Life Transplanet

Schnoodle with some of the various tropical plants in our house -coffee tree is furthest left

We have had a small coffee plant for the last few years.  In the summer we put it in the humid greenhouse and it grows well.  Then in the winter we bring it inside, where it lives..but doesn’t exactly thrive.   Just this year it started to bloom.

Cassie played the role of the honey bee and pollinated some of the blossoms by hand.  We hadn’t thought much of it until just the other day when we saw….Coffee beans!

Colorado Coffee Beans

We will continue to let them grow and I doubt we’d have enough even for a single cup of coffee, but it’s still fun and having tropical plants around us invokes thoughts of Puerto Rico.  Of course the coffee plants in PR are a hundred times more fragrant and bigger!  Perhaps if we have enough beans/seeds we will try to grow another tree or two here in CO.  When we get to PR we might plant a whole acre of them!

This is a coffee bush in Puerto Rico (makes our Colorado coffee beans look silly)

This weekend we started the task of the last harvest. Things are starting to turn brown and since the frost hit, our basil, tomatoes and peppers have not been happy. We decided to go gather up as much of the bounty as we could wrangle together. We started to turn under the garden and we need to do the same to the greenhouse and move the chickens in, but that we might save for  another warmer  day. Here is a fun video I made of our harvest, greenhouse and garden. I just started playing with Youtube’s video editor so it was kind of fun to do. I hope you like it:

Here’s some of the bounty all washed

Look how purple this potato is…and iridescent!

Today we made egg and potato breakfast burritos with this and since it’s chili out, I’ll use some of these ingredients to make some chili to stay in too!

The feel of dirt under your feet and hands really brings you back to nature and the source of our food and life. I transplanted a few of the tomato plants in the garden and worked in the greenhouse a little as well. The tomatoes are growing well and some even have small green tomatoes on them.

Green Tomatoes Growing in the Garden

While I was in the greenhouse I also found Mr. Toad again. But at least this time he didn’t have a near-death experience like the last time (I didn’t step on him).

Señor Toad

Close Up

I noticed some condensation dripping down on me and when I looked up, I saw a scary sight:

Hornet/Wasp Nest just beginning

Tonight was a perfect summer night for a BBQ. The air was still and warm, but not too warm. There was cloud cover and it was not stinky (notorious in Greeley). We grilled up some organic chicken and drenched it in BBQ sauce.

 You might notice Schnoodle, (the black blob) and Kitty (the grey blob) in the background. The flowers are blooming everywhere in the flower gardens.

Here’s Noodle enjoying some corn cob.

Here’s one of the lillies.

These roses are cool because they change color from the UV in the sun.

Daisies…

If you know what this flower is called, let me know. I think it’s gallardia or something, but Britton thinks that’s the name of a water-borne illness.

The greenhouse plants are doing well also. It mostly has strawberry plants, lettuce, marigolds, garlic and tomatoes on the shelves.

Today is another hot summer day in Colorado. Britton and I went for a bike ride today. I also worked in the greenhouse and garden.  Britton mowed the lawn. When I was in the greenhouse I stepped on a poor toad. I thought I killed him, he turned over on his back and looked very dead. When I nudged him with my shoe he jumped back to life and into the foliage of the greenhouse.