My Flower Garden

Some of the flowers around the house...
This is Lupine...

wild daisies (plenty in the field as well as in my flower garden).

From Mom...(I don't know the name)...

Another (bush) flower I don't know the name of...

Another unknown to me...

and another unknown...

and another quite extraordinary...

this one reminds me of cluster-type gumamela...

A columbine variety just about to bloom... 

This is Mom's greenhouse containing all the seedlings of her flowerplants. Yesterday I went over to her house to get some of her excess,

and transplanted some of them into my own garden











Marigold...

This is Ana's garden, which her mom started for her. Her mom says Ana has no interest in gardening. I could empathize with Ana in that she has her hands full already with two daughters aged less than 2 years and a month-old.

A closer look at some of the other flower plants there...

This lilac bush is partly hidden by a tree situated near the beginning of our driveway at the periphery of our lawn. I only noticed it when we were working at the vegetable garden!

The white lilac...

And the purple lilac.

I cut some bunches of these heavenly-scented flowers to put on our dining table.

We have plenty more lilac plants at the back of our house but they seem to have stunted growth and at the moment have not flowered yet...

Almost resembling grass, this unknown-to-me plant has tiny white flowers. It occupies a small space in my flower garden. Yesterday on my way to Mom's, I saw the same plant wildly growing in the field...

Gary has fixed the fountain despite a missing hose. It is quite relaxing to hear the sound of water dripping from it, as if one were beside a brook with running water. Coupled with the bird sounds that abound in my surrounding, one will readily feel peace in my garden especially when seated in the swing on the lawn.

When Ana's mom came to meet me, we discovered something in common: the liking for plants and gardening. Though I am quite a newbie in this field, we enjoyed taking a short walk the second meeting we had, to dig up some more plants from the roadside. This is a columbine already with flowers that I have transplanted into my flower garden...

Taken from the ant's perspective, the unique feature of this flower is the spiked petals, the purpose of which I will never guess. Ana's mom said that the hummingbirds are particularly attracted to them. Maybe the spiked petals serve as water reservoir (and probably the flowers have a chemical added to it that makes it sugary) which the hummingbirds drink.

More veggies in the garden

It's Saturday, and the day is sunny...perfect for transplanting the seedlings!

These are tomato seedlings. Note the yellowish leaves. Coupled with roots extending way far beyond the pots, Mom said it signifies insufficient nutrients from the soil, and that the plant needed badly to be transplanted from their tiny pots to a garden bed.|

Aside from tomatoes we also transplanted bell peppers. Then we sowed the seeds of cucumbers (which needed a lot of space because they creep over the whole area!), beet greens, and carrots. Later that day, Ann came and gave us their excess corn seedlings.

This is a mildly,heavenly-scented flower (a kind of lily) that I also dug up. 

These are the plants that I dug up from the roadside near our house. 

Planting Potatoes

Today we worked on the vegetable garden. I called Mom early this morning to ask her how to do it (should I plant it the same way I did with the onions?). She said it would be easier to show than to tell the instructions on the phone, but that she just had to attend to her laundry. During that time, I went out to start with my flower garden. The kids helped me.

Finally Mom came and instead of just showing me how to plant potatoes, she started tilling the land with the backhoe, touching the areas nearest the planted onions and spinach. She said I should deter the weeds from establishing their roots at least every two weeks.


Later Dad also came and rotatilled the aread where we would plant the potatoes becauce the soild had gotten so hard (Mom said it was like granite!). The kids all helped in picking up rocks. Mom and I picked up lossened grass and weeds to throw them away into the field. 


Mom saw a big nightcrawler and asked Juliana to pick it up and set it at a corner of the garden to avoid crushing it with the rotatiller. 

Then we planted the potatoes. The seeds should be planted deep (about 5 inches from topsoil) and about 1 foot apart from one another (Dad said so they would produce big tubers). Patrick also tried to do it. It's nice to have my in-laws teaching me about their ways AND teaching my kids as well...Adult models are critical in a child's formation of his/her values, and I certainly can't be the lone model especially for the boys. Like what Mom said, it takes at least two to do the parenting, a female and a male, to be the role models in the normal development of an individual. And I agree...

Gary mowed the lawn today...After that we decided to go for a walk with the kids down the street to enjoy the sunny day... 

Lily of the Valley

I got these flowers from the plants shown on the ground below, almost as high as the feet. One plant consists of 2 leaves and a bunch of flowers like this. They have a very nice scent, I bet they can be used as perfume! I picked several of them (a lot hidden underneath the leaves, almost as if they want to kiss the earth), together with some other flowers from other weeds or trees and placed them in a vase. 


Update: My friend's mom told me it was Lily of the Valley...then the next day I saw it on magazine for sale! This morning, I dug out a bunch of them (they were located under the big tree that stood as one of the "guards at the entry point to our driveway) and transplanted them to our garden. Prior to that I tilled the soil in one spot of our lawn where there are small trees and lots of grass around them, along with a stump. I figured it would be better to put them there because they might probably need the shade. I will see tomorrow if they will overcome the initial shock...

So colorful and beautiful... 

My Flower Garden

This is now how my flower garden looks like. I'm going to work on it some when it becomes sunny...Have to pull out some weeds (I know now how to detect them.) and some invasive flowering plants I have to transplant to another site in the landscape, or in a pot to give away to friends. 

This is a pile of weeds I have pulled out...there are more piles, and more weeds to pull...sigh!...

Here is another cluster of plants being invaded by sprouts of another flower plant. If I would not remove these, soon they would kill this particular cluster and dominate my whole flower garden! (I could only compare them to the greedy colonizer, wanting all the [soil's] resources for their use, regardless of wiping out the other flowerplant [the colonized]. Too bad, the colonized do not really have a rescuer, unlike these plants which I am rescuing...But this brought a conflict to me. I would, as much as possible, want to leave nature as is...letting Darwin's "survival of the fittest" principle at work...But well, I want to enjoy the beauty of these flowers [a wonderful artwork by God!]...)

This was the tulips cluster before mulching...

Here I have pulled out the weeds at the cluster of the tulips, and put mulch (Mom said that this would choke the weeds that would attempt to grow from under).

I gathered some grass clippings (my husband mowed the lawn the previous day), then started putting mulch on the flowerplants. I asked the boys' help in gathering mulch. I was elated looking at them as they complied to my request (despite some objections)...

At this time the weeds are now quite distinguishable. Here, my tulips have lots of different kinds of weeds embedded in between them. One even had tendrils as if choking the tulips! I really needed to pull them out.