Gardening

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Mazatlán sultry summer Sunday

After our big rain last week (NINE inches in just a few hours!) it has cooled off a lot here – today the temperature in my kitchen hasn’t risen over 78 degrees! We don’t expect to see temperatures this cool until November!  We know it’s just a little break, but the whole city is enjoying the cool.  I think it’s probably perfect for surfers, with nice waves and some clouds to shield them from the sun.  The picture above is...

Guess what I saw at my tropical hummingbird feeder…

Last night I passed by the back yard hummingbird feeder in the dark.  It looked like something was on it. Check it out, above! Geckos are on the hummingbird feeder! I crept over for a look thinking it might be a bat.  You can see what I saw, above! Geckos! A trio of geckos hanging about on the empty feeder. Are they drinking the last of the nectar?  Or were there bugs by it that they were eating? I’ve written...

My tropical garden – Mazatlán hummingbirds

We have a new visitor to our garden this summer, a plain capped starthroat hummingbird!  (That’s a picture of him at the top of the post)  I knew right away it was a newcomer by the assertive way he flies and the white underside and patch on his back.  It took a little while to identify him – and I was grateful for the help of some birders at BirdForum.net. He’s a big bird, maybe even bigger than the cinnamon...

Summer is coming…

The last couple of days have felt warm. Not hot – blast furnace hot – like it can get in August or September. In August you can drive along with your hand out the window and feel the heat just like an oven. Right now it is warm but there is this little undercurrent of cool. Even though it isn’t super hot it takes a bit of time to adjust and I have been a bit woozy today, not feeling...

Another garden update

Well, it has been just over one year since we planted all the pots on our upstairs patio.  They had been growing quite happily when the tropical storm season hit and they were mauled by both a tropical depression and non-hurricane Rick.  All’s well that ends well, though, as you can see! At the top is what it looked like right after we finished planting: We’ve done a lot of rearranging and have even bumped a few plants to other...

Progress pics

Three years ago when we bought our house, the courtyard was a mess!  Above is a picture so you can see for yourself! We moved in here in September, and by October we were already having the courtyard overhauled.  If you want to see the step by step, visit the Photos page or click here.   The work was finally done around Christmas, and it wasn’t until February 25, 2008 that we actually planted the beds.  The pictures above and...

There’s no place like home…

We love visiting Adam and the family in Mexico City… but we are also happy to get home!  This time I had a severe headache for three days due to the altitude – 7,349 feet above sea level!  And of course  Mazatlán is at sea level!  Finally I visited Dr. Google and found that I should have been taking ibuprofen or tylenol instead of aspirin.  That did the trick!  But then my eyes were burning and my nose was dry...

I know, I know…

The handkerchief plant is even blooming now! I haven’t been blogging very frequently lately.  I think the enthusiasm for writing ebbs and flows, right now I have been spending more of my energy doing other things – knitting, reading, helping a friend with a new business, and getting back into the swing of wintertime social and cultural events. I am not working any more (at least for pay!) but Paul is – most days he works about four hours for...

This climate is amazing.

My last post was about Tropical Storm Rick and how all my plants had been affected.  Everyone said they would recover, and while I was hopeful, I was somewhat skeptical, especially with regard to the bamboo.  Take a look, above.  I am amazed.  I guess I knew the banana would do all right, but after just 4 days it already is sending up a new leaf! The handkerchief plant is recovering already. This is the bamboo that shows above the...

Our Sunny Mazatlan Patio

Our upstairs patio is hot and sunny. Last week it was time to get going on changing it from a bare wasteland with a few lonely pots to our own private oasis. Above is a picture of the patio, before. Last week I wrote about buying the pots in the post First Step In The Patio Improvements. Once the pots were all upstairs, Scott and Coco came over to arrange them and finalize the plant selection. We wanted some nice...

First step in the patio improvements

Our upstairs patio is only used in the evening because it is so sunny.  Well, in the winter we do go out there during the day, but evening is  when it sees us most, once the sun has gone down.  It’s a great place for lounging in the evening, looking up at the stars and listening to the sounds of the neighborhood. We’d discussed adding some sort of shade structure, but we came to the conclusion that we have plenty...

Gardening in the city

Paul and I love plants and gardening.  When we lived in the US we had ten acres and we worked outside all the time.  Part of the time we loved it but there were times where we realized we were working in the garden or yard so much we couldn’t do other things we enjoyed.  With our move to Mexico we decided that we’d try to be a bit more in balance. Our central courtyard was planted just about a...

Crazy plants around here….

Our bamboo is growing really well…and has actually sent off a shoot. I first noticed the new shoot on May 16. Here is a what it measured each day: May 16…….4 inches May 17…….8 inches May 19…….11 inches May 20…….13 1/2 inches May 21…….17 1/2 inches May 23…….25 inches May 24…….29 1/2 inches May 25…….33 inches May 26…….39 inches So, you can see from the above that it has been growing from 3″ to 7″ per day! And we haven’t...

A Tree Grows in Mazatlán

  I am reading (it is amazing to me that I hadn’t read it before) A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. It is a wonderful book, set in Brooklyn in the early 1900’s. I am loving it. The tree referred to in the title is one they called the Tree of Heaven. It grew in the worst possible soil and was the only tree that would even grow out of cement. I think México has a number of...