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Propagating African Blue Basil
Ignore the old masking tape tags there…. I started taking cuttings of my African Blue Basil in hopes of containerizing it for the winter and replanting in the spring. The plant won’t take a freeze, as evidenced by the plant I bought last fall dying last winter, so I thought I’d help continue on this plant’s existence in our garden by rooting cuttings. Since this variety of basil is sterile, it does not produce seeds and cuttings are the only way to continue its life. Previously I had tried rooting them in water only to have the leaves brown in a few days. This time I just stuck them in…
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Compost Bin Update
As I was putting plant materials on the right side of the bin yesterday evening I thought that I’d post a short update on how the composting is going. You can read how it was built and what it looked like when it was started for a frame of reference. As you can see we’re adding to the right now and the left has reduced considerably. The left was having difficulties getting going but an addition or two of grass clippings from my dad (thanks Dad!) helped speed things up this summer. Paired with regular watering and turning, I think we’ll be able to use the left side in a…
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Backyard Birding
The waterbody we live on is named a lake but really it is more of a pond. There’s another pond adjacent to this one with a few other houses on it as well and it also has a lot of wildlife. Here you see a single roseate spoonbill and a plethora of black bellied whistling ducks. The ducks are very fun but noisy. Sometimes I can hear them inside my house at 11pm or later, just whistling away! I have no idea what they are up to at that hour, but so they are sometimes. (OK, according to multiple resources they are nocturnal feeders. There ya go!) I took a…
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Waiting for Fall
Just a few trees and plants are beginning to work themselves into fall foliage changes. Some are just calling summer ‘done’ and switching over to hibernation in favor of not putting up with the drought any longer. The ones that are truly beginning to turn colors are the mulberries like the one in our backyard. I remarked on Sprout Dispatch that I’m really enjoying this change, this tip of the switch between seasons. I am ready for Autumn. Puttering about the garden the other day I found the mimosa tree still putting out blooms. I’ve seen hummingbirds and swallowtail butterflies enjoying the nectar from the flowers. Walking near the edge…
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On Writing A Book
Writing is hard. Much more difficult than I imagined. And it’s not like I’m writing a completely made up fiction story here, I’m writing about something I actually did. Two years ago, late summer 2011 at about the same time of year it is now—the sun adjusting its position in the sky, the flora preparing for a time of rest—I decided I’d write about our thru-hike of the Florida Trail. Back when we started on the Appalachian Trail in March of 2010 I’d decided before the hike that I was not going to go into the hike with the intent on writing a book. There were already a lot of…
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Miracle Fruit Season
Our miracle fruit tree (Synsepalum dulcificum) is looking a bit like Christmas with the deep red fruits decorating the tree and contrasting greatly against the lush green leaves, like lights at Christmas. I went and checked on them last night and pulled this handful off the tree and there are several more that have ripened today that I will go pick in a bit. Nothing like a fresh lemon eaten after gnawing on a few miracle fruits first! Mmmm! I’m going to save a few seeds for our friend Christine who requested some to start and I think I’ll plant the others so maybe we can have a little grove…
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Cibolo Creek
I’m trying to finish going through some photos from Memorial Day weekend when we went to the Texas Hill Country. The first part of the weekend happened to be a little rainy. One of those days we stopped by Cibolo Creek a place we’d been to before three years ago when we did a Texas road trip, camping at various state parks from the Panhandle to the Texas coast. The nature center had changed a bit since we’d visited, a new building for nature education was built and the road entrance was improved considerably. While the creek itself was flowing rather lazily at the time we went, there was evidence…
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Snakes: Friends Not Foes
Over the weekend a friend of mine had a snake in her yard which she ended up killing due to its being near where her dogs were located. She didn’t know if it was venomous or not at the time and later posted a photo of it which her friend identified as potentially a rat snake, to which I conconcurred it likely was. Now, I’m not writing this to pick on my friend, but it really was a bit of a tipping point for this post to be written as I’ve read several different items from other people in the last year about snakes being killed by people who felt…
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Kombucha Fun
For the uninitiated into what kombucha is, here’s a run down. Last week when I was at my parent’s house for my grandmother’s funeral I mentioned to my brother and sister-in-law that I wanted to try their kombucha. Stephanie, my SIL, had received a ‘mother/SCOBY’ as a present for her birthday. They’ve been happily brewing kombucha ever since! Now the SCOBY has split enough that she could share so I was gifted a jar of fermenting tea and SCOBY. Last night was my night to pour it into Ball Jars and flavor it how I wanted and start a new ferment. I opted to keep the new ‘baby’ with the…
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Down By The Pond
We’ve had a group of Great Egret’s starting to roost around the pond and sometimes they come to hang out in our trees down by the water. Of course now this makes it difficult for me to photograph without scaring them off, which is what happened last night. I managed to get a few half-decent shots of them flying around. I spotted this Argiope spider hanging out in the overgrown vegetation along the pond and rethought my plans of cleaning out the vegetation along the shoreline. I was planning on trying to remove some alligator weed and few other overgrown plants to clear up the edge a little so that…