Gardening
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Shangri-La Botanic Gardens: Orange, Tx
Great white egrets nesting Itea virginica and white ginger flower Bunny, something I don’t know, beaver dam, and green heron Pond covered in small and giant salvinia, an invasive exotic Banded water snake, Nerodia fasciata The same day we went to the Beaumont Botanic Gardens we drove over to Shangri-La Botanic Gardens to see what they had in store. This was an affordable garden, $6 entry for a regular garden tour and then $10 for a garden tour and a boat tour down a bayou to a few of their education centers and maybe to see a beaver dam or two! We opted for the $10 and arrived there when…
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Gayle’s Roses
My mother in law has beautiful roses and they are always blooming like crazy. She has some in the ground in the back yard but she also has these gigantic tubs of them in her driveway. One side of her driveway is lined in roses and the other in tomatoes. It’s a pretty neat way to drive into your garage! I’m a sucker for roses anyway. I would often go home from my grandmother’s house with a rose or two to stick in water at home. She had a great green thumb and it’s too bad she can’t get out and garden these days. Enjoy these Friday roses!
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Beaumont Botanical Gardens
On our Sunday off a week ago in Beaumont we took a trip to a few botanic gardens. One of them is a free to the public garden, the Beaumont Botanic Garden. We arrived too early to see the conservatory but we did a tour of the garden. I think the rose garden was the most stunning but they did have some other beautiful parts in the garden. Several people were taking graduation photos. We’re off for at least a week as we switch projects down in the Big Thicket but when we return we’ll drop by the conservatory and see what’s blooming in there.
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Moosie’s Garden & Dad’s Yard
My mom usually handles the flower beds and my dad is the yard guy. He’s the one who keeps it green, mows it regularly and had my brother and I, in the 100* summers of Texas, moving the sprinkler for spot to spot while we were at home. There’s nothing like running barefoot through the St. Augustine. Now the name Moosie formed for my mom back in high school. Somehow “mom” morphed to “moo moo” and then to Moosie. 🙂 Initially she thought she might use Moosie as her grandma name but she didn’t stick with it and went with Mimi. I’ve been weeding and planting and we’ve got the…
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Plot Happenings
Not our onion, someone else’s but it was too pretty to pass up. Several seedlings are getting their second leaves: The carrots… the dill… and the cilantro! Thinning out the okra… and the unlucky ones plucked out. A few of the plants that will give us the beautiful fruit that we’ll make into gumbo or be fried up…mmmm!
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Gayle’s Garden
After a year without a garden Chris and I now have two. Kinda. Our parents are kindly letting us help them with their garden, but I think they are rather enjoying the free labor. Ok, I suppose it is our due since we are enjoying room and board at each of their homes, but at least it is a pleasurable form of labor. Of course all of it is just making me wish I had an acre or two to plant a gigantic kitchen garden, build a greenhouse to grow all of the tropicals we used to, and to grow all sorts of interesting natives and bulbs. Until then we…
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Published!!!
This whole thing fell to luck, really. I happened to check my email in Orlando when we were on the Florida Trail and see an email from a woman who said she was with Woman’s Day magazine. Apparently she’d found a photo of a tomato of mine from a few years ago and wanted permission to use it in a special issue called Woman’s Day Garden and Outdoor Living. I was a bit suspicious so I did some Googling and found out that she was completely legit. I figured she might need a full res photo or something so I emailed her back and gave her my number since I…
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Sprouting
I went by the plot today to check on how things were going. The last we’d seen were that the carrots were up and the potatoes were thriving. This is the shed where anyone in the garden can use tools and organic fertilizers and pesticides. It is super organized with printed recipes for making the pesticides or fertilizers, too. My mom’s onions have been up for awhile and are doing great. We’ve got five tomato plants that we bought from the store. Chris got a bit overzealous with some orange oil for bug prevention and the next day two tomatoes looked to bite the dust. So, he replaced them a…
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365 Photos: Day 1
Tech info: ISO 200, f/5.6, 1/80sec, 55mm Chris started a bunch of tomato seeds the other day. We worked in the plot, too, planting lots of new seedlings including carrots, okra, dill, basil, parsley and cilantro. Grabbed a few already growing tomatoes to get a head start and put cages over them. Got some fertilizer going on them. Mom’s potatoes are coming up and her onions are thriving. I’ve been weeding out some of the flower beds in the backyard. A few more afternoons and I might have them done. One bed at a time! Anyone else growing anything?
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The Green Tunnel & Assorted Items
Green Tunnel from Kevin Gallagher on Vimeo. It really is like this! It was fun to look back and know exactly where some of these spots were. Ah, such a good trail. I’m getting Springer Fever a bit; it would be fun to watch all the thru-hikers for the year. Speaker was planning on hiking from Springer to Neels Gap in a week or two and see how all the hikers are doing. Ah, to be a fly on the wall of a shelter! Meanwhile I’ve also got Spring Fever. My mom and brother have garden plots in a community garden this year. Chris and I went out and started…