Butterfly Garden

Last spring we built a small triangle flower bed at our backyard, just left side in front our sunroom.
We direct sow some mix zinnia and cosmos at early summer, wow... they growing very fast, butterfly and humming bird love them.

This summer we really enjoying our new 'butterfly garden', those flowers are so easy to care and drought tolerance.

Here are some pictures I want to share with you all, hope you'll enjoy it as much as we do.






Happy summer !

Carolina Wrens Nest

Carolina Wrens are medium small size bird, beautiful and outgoing birds. I love to hearing the male sing a song all day long, they usually found in pairs and stay on its home territory all years long.
They love hanging around at our back yard and I want to make sure they stay happy, I design a small 'birds friendly' garden area, with couple bird feeders and couple bird bath, ooh... even cardinal and tufted titmouse love to hanging around that area also !

Further more, last spring I bought a small birdhouse and painted with bright color, it's look pretty but so wrong... later I learn that birds don't like a bright color for their home, they prefer a natural color. But I'll not re painting them, instead buying the new one later.

Bird House

The other bird house

2 weeks later, I found a Carolina Wren nest with their 5 little tiny eggs, but not at the birdhouse but at our mulch bags... They are a low vegetation and built their nest at low branches and at this time at our mulch bag at the 4th bag ( we stacked 6 mulch bags, left over from last year) just right in front the garage window, so I can watching them without scaring the chicks, perfect!

Here are some pictures from last spring, they are so cute, isn't it ?

Laying an eggs

1 day old

Look at those feathers!

Learning how to fly

I'm so happy, all of them still love hanging around in my back and front yard.

Papaya Flowers

I grew up where papaya trees growing every where and never know before that papaya have 3 type of flowers: female, male and bisex/hermaphrodite.
Female n Male flowers will not in the same tree, so it's means that you should planting more than 1 tree with hope you will have a couple trees for fruiting.

So, on August last year, I'm start my papaya seedling, the fruit came from our local grocery, I planted 3 seeds and save the rest of them.
Right now the trees in bloom, I'm so excited to found out that 3 of them have hermaphrodite and few male flowers. They have a 2-4 babies each and the biggest one about 5x3", yeaah !

Hermaphrodite Flower

Bisex Flower

Male Flower

Papaya fruit all year long, as long as the temperature warm enough, they'll keep flowering and fruiting. If the temperature drop too much, they'll stop flowering and will start flowering again soon after the temperature back warm again.

From my own experience with my others tropical fruit (like mango and wax apple, ), if the temperature drop or too much watering (lots of rain), before the fruits ripen, the fruits will get bigger but tasteless. I hope my papaya fruits will have enough warm weather until they're ripen...

I'll start new seedling soon for next year crop.

Tips from my parents, if your trees only have male flowers, a long thin stalk with several small flowers in cluster, don't pull them off, instead cut of the top, in most case the new grow will have bisex flowers and few male flowers.

Growing Potato in the box

Since we moved here on December 2007, the first think we want is have our own small vegetable garden, still in on going project, a very slow progress :0) . The first year, we planted most of our veggie in the pot, some tomato, hot pepper, eggplants, basil and some others Asian vegetable and herb. with no experience, we just doing by learning, so far, every year we learning a lot about what to do and what not to do, and some advice and information from uncle Google. It’s fun !

This year we growing purple potato in the box, (built as you grow box), starting on February with 2 line frames and today they almost ready for the next 7nd frame , they growing very fast, growing so fast just like a weed potato ! ha…ha…ha..

We built our potato box with pine board



Aaaah… can’t wait for the harvest times, and how much potato we’ll get…
Update: Dang! I forgot about this project until some friends asked about it, we got some but not what I expected. Most potatoes I found at the bottom and only few at the middle of the box. We replanted some of them with hope we can have a purple mash potato for our thanks giving dinner.
Maybe will have a better luck if we planted a long season potato.

Update: 
I quest this is not the right potato for growing at the box, even it's said medium season potato, but the fact it is a short season potato. They taste great though.