Home gardening

We had the surroundings of our home professionally landscaped last summer and it took a while before the plants and the grass finally grew and "stabilized" on those hot days. These days, we try to add to the plants as there are many spaces where we think plants are appropriate. Among these are spaces along the fences where instead of planting directly on the ground, we decided to use large pots to hold fruit trees and flowering plants. Fruit trees now lining the adobe fence of our neighbor owns and which we share include atis, chico, dalandan and kalamansi. On top of our fences, we have placed flowering plants, what are popularly known as Vietnam roses, which are always nice to look at because of their continued flowering. These and other flowers now growing in our modest garden are visited regularly by butterflies, bees and other insects that feed or harvest the nectar from the flowers. We have also noticed that fireflies have become regulars, too, during the evenings. These encourage us to grow more of these plants as they are truly pleasing to us.

Transplanting Vietnam roses and another plant - gifts from my mother's garden to ours

Organic fertilizer and garden soil that we mixed with the "regular" soil, which appears to be composed much of clay.

We expect to have more plants soon as we are trying figure out what will survive under the shade of the neighbor's fire tree. The tree has affected the grass beneath its branches and practically stunted the growth of the frog grass. This is partly as it prevents the sunlight especially nowadays during the wet season. We also think the fire tree's flowers are also to blame when they rained and covered the grass. Then there is also the wind and the cooler climate here that needs to be factored in the selection of plants. Fortunately, the most important part of our mango tree (the trunk and roots) survived the onslaught of the recent Typhoon Glenda. It's main branch fell on the road but the smaller branches were spared by the winds and will grow to bear the sweet fruits we enjoyed last summer.

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