Week 56: Looking back...and forward
Texas_Gem
8 years ago
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Anyone in Zone 5/6 grow passion flower vine?
Comments (47)@Shad Burns I'm curious, where did you buy your seeds or vines from? I grow them too, and I'm always curious about the source of passiflora incarnata, when grown successfully in zone 5/6. Mine were selected from the wild, in Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. I'm always interested in hardier strains. @Helene Albert I am in zone 5b, Chicago suburbs, literally a stone throws away from you. I grow passiflora incarnata successfully. I have fruit that's ready to harvest at end of August continuing through to October. It's truly a may sprouting perennial for me. If anyone is growing passiflora incarnata in zone 4/5/6a, please send me a message through Houzz by clicking my profile. I cannot send messages by default to most people, because messages are not enabled by default in Houzz until you go to your profile and enable them under "advanced settings." You should be able to send to me, however. I collect hardy passiflora incarnata. There is some genetic variation. Even the white version of P. incarnata aren't the same, with at least 5+ different strains floating around....See MoreCoconut Palm in zone 5-6
Comments (67)Luck of the weather always helps too. Two weeks ago we had 6 sunny days that were 80 85 87 90 90 73. That is a great October blast that our potted cocos would normally never get. This past weekend has been sunny and 68 81 76 (today). Again three nice warm sunny days here near November that they would normally never get. That brings us closer to when they can go out agian next May. If you have a coconut (or just about any other palm) that is a manageable size hget them in full sun anytime it's in the 60s. If it will get too cold move them in for the night and take out the next day. Sun, Sun and more Sun....See MoreEscalade or Infinity QX 56? Other SUVs You Love?
Comments (30)Hey--what constitutes and "American" car these days anyway? Many of the Fords and Chevys (how does one pluralize "Chevy?")are made in Canada or Mexico--while Honda makes most of it's cars sold in the USA here IN the USA. And, of course, Chrysler is now DAIMLER Chrusler--and a German company... Our 2001 Odyssey is also paid for. I hope to drive it for a few years more. If anyone is looking for a LITTLE car-be sure to look at the new Honda "Fit." Elder Son took an internship away from home this summer and needed reliable transport. We might have gotten him a Fit if we could have secured one in the limited time-frame we had. Though perhaps not. We always hesitate to purchase a car it's first year out...and then DH and I feel there's something WRONG about giving a kid a new car...weird prejudice from OUR up-bringings, perhaps. I didn't have a NEW car until my FIRST minivan. (1992 Villager...) As it was, we picked up a used 2005 Scion aB with fewer than 10,000 miles on it. It's in our name--we just let him use it. We'll probably give it to him when he graduates college in 2007. It's a lot of fun to drive-and relatively safe for a small car. I just wish it had the side curtain airbags that the Fit has. Ah well, it DOES have ABS. And it got 39 mpg's on the highway when he drove it up to Cincinnati. melanie...See MoreOctober 2019, Week 3
Comments (35)Larry, I probably would use a small tractor for a while as we redo the landscape, but I'm not sure we'd use it after that. Our property is a strongly sloping creek hollow with very little level land (the house, southern side yard, back yard, detached garage and greenhouse pretty much fill up all the flat land), and once when Tim tried to mow with a friend's tractor and brush hog, it was a disaster because the land was too hilly and rough and the tractor didn't do well on the high spots or the low spots. We'll probably never have a tractor for that reason. I'd love to have one that made the tough jobs easier, but it doesn't seem like a practical tool for us unless we hire someone to come in and level the unforested parts of our land, which I doubt we ever will because of soil compaction issues with red clay. Now, if a tractor fell from the sky....we'd take it! Don't give up until you're ready! My plan for old-age gardening is a container garden, and I may start converting the back garden to a large container garden area this Spring. I will lay it out with really wide paths so it can work for us without modification later on in our lives. I couldn't do it all at once, but perhaps bit by bit over the next few years I could add more containers until the garden space was full. When Fred first gave me molasses feed tubs for growing tomatoes, he thought I was nuts to go to all the trouble to fill them up, etc., and to use them, until he saw how well the plants grew with so little soil-tending and weeding. His son lined up 4 or 5 molasses fed tubs for him the next year on an elevated surface of old tables so Fred, who had perpetual back trouble, could garden at the waist level instead of bending over, and Fred was so happy he stopped giving me molasses feed tubs because he began using them all himself. I was thrilled for him. He still had traditional row crops in the ground like corn, beans, melons, peas, etc. but his tomatoes and peppers too, I think, forever after were grown in molasses feed tubs. This allowed him to garden all throughout his 80s and into his 90s, though his son increasingly took over all the row crops while Fred tended the container crops. He was such a happy camper. I think we call be happy campers later in life if we just make the modifications that suit us and allow us to continue gardening in some shape, form or fashion. Jennifer, There's 7 birds: 4 Quakers: Arthur, Guinevere, Ducky (a male) and Sarah--they are two bonded pairs (A&G and D&S), and he's had them since about 2008 or 2009. He has two bonded parolets, Sunny and Leia, and one canary-winged parakeet---BeBe. He rescued Artie and Gwennie from an uncaring who left them in a cage and didn't interact with them---they were unsociable and depressed, but improved quickly under Chris' care. BeBe belonged to a sweet little old lady for many years, and she became Chris' bird after that lady passed away and none of her children wanted BeBe. While BeBe bonded slowly with Chris, she adored Jana from Day 1 and is Jana's bird now, practically speaking. Ducky is brilliantly smart and can carry on quite a conversation. I can ask him "where's daddy?" and he'll tell me "Daddy had to work today". It cracks me up. He will talk to you all day long if you'll talk to him and listen to his answers and respond to what he says. So, when we are taking care of them, we don't just uncover their cages and give them food and water, etc. We let them out of their cages and let them fly around indoors, sit on our laps or shoulders, play with toys, talk with us, etc. so we're up there for a couple of hours in the morning and a couple of hours in the evening. They are great pets and can live for decades, so they are quite a commitment. Chris, Jana and the girls love their birds, and we birdsit for them several times a year. Each bird has its own personality and you have to know what it is in order to interact well with them---it has taken me years to get to know them as well as I do now. I still cannot find any cool-season annuals to plant. I don't know if I waited too long, or if they aren't in the stores yet, or if they had them earlier when it was in the 90s and the poor things burned up in the heat or what. I'm going to go plant shopping tomorrow and try to find something. We have worked so hard between trying to get the exterior of the house painted and the birds taken care of....and the house isn't done yet, but it is about 80% done and maybe we can finish it tomorrow afternoon after we do the weekly grocery shopping (and some plant shopping). If we shop too long (I really want to find some plants), I can work on painting Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. As far as I know, we are through with birdsitting. Chris, Jana and Lillie are on their way home---having rented a car this afternoon to drive home after their flight home was postponed at least 3 times and about 7 or 8 hours. Chris had a feeling it would be delayed even longer, since he works at an international airport and knows how these things go. When I talked to them they had a 7-hour drive ahead of them, so if all goes well they should be home pretty much any time now. I did notice that the dianthus plants in the garden are starting to bloom now---they must be liking the cooler weather---but I'd like to have some pansies and violas to go with them. They usually arrive in the stores here in flats in October and it is October now. I haven't seen those plants in the stores, but Home Depot is full of fake Christmas trees, fake wreaths, and real 'living Christmas trees' of various kinds in pots, and rosemary plants sheared into Xmas tree shapes, and such. They also still have lots of warm-season bedding plants, though I don't know who would buy those now that we are a month away from our average first freeze date and already have had a killing freeze anyway. There's still a lot of nursery stock, especially shrubs, on hand and, if I could make up my mind about what I want to plant in the Spring, I could buy them now and hold them over the winter until the soil is ready in Spring 2020. I bet I'd do a better job of keeping them watered and protected from the cold than the local big box stores will. So, I think a plant shopping trip is definitely happening tomorrow, and who knows what I might bring home. There's definitely some plants I know that I want for sure, so if I could find those, I wouldn't hesitate to buy them now even if I can't plant them yet. Dawn...See Moremgmum
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