Before the lockdown, I had big plans for the garden. I had some work to finish and then I’d spend most of my days doing what I love most. Well, that sort of backfired. First of all, that work took a lot long longer than I thought (still not done). Then I started to feel sick and wasn’t even able to work in the garden and because of the lockdown it wasn’t possible to go anywhere else than the supermarket anyway, so buying potting soil and seeds was out of the question.
I have to admit this sort of sent me into a downward spiral towards depression again (that and some things I’d rather not talk about right now).
But… I am slowly feeling better now (fewer headaches, no more arrhythmias) and I’m working hard to snap out of that downward spiral. Gardening always helps a lot with that.

Three garden-related things that are making me very happy right now:

1. I went to Goisco yesterday and was delighted to find they didn’t stop selling products other than essentials and groceries. So I was able to buy potting soil, planters, and seeds (and I’m planning on going back for more).

2. My kitchen herbs are catching on. Okay, the chives are iffy, but I have thyme, parsley, peppermint (that’s the one below) and outside the frame there’s some rosemary too. I’m hoping to save the oregano I neglected when I was sick and I bought some tarragon yesterday.

3. Early this morning, T. and I worked together to give this dieffenbachia another chance to live. It was in a container but kept tumbling over. We’ll see if it makes better roots this way. It’s not exactly a useful plant (it’s toxic), but it’s beautiful (when it’s healthy) and I hate killing living plants. I love that T. knows this, agrees with it and helped me to do this.

Linking up with Carole’s Three on Thursday

We had the most wonderful weekend. Full of sunsets, swimming, friends, music and good food. And also some hard work away from the computer.
On Saturday morning I felt a bit (ahem, a lot actually) restless and stressed, but I decided to ignore my laptop and head into what will be my garden someday to attack the thornbushes in that space.
That was the right decision. I should have known there’s nothing better to work off frustration then clearing big spaces from weeds. Or thorns in this case.

My arms and legs are scratched and I’m still a long way from having that space completely cleared and ready for planting, but I do feel up to facing my e-mail and editing work again.

I told T. to remind me of this and to kick me into the garden when I mention I feel restless and stressed again. Garden therapy always works for me.

Wishing you all a good start to your week!

I’ve always wanted to grow my own food. And yes, I’ve done it too, for a while.

(writing that sent me to my blog archives. Remember this garden? I had to stop myself from digging too deep into the archives because I actually don’t even really have time to write this post, let alone read my own blog archives. I did find out that some older posts have missing pictures though because I deleted my Flickr account. Will have to fix that. Some day.)

I’ve also always wanted to grow medicinal herbs, but we used to live in a region that had so much pollution that I never really felt safe to do so.
Traveling and lack of time, energy and space made it hard for me these past few years, but now I’m dreaming again. After all, we have half an acre of land and that may not be enough to do real homesteading on, but it is plenty to play with.

Most of what you see here. behind the artificial grass, is my future garden, where I can plant whatever I want. It’s a lot bigger than it looks here. And then there’s the rest of our lot, that needs some landscaping. I think it would be fun to make a cactus garden with all different kinds of cactuses and succulents. And we need color. Bougainvilleas of course, but there must be some other possibilities too. All in good time…

Since we live in a completely different climate now, I have a lot to learn. But that’s part of the fun. Our coconut trees are growing steadily and we’ll probably have our first coconuts in about a year.
My first papaya tree needs to be planted soon, it’s growing really fast. The other seedlings need a bit more time, but they’re coming along too.
Two weeks ago I’ve planted an avocado pit and a kalbas. I’m watching it constantly, but so far, nothing has happened.

We already have quite a bit of aloë and agave growing here (it was here when we bought the house). I need to look into harvesting and using the aloë (there must be a way to keep it longer than a few days too) and I want to find out if the root of this agave is edible.

I found out I should have started growing a vegetable garden about now to be able to grow when there’s rain and to harvest before it gets really hot and dry so I have to skip this year. Next year I want to grow some corn and beans and maybe some zucchini, pumpkin and/or squash too.

Also on my list for next year: bananas, mangos, and soursops. Oh, and a lime tree (we use a lot of lime in our drinks). And I also want to try to plant a pineapple. How cool would it be to make a fruit salad or a smoothy with fruit from our own trees?

I would also love to find the edible kind of cactus that is indigenous here but isn’t growing on our land (the one in the picture is inedible but beautiful).

Oh, plenty of plans and dreams. But that’s part of the fun, isn’t it?

The area our house is (and a lot of other houses are) built on, used to be known as “Papaya Tuyn” (papaya garden) and is still officially called ‘Papaya bij Westpunt”. I can’t find a lot of information about it, but I don’t think they really grew papaya trees here. Still, I thought it was only fitting to try to grow them myself.
I just sowed some of the seeds of a papaya I ate, and that worked like a charm. The first batch was eaten by birds, but I have seven seedlings now. One of them is actually already past the seedling state and growing really fast. I’m not sure these will ever produce fruit (sometimes the seeds of fruit you buy in the supermarket don’t work for that), but I like seeing them grow.

I’m not particularly fond of the taste of papaya anyway, though it does taste so much better if you sprinkle lime juice on it. I do know it has a lot of health benefits though, so it’s worth trying to eat it regularly. The leaves can be used medicinal too, so these trees will be a great start for my dream of growing a Caribbean medicinal and edible garden.
I can’t wait till these are big enough to plant out! Not that I already have a garden lot ready for that, to be honest, but I’ll get to that soon.
(Really? Well, probably not, but a girl is allowed to dream big, isn’t she?)

After some very dry months, we finally got some rain around here. It was about time. Today I’m sharing three things happening in my garden since then (apart from thornbushes and weeds growing like crazy).

1. We thought this tree was dead. It obviously wasn’t.

2. My aloë is turning green again. I honestly thought it was a different kind of aloë, because of the reddish/brownish color. But that turned out to be a lack of water.

3. Yeah. This one I don’t understand. But it’s there, so clearly the soil was wet enough.

Linking up with Carole’s Three on Thursday

I was going to share some house updates today. You know, after one month of working on it. But this week… well, a lot has been happening, but we’ve not been able to even visit the house since Saturday. Of course, I could just repeat the list I made a few weeks ago and yes, there are things that I can happily cross off now. But I think it would be more fun if I had some recent pictures to go along with that and I just didn’t have time to take them. So that will have to wait.

Let’s talk about palm trees instead.

Living in the tropics you need to have at least one, don’t you think? Or actually, at least two, because you need two to hang a hammock.
Or maybe three, to hang two hammocks?

Palm trees are expensive though. Especially if you buy full grown ones. But our landlord had some in his garden and was kind enough to give us three coconuts to sow. Because yes, the nuts are the seeds. Sort of. The real seed is inside, but once it sprouts, it feeds off the water and the flesh inside the coconut until it’s strong enough to face the outside world.
It takes months before you see anything happening. We put them in the ground on March 2nd.

(we had some help from an expert, who taught us to bury them only halfway into the soil)

And then we waited patiently. And not so patiently. And then we were about to give up on them.

But on the 10th of May, we spotted this:

One of the nuts is actually growing something. It’s like watching an egg hatch. But slower. A lot slower.

May 23rd:

And yesterday (June 6th).

Bring on the hammocks!

(sadly the other two nuts are still not doing anything, but we still have hope they will eventually).

People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us. ~Iris Murdoch, A Fairly Honourable Defeat

I love my garden (even when it’s overgrown again, since I never find enough time to keep up with it), If – no wait – when we’ve sold the house, I’m going to miss it so, so much (but there will be other gardens, for sure).
Anyway, I’m going to pretend that’s why I’m going to take and post lots of pictures of my garden while we still live here…
Ofcourse my archives prove that I just love, love, love walking around in our back or front yard, taking pictures of buds, flowers and leaves – I guess my faithfull blogreaders just have to deal with it each summer. It wouldn’t be my blog without it.