Next was the Century Plants (Agave Americana). These are evil little buggers. These are related to the Blue Agave, the plant used to make tequila. I thought they were cactus. I ripped out the first one by hand. Used a hatchet and a shovel, took me about half an hour. A lot of work. The next day I had a horrible rash up both my arms. I thought it was because I got poked a couple times. Lucky for me I have really powerful prescription cortisone that almost cleared up the rash completely overnight.
So the next weekend I had three more to take out. I did these three with my gas pruner. Took out all three in ten minutes without getting cut but again got a horrible rash. This is when I decided to investigate what I had there and I found out they are not cactus but they are Century Plants. These things grow looking kinda like aloe for 7-10 years before blooming. Then they grow a 40 foot tall stalk with flowers (the stalk is what they use for tequila in the Blue Agave or in this plant for a syrup or sugar substitute), and they die after they bloom. Well, I'm glad they are gone. They are evil. I don't have a current picture of my butterfly garden but I have replaced the Century Plants with pentas and butterfly weed. Next month I want to tear out all the grass around the butterfly garden and replace with a flower called wishbone, aka, bluewings. Those are annuals and in Miramar I planted just one. I came back from vacation and it was dead but a couple weeks later I had 200 of them. So maybe at the end of this month I'll take on that project.
I planted 8 pine trees in my yard. I bought them from some kid in Parkland. He was selling them for 2 bucks a piece so I got 8 of them for 15 bucks. I accidental cut one of them in half with the weedwhacker though. It pulled me in and next thing I knew my tree was cut in half. Oops :( I also accidently cut a sprinkler in half with the weedwhacker by the pool pump. This is good though because the sprinkler was just watering the pump. Morons installed it. When I replaced it I raised it up 2 feet so now it actually waters my lawn and my Papaya tree.
The same day as that I was mowing my lawn for the first time. Apparently a self propelled mower can pull you into a canal. I learned that I need to do things the slow way and hit the canal straight on, pull the mower back, side step, and repeat. I was trying to go with the canal and I fell in. I was just walking and next thing I knew the mower hit a bump and pulled into the canal. The mower is fine, only one wheel got wet. But I had to jump in to save the mower. My whole left leg and half my right leg went in, I pushed the mower up, hit the gas, and it pulled me out. Natalie and her sister were in the kitchen watching and laughing. I learned that my yard is bigger than I though. A whole hour just to push the mower, without the bag. I'm going to have to start using the bag on half of the yard though because when the wind kicks up all the grass starts blowing in my pool.
I took down the baby guard around the pool. I figured I wouldn't need that until the baby is big enough to get into the pool which is for quite a while. I'm keeping that in my garage attic. It makes the yard and pool area look a lot more open. Of course, previous blog, I also acid washed my pool last weekend.
I cut out the evil juniper tree in the front yard and replaced with a nice fragrant ginger plant. It's still small but buy summer should be a nice full plant loaded with flowers. My yard can actually look tropical instead of Mediterranean.
I have been doing a lot of planting. I have a picture of the side of my house, not current though. My veggie garden is full and I just added more bananas and sugarcane. Once I crop some sugarcane this year I take a stick with 4 nodes, place it on it's side, cover in soil, and I'll get four more. My banana trees will reproduce like crazy on their own. One tree turns into 5 in a year. Here is a complete inventory of my fruits and veggies. Hopefully in another month or two I won't have to buy produce anymore.
Summer Squash
Cucumber
Watermelon
Beef Steak Tomatoes
Roma Tomatoes
Cherry Tomato
Sugar Cane
1 Ice Cream Banana Tree
1 Kru Banana Tree
1 Red Jamaican Dwarf Banana Tree
10 Manzano Banana Trees
2 Passion Fruit vines, both yellow and purple
an unidentified mango tree
Madame Francis Mango tree (Haitian mango, one of the best. the ones in the store are crap, Tommy Atkins Mangoes. They are only sold so often because they are very durable. 3 out of 5 stars and too stringy. Haitian Mangoes get 5 out of 5 stars.)I got this tree for free from a Haitian friend at work.
Papaya tree (not the big Mexican Papayas that taste tart. I have the good ones. The little sweet Hawaiian ones)
Lychee Tree
Naval Orange tree
Lemon tree
Starfruit tree
Pomegranate tree
Cilantro
6 Strawberry bushes
multiple green, yellow, and red Bell Peppers
Monster Jalapenos
Ginger
11 pineapples
Coconut
Lemon Grass
My yard is done for a couple months. This summer I want to add some JackFruit, a Nam Doc Mai Mango tree, and Miracle Fruit.
I finally got my gym cleaned up and ready for use. This is my mask room. My garage is clean, my office is clean, and I only have one bedroom left to clean up.
I got a new propane bbq in January. Took me two nights to set it up. A month ago we had a bbq with some friends from church in Hollywood and our neighbors on the north side. That was a lot of fun. Then this weekend we had a bbq with my coworkers. My boss's boss just moved to federal so we threw him a bbq. 2pm-8pm. Round after round of eating. That was a whole lot of fun. It was a hot morning but we had a front pass around 3pm. The clouds were coming in low and forming and reforming and it started looking crazy. So we pulled the bbq under my patio and kept going with the bbq. The wind was insane. Patio furniture went flying, hundreds of leaves went into the pool, but we were able to continue the bbq regardless. Everyone loved the patio because no matter what the weather is like you can sit outside and enjoy it. Once the storm passed we all went out by the canal and all my coworkers said "the wildlife is insane there". Lots of wildlife to watch out back.
Natalie's Aunt is crazy about planting stuff just like me so she has been bringing over stuff as well to add to the yard. By summer I should have more of a jungle look going on out back. Eventually once it all fills in I want to add a brick trail through my jungle.
Here are some pictures.
Nasty rash on my arms. This is the first time I got the rash, worse than my second outbreak the next week.
Side of my house after I removed the bush. The garden where you can see the dirt, well you can't see dirt anymore. My veggies are huge. Almost all the grass along the house has been removed for my banana plants and my sugarcane. There are two gardenias by the ac unit where I took out the evil bush and there's another one by the bano. The one in front of the bano has big flower buds but so far I haven't got them to bloom. I'm working on it.
Yellow Pentas
I forgot what these are but they are by my front door
Backyard without pool fence
My baby pomegranate tree
Plant that Natalie's Aunt (Suegrita Segunda) gave us.
Butterfly weed. I have a couple of these in my butterfly garden. They look very similar to fewflower milkweed, only with better foliage, flowers are nearly identical (I can't see the difference). Fewflower milkweed is found all over the everglades.
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