We enjoy spring in the garden. It is wonderful to see the new growth and change. Of course, learning a new climate, plants, bugs, and chores makes this a work in progress for us.

At the top of this post you’ll see our pot with three cantaloupe plants. They haven’t even bloomed yet but we are very hopeful that we’ll get a few lovely melons. They love the heat, and that’s one thing we can promise them!

Below is a picture of our schefflera (umbrella) tree. We planted it in a large pot several years ago, but by the end of winter it was root-bound and scraggly. Lots of the leaves were yellow and it just looked sad! Since it will likely wreck the pot to try to remove it we decided to chop it off and see if it would regrow. This tree is considered a weed tree, so I thought it might come back just fine. Take a look and see if you agree!

The following picture is of our plumeria, getting ready to bloom. The plumeria is has beautiful pearly pink fragrant flowers that in Hawaii are used to make leis. Here in Mazatlán they are bare sticks all winter, and I always notice them getting ready to bloom about the time all the snowbirds head home to the US and Canada. They miss such beautiful flowers! In nurseries here in México they are called Flor de Mayo.

I thought I’d show you how the tropics really accelerate growth. Last August I yanked out of the ground a Coral Bell vine that was in a bad location. Truly, I yanked it out of the ground. I got some roots, but not much. I replanted it where our maracuyá (passion fruit) vine had given up the ghost. We wanted something nice growing on this wrought iron – reused here from another project to block the view into our bodega (storeroom.) Look at it now! I love the beautiful blooms, and so do the hummingbirds.

I mentioned before that we had our palm tree trimmed and the blossom clusters removed. You might remember when we first bought this house the central courtyard was a mess. In the picture here you see it as it was – on the right side of the picture is the palm tree shown below. We haven’t even been here five years! Amazing, isn’t it?

You might have remembered when we remodeled our back yard that we put bamboo at one end to shield us from the apartment building that looms over us. While the birds loved it and it did give us the vertical (three stories worth) line we wanted, it was too much. It is very messy and was always clogging our gutters. Our neighbor didn’t like it either. So we asked Chuy to take all but one little patch out and in its place we relocated several of our pots from around the yard. We feel so much happier and to tell you the truth we don’t even care if we see the apartment any more!

So there you have it, a little tour of our garden this spring!