My Jungle

Last month we took a vacation to South Florida for 11 days to see family and take care of our house. I'll post more on our vacation on my next blog post but I spent more than half my vacation at the house working. When I got there I could tell I had a lot of work to do. However it ended up being even more than I anticipated. My landscaper takes care of the grass and some of the hedges but a lot of it gets left to me and waiting a whole year in between visits things got really out of control. I worked one day in the rain, a few days in the heat, got heat exhaustion so bad I got sick and had to lay on the hot drive way for 20 minutes to cool down, got some nasty rashes, and worked muscles that haven't been worked in so long I could hardly move the next day. The last day there I only worked 4 hours but I had heat exhaustion so bad it caused the lactic acid to build up in my shoulder and I was in pain for the next 4 days. The pain finally went away a couple hours before my chiropractor appointment. Go figure. I was told coconut water should prevent that in the future as I probably had a bad electrolyte imbalance.

Not a whole lot more to write about so I'll just explain the pictures below. I will saw I was shocked when I got there. My yard has really grown in. It was nothing but grass in the back when I bought the house and its finally turning into the tropical garden I always wanted. Here's pics of what it looked like before.

Front of the house. That's my new oak tree I put in a month before we moved. Its coming along nice. It already has a few airplants and some Spanish moss growing in it.

Before I cleaned up the front. Those are my lobster claw heliconias. Once they flower you are supposed to cut them down because they die. I had to cut down a lot of them.

Side of the house. Those white butterfly birds of paradise were tiny when we left and they already needed a big pruning. This side of the house had moss and mildew growing in the shutters and by the AC that had to be cleaned up. That's what happens in a humid environment. Also had to fix the ac drain pipe. It got busted adding to the moss problem along the house.

Our bamboo. Right after Adri was born I cut down the 18-20 ficus trees that they tried to grow into a hedge here. You can see what it used to look like here. For Christmas the year before we left I got Natalie Timber and Blue Chungi bamboo. She wanted bamboo, I didn't because I thought it would be invasive like the giant reeds in CA. I looked into it though and found that clump bamboo is nothing like running bamboo. It's actually coming around very nicely. Just needs more water in the winter. The 65 inches of rain we get annually just isn't enough for the bamboo or the bananas (bananas need 100 inches annually). Also had some heliconias by the bamboo but I'm thining it out now that the bamboo is growing in. All the helconias in the front and back yard came from one 3 gallon pot my dad bought me when he was out a few years ago. They spread like crazy.

My Valencia Pride Mango tree on the left and my banana mat and coconut palm on the right. The bananas were a mess. You are supposed to cut them down after they fruit. I was very vigilant about cutting them down right away when I lived there. They get neglected now and it's a lot harder to cut down after they rot. If you cut them down right away a machete goes right through them. If you wait all the fibers get mashed up, it's stinky, and it takes several hits to tear it apart. Lucky for me a neighbor let me use his chain saw for a couple hours and it made cutting the base a lot easier.

On the left is my Jackfruit tree. Then some bananas on both sides of my Alphonso mango. I had never had an Alphonso mango before but I heard they are one of the best. My tenant told me it fruited this year but they all dropped. Well they mostly all dropped. I found one mango hidden and I brought it home. I waited almost two weeks to eat it. It was so good. Probably the best non Florida mango I have ever had and probably in my top five of all time.

My Valencia Pride mango. It had over a dozen mangoes this year. Not bad consider this was the first year it has fruited and it was a bad year in Florida for mangoes. I went to Tropic Plants to try to buy mangoes like I do every summer and they didn't have any.

My butterfly garden. It was really over grown.  I have a bush in there that smells really good. It's called Sweet Almond Bush and it smells like sweet almonds. Very fragrant, lots of bees and wasp.

My Nam Doc Mango, another of the best non-Florida varities and my 3 papaya trees. Taking over is my neighbors Mexican Sunflower weed. I cut that crap down, threw it in his yard, called the city, and ordered it removed. It's been a five year fight over that stupid hedge. It needs 16 feet of space to grow and this genius put it in a ten inch wide planter right on the property line. It's growing over my roof by the gate, he doesn't take care of it, and I'm sick of complaining. I got down right nasty in an e-mail to code enforcement, the city commissioner, and the mayor. We'll see if anything happens this time.

Two hours to cut this weed back. I don't think my neighbor was happen to find it all in his yard. Oh well.

Valencia Pride Mangoes. These are the best mangoes ever. There was one day I worked all day on the yard and I found one of these mangoes on the ground. I thought I'd have myself a nice juicy snack but the ants got it first. I was able to take a couple with me. These mangoes are huge, about 2 pounds when fully ripe.

My new mailbox. The last one was trashed. I think the previous owner's kid hit it with the car and the base was rotted out. This one is concreted in. It's not going anywhere. Plus it matches the house better.

Front of the house after a couple hours of trimming.

Back yard after some trimming.

I had to get up on the roof and spray it. It's turning black from the mildew, supposed to be a really light grey or off white. So after a few rains it should be clean now. So while I was up there I snapped a couple pics. Here's my backyard.

And a view of the neighborhood. That is a fraction of the pile of my trimmings. This was after the first load got picked up.

My favorite view from my backyard. Looking NorthEast.

This is a Jesus Lizard. They are called Jesus lizards because they can run across the water, on their back feet, while their front arms flap like a t-rex. They look like mini dinosaurs. I never had one in my yard until right before we moved and now we have lots of them. I think its because the cold snap after we moved in wiped them all out with the iguanas which are now coming back.

My butterfly garden all cleaned up. This was all grass when I moved in. I just started ripping out grass and planting stuff and this is what I have now. It was better when I lived there because I had more butterfly weed. The gardener has wiped it all out.

My banana mat all cleaned out. So while I was working on this one, before it was all cleaned up, it was raining and muggy outside. I got inside the banana mats and the heat/humidity was amplified so bad. It was like a sauna. I know people say that about Florida but it really is when you are in a banana mat and all the moisture is trapped.

This is where all the good bananas are. I was disappointed I didn't have enough to take home. I think it's a combo of the landscaper cutting to close to them keeping new shoots from coming up, not enough fertilizer, and not enough water in the winter.

My orchids. None are in bloom right now.