Indoor Greenery

My indoor plants are for the most part self reliant!  Haha - no not really but they do not need a lot of attention which is a good thing.  I try to water them weekly and they seem to like that.  Today I watered and fed them and removed dead leaves and talked to them of course!  Here are pics of my pretty indoor garden!

My Fiddleleaf and its new corner which it seems to like!

This Philodendrom has been in the same spot for almost 5 years

This Ficus likes its new corner too!

Christmas Cactus needs a new pot! 

Grape Ivy 

This Ficus is over 13 years old!

Front view of my Philodendrum

Our newest edition from Carol's 70th BD party

This morning as I watered and tended my plants, I discovered that the grape ivy was drowning in water.  I had to take it outside and dump the water from the internal pot and of course I didn't give it any more water or food.  Several vines were dead and so I spent some time trimming it up and I will watch this one closely for overwatering.  Our newest little plant which is some sort of succulent type plant was one of the table center pieces at Carol's 70th birthday in July.  It rarely needs watering and I like the pot that Morris transferred it to and it seems to like its new home too.

After finishing up with the indoor plants, I did water and feed my outdoor potted plants which are plentiful as well as the flowering plants in the beds.  At this point I feel I'm done for the day with gardening and everything is happy including me!

Sunday Yard Work

Sunday is often a day we mow the lawn and do general clean-up around the yard because on Monday morning our trash and green waste is picked up.  So this morning both my husband and I got on our garden gloves and mowed the front and cleaned up and trimmed the front yard shrubs.  I enjoy it when we both are working together and it alway feels good when we are done and can see the fruits of our labor.

Here are some pictures of our porch.

My big beautiful Jade plant and a basketful of ivy and inpatiens

I love purple flowers and these keep blooming for months

Humphrey our cat enjoying the lazy Sunday afternoon

We have a very large porch and lots of flower pots to give it color!

A beautiful bougainvilla on our side yard

These shrubs need to be trimmed regularly to look good

All in all a very good Sunday in September.  Both the front and the back yards are in pretty good shape this week and all the maintenance has paid off and it is now time to relax and enjoy the fruits of our labor!

My Lemon Tree

In early 2014 two very good friends gave me a potted lemon tree as a gift to memorialize my mom who had passed away in October of 2013.  They had asked what I would like and I said a lemon tree would be perfect because my mom loved lemon, especially lemon desserts, and the tree would be a nice reminder for me.  For the first year I kept the tree in a pot but in 2015 we decided to plant it in the ground.  I though in the long term it would do better if it had a permanent home.  Last winter I did get several lemons off the tree and I was happy about that.  However, for the past 6 months or so the tree has not done much in terms of growth or blossoms.  I did some research last month and decided to change how we watered the tree.  We were watering often which I thought it needed but I have now changed to a weekly deep watering approach with a dry out at least for the first couple of inches of soil between watering.  This approach seems to have made a difference and I am now seeing leaf growth but also I have 4 blossoms!  Originally I saw just one blossom which put a smile on my face but today I counted 4 blossoms and I'm ecstatic.  I would like to think it is because of the change in how we are caring for the tree but perhaps it is all coincidental and this would have happened anyway.  

September 10, 2016 - Buds on my Lemon Tree

I also have been taking cuttings off of various plants and had taken a cutting off of my basil plant about two weeks ago.  It showed root growth within a few days and then the root growth went wild.  I did not take a picture of it before I planted it but my gosh it looked like a mustache!  I dipped the cutting in root tone and planted it today.  I also took another cutting off my big basil plant and will plant that as soon as it is ready.

September 10, 2016 - Basil cutting finally planted

My garden journal ...

I love to garden ... I think it is something I was born with.  My dad loved to garden when I was a kid and I remember watching him in the garden.  His mom, my grandmother, also was an advid gardener and I enjoyed spending time with her walking around the flower beds and checking on all of the beautiful shrubs and flowers.  So it may be innate, this enjoyment of the garden.

Our back yard is a beautiful landscape with so many trees and shrubs.  It is one of the things that made me want to buy this house.  However I haven't spent the kind of time in the yard that I have wanted to ... first because I was working full time when we moved in in 2012 and then after I retired in 2014 I was busy with other things.  The yard looked fine and my husband kept up the lawn and trimmed many of the shrubs so it looked good.  In 2015, I began to enhance our front porch with potted flowers and continued with that this year.  The porch is full of beautiful potted plants and the flowers are colorful and plentiful and look great as you are walking up to the house.

Several weeks ago, I decided to spend an hour or two out in the backyard every morning.  I didn't realize it at the time but it was a pivotal decision for me on many levels.  First, there is something healing and energizing about being outside in the cool of morning before it gets hot and dry.  Second, working a little every day was just what the yard needed.  I began trimming and cleaning up the shrubs around the yard and then began work on the trees.  I carved out spots where a little color would be pretty and planted impatients in those areas.  The yard is coming along and I feel a deep connection to it.

I don't have before pictures to show the improvements and that is okay.  It is like getting a haircut and I'll need to continuously trim and prune these shrubs and trees as time goes on.

A little pot in the flower bed with coleus and inpatiens.  

This area was really overgrown to the point you couldn't see the rocks.

Windchimes in the birch tree

The rock on the left was almost completed covered by the wheeler shrub

The walkway is now cleared of overgrowth

This Japanese Maple is doing well

Herb pots which need to be cleaned out

Jade plant is a starter off another big plant and doing well and coleus doing well in strawberry pot