everything in a big plastic container and saved the water in a bucket and I used it to water plants.

I am so happy because HGTV is showing again Gardener's Diary. That is my favorite program on TV. I watch very little TV but I make sure to watch that one. They show the most amazing gardens!!

The bananas we got seem to be finger bananas. I think that Lady gave me the plant. All the stalks are open and now I guess I should wait until the mature a little.

What's blooming in the garden

We went to see the bananas yesterday and saw that 4 more bunches were open. They don't have many bananas in each one so we don't know if they are the plantain ones. It is so cool to see the stalk open and the little bananas with flowers at the end.

Lots of things are starting to bloom. The candlestick cassia is getting flowers, the yellow ground orchid still has flowers, the amarillys that flowered last year has two more buds, one about to open, the magenta epidendrum is still flowering and has two new stalks of flowers. I got two roses, new black eye susans, the yellow alamanda, the porterweed, the cotton,

In the front I have in bloom a vanda orchid, pentas, bouganvilla (sp?), bulbine, society garlic, white iris and the glory bower. It looks very pretty.

We have bananas!!

Last week I noticed that one of the banana plants had a flower stalk and I got very excited. Well, yesterday I went to see it and it is now open and you can even see small greeen bananas coming out! The kids were very happy to see it and I hope they will leave it alone. They kept asking me if they could touch them.

I don't know what kind of bananas these are. I got small plants from Lisa and Robin at the plant exchange but I mixed them up. One of them is a plantain, another small bananas and I don't remember the other one.

I have a collection of orchids!!!

Last week I went to Wal Mart and like always, I went in through the garden section. I went to see the plants but I decided not to buy anything since I am trying to save money for my trip to Guatemala. I went inside and bought some groceries and then, right when I was leaving I saw some orchids by the door with a sign that said 97 cents. I asked one of the employees if that was right and he said yes. I ran to the car to put my bags away and went back to get some. I bought 15!!! Right then other people discovered them and they were gone in a minute. I got most of them!! Now I have a collection. They were not flowering but they were very healthy and they were in a small clay pot.

I didn't have time to look at them so I just put them on the ground next to the ground orchids. Today I finally looked at them closely and saw that one of them had one bud! I had to repot some of them because they had a plastic pot inside the clay one and were getting too much water from the sprinklers. It looked like the roots were starting to rot in 2 or 3.

I am so happy!!! Now I have 21 orchids!! I put them in a wooden table in the screened patio but I need to get something better.

Cotton

The 3 cotton plants I got from Misti had cotton in them but I had not had time to cut it. I finally did it today and got a bunch of seeds and a bunch of cotton. I am going to use the dried up bud to decorate a wreath next year. I saw some very nice Christmas decorations made with dried plant materials and they were very cool, like Titi would say.

The yellow ground orchid is still blooming a lot. It is next to the Chinese rain bell (strobilanthes flaccidifolius) plant I got from Arabesque and they looks amazing together. The flowers are magenta and so pretty. I am so lucky to have it.

Bricks

I asked Don if it was possible to build a patio for the kids in the garden and since we were going to do some other work around the house, the contractor agreed to do it. They already delivered the bricks so it should be finished soon. It is going to be very large so they kids can run around in their scooters or bycicles and we are going to put the basketball hoop there. I am happy because I am going to have more areas to landscape.

My clerodendrum quadriculare is blooming now and it looks beautiful. This is the first year that they bloom well and I am very happy.

I weeded in the back but there are still hundreds of dandelions everywhere. I need to put newspaper and mulch everywhere or the weeds will invade everything!!!

Carmen

Back to the garden

After many weeks of not gardening, today I was able to work in the front beds. I weeded and planted the bulbine that Mimi gave me for Christmas and I put two other plants variegated (can't remember the name) near the walking iris. I had them in the north side of the house so they were not getting any sun but I have seen them in full sun and I hope they will make it there. They will get morning sun.

I also mulched a little but like always, I ran out of soil and I didn't finish planting and I could not continue mulching. It was also too hot to be in the sun so I need to do it another day once there is shade in that side.

I also weeded the lawn in the back. My gosh, there are hundreds of dandelions! I am going to put mulch under the swing set since there are so many weeds there and I am hoping that will help a little. I took so many dandelions that when I went to take a shower and closed my eyes, I could see the shadow of a dandelion. The image was stuck in my brain.