Category Archives: Gardening

Gorgeous Orchids

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I love orchids. I had always heard how hard they are to grow, but they’re not! Really they’re easy! Especially for someone like me who always forgets to water plants. They like to get dried out between waterings so it is so simple! Just wait till the sphagnum is dry then water until it’s moist again. They really don’t need any fertilizers or even dirt because they are epiphytes or air plants. They derive what they need straight out of the air and water! Like magic.

Another great thing I love about orchids is their bloom length and time. The blooms of these orchids stay on for months on end. They unfurl one at a time until the whole thing is covered in flowers for a month or two. I love that they start budding in January or February and bloom right before everything else in the yard wakes up. They are great indoors here in Colorado and perfect in the tropics as well!

White Orchid

The Kitchen table is getting full of orchids

It is one collection I don’t mind increasing! 🙂

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Hen House Migration

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Twice a year we have a migration of the hen house. The chicken coop goes in the greenhouse in the fall through winter and it comes out spring through summer. It works out well because inside the greenhouse it can be 40 degrees warmer than the ambient air in the winter when we aren’t growing anything in there. If it’s still cold in the day or snow’s on the ground they have a dry spot to peck around in. It still gets cold at night, but with the coop inside the greenhouse with a heat lamp and blanket insulation really our chickens are more spoiled than most.


Britton moving the coop with the help of Kitty (standing looking into the coop), Greenfoot and Football

But then we have to drag it back out (by we I mean Britton of course) in the spring. This is nice because we get our greenhouse back, but it also kind of stinks because that means opening them up in the morning and shutting them in once the sun goes down. We didn’t use to do that but we learned our lesson after the hen house attack last summer.

But all the hassle is ok because like daylight savings, it’s a sign of finally moving out from under winter’s long grip, and I’m all right with that!


Another sign of spring: white crocus

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Puerto Rico…A Little Closer

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Today we got a little closer to Puerto Rico. (At least figuratively, but perhaps actually since the earth moved a little off its axis after that huge earthquake in Japan.)

We applied for and were approved for two personal loans that will help to cover the difference in buying the place in Rincon. We have also bought our tickets to Aguadilla and back leaving the last week in May and returning early June (2 weeks). And thanks to the kind Kruses, I think we have a place to stay when we first arrive. I am so excited today that I just want to do it now! But I know we must wait, and so I have been keeping myself calm by reading all about the tropical plants we can grow there!


A cool Puerto Rican plant

I picked up one from the library called Growing Tasty Tropical Plants. I am ready to grow, cook with, and eat kumquats, guava, cinnamon, yerba mate, passion fruit, dragon fruit, and miracle berries among many other strange and delectable things. Hurray for gardening in the tropics! And hurray for all these steps that are helping our dream bear fruit as well.

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Life Prefers Warmer Temperatures

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I read thru a political forum from time to time.  I find it interesting for a number of reasons and it gives me an opportunity and a reason to try and educate myself on a number of things.  Just recently someone posted an article about prosperty and global temperatures.   The premise is pretty basic.  When it is warm out life grows more readily there is more food and more wine consumed!  When it is cold food is scarce, wars break out and societies collapse. 

The article doesn’t attempt to explain the reasons for the warming and cooling and it really isn’t the point.

I thought it was relevant because we are trying to move from a climate that has extreme swings in temperature thru the seasons to one that is much more steady.  In the summer in Colorado it can get up to 110F degrees and in the winter it can get to -20F.   I’ve started to notice that with those swings I also experience a change.  In the summer things are growing, I have more energy and am generally way more productive.  In the winter things die, I have less energy and it’s more difficult to try and be productive.

I would think that not experiencing the extreme changes in seasons and temp would keep humans (and all life for that matter) just a bit more on the productive and energetic side.  It will be interesting to see what my own experience is like living closer to the equator.

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