2022 Garden

 Wow it has been a hot second since I have blogged about my gardens! I post pictures all the time on Facebook and Instagram, but never on here! 

This year's garden! I planted when we got back from Seattle over Spring Break (March 19th). The weather was milder and cooler, which I think has helped. 

Everything is planted! (March 19th)

Of course Ziggy joined the annual picture

In the right bed this year I have: 

Buttercrisp lettuce- an experiment of mine to see if it would grow. It is doing well and I recommend it, it has a nice mild flavor. 

Slicer Tomatoes- I normally get Roma's, however there were none left at the nursery. 

Tam Jalapeno- not sure what the difference is of yet with them, but they are growing nicely. 

Ghost Pepper- I saved seeds from all my peppers last year and grew the first plant from seed. Sadly it was not doing well so I replaced it with an established plant. 

2 Gypsy Peppers- I grew these from seeds. One was replaced with another seedling I grew that was doing better. 

Dill- I got to have dill for pickle making! 

Straight 8 Cucumbers- on a trellis is the only way to go! 

In the left bed I have: 

2 Habanero- last year we did not have good luck with them after the 1st plants died. This year so far so good. They were the first peppers to grow buds. 

Sweet Chelsea cherry tomatoes- I put these on a trellis and from now on I think I'll do that! Since these cherry tomatoes ALWAYS outgrow their cage, this is a better option. 

Jalapeno- I got an extra jalapeno plant from my mom, I figured why not. 

2 Scotch Bonnets- I grew these from seeds from last year's plants. I had to replace the first couple I planted with seedlings that grew better that I had. I decided to plant 3 just to make sure they'd make. 

    We like to make a mango scotch bonnet hot sauce that makes a fantastic marinade on chicken. 

1 reaper- Ms. Carolina is back this year! We made hot honey last year with a pepper. It's basically infusing honey with a reaper pepper. 

Yellow Squash- It has been a few years since I tried squash. In year's previous I have gotten vine borers that kill my squash. This year I decided to cage it- keeping the leaves off the ground and so far *knocks on wood* it has done fantastic! The leaves are bigger than my hand and the plant is very tall! Today (5/1) I picked my first squash!

March 23rd (Almost 1 Week)

April 3rd (Week 3)

April 3rd 

April 13th (Week 4)

April 19th (One month later)

The lettuce surprised me and grew very well!

Harvested lettuce! 

April 26th 

My squash had SO many blooms!

The leaves were bigger than my hand!

May 7th (Week 7)

The garden was rocking at this point! 

May 6th 

May 10th 

May 12th 

1st Cucumber picked

May 20th 

June 4th (Week 11)

By now the cucumbers were starting to show more brown leaves, but still showing growth. 

I killed the dill, I think by getting too much off of the plant at one time. I read you can only trim to a certain percentage of the plant. Who knew?! 

As I am finishing this post (6/22/22) my garden looks like: 

Squash- I have trimmed off one of my stems from the squash. I am thinking vine borers got to it. It has that yellow powdery type stuff on the remaining stalk. I did not get any more squash after that picture above. Overall I am happy with the production and getting anything from my squash plant was awesome! I saw a video of someone adding aluminum foil around the stalk base to ward off any borers, I may try that next year. 

Cucumbers- I have no idea what their issue is. The older leaves started dying a lot, new growth was happening at the very tips of the vines. The bases looked a little split, but that can be normal at times. I started with 2 vines on each side, they are both now down to one on each side. I'm not sure if they will make it with the over 100 degree temps we've been having. 

I did get about 4-5 cucumbers off of it. Nothing like my best harvest (which was a crisper drawer full), but better than the last couple of years. 

Side note: keep cucumbers at room temp, putting them in the fridge makes them spoil faster. 

Tomatoes- My slicer tomatoes are not my favorite. They make tomatoes, however every one of them splits. 

Cherry tomatoes had leaf-footed bugs BAD for a few weeks, I used DE to try to get rid of them and neem oil- that didn't work. Not sure what caused the hoard of them to come, but they are pretty much gone now! Right now the cherry tomatoes is growing new vines/stems, but not a lot of fruit. These cherry tomatoes seem to have a tougher outer layer than some cherry tomatoes. 

Habaneros- the bush closest to the fence is ROCKING!! Each good fruit I've gotten has been from this bush. The one next to it has curled leaves, looks like something is eating the tips, no visible pest though. The fruit would have bites taken out of it. Looks like a bird pecked them. 

Scotch Bonnets- I replaced the ones I first planted since they were having trouble growing. I kept the other germinated growing in the pot, so I transplanted 3 of those. Now we have 3 scotch bonnet plants. One plant (furthest to the left) has many bonnets on it. The middle plant is not as tall, but doing well. The one closest to the aisle is smallest and the leaves are not as big. 

Carolina Reaper has at least 2 fruit on her. One is starting to turn to a red color so it will be ready to pick before long. 

Gypsy Peppers- they are growing well. They need a lot of water so they do not start drooping in this HOT weather.  These peppers have to go in the fridge as soon as you pick them. They can sit on the shelf.

Jalapenos- I am actually liking the extra plant my mom gave me more than the Tam Jalapeno from the nursery. The one from my mom makes bigger jalapenos. I have picked many off of each bush. Store these in a paper sack within the fridge. This way they will last quite a while. 

Ghost Pepper- this one also got replaced from our transplant. It is a picky little plant. It wilts very easily. It has not grown very tall and the leaves are curly. It was the most happiest when I was watering 2x a day as evident by it's leaves. It has not started bearing any blossoms yet. 

Lettuce- the lettuce stalks have gotten tall! It is putting out little leaves, but is still growing. I pull off the leaves that have yellow or brown on them. Since the heat has picked up, growth has definitely  slowed down. I am just happy it is still alive! 

The new thing I have not done this year and other years I have is that I do not have soaker hoses out in the garden. That worked really well with our wet April and milder temps.  Now that the weather is getting very warm and we are starting to get into travel season, I have purchased soaker hoses. I just haven't put them out yet. 

I believe me hand watering each day definitely helped with me staying on top of growth, weeds, and pest control. 

Overall I am happy with my plants and what has grown for us so far! 

Our animal babies

Originally posted 1/30/22

 I realized how sporadic I am in blogging. I didn't mention a few things within the skipped years. 

Our fur babies are now 9,10, and 11 years old.  Ziggy (9), Nemo(10), and Lucius (11).    The turtle ladies are now 14 years old! 

Max passed away suddenly in 2020 (it will be 2 years in a few days). He was 7 years old.

He would lay next to by chest or back at night. He'd be right up against me. If I tried to hold him like a teddy bear sometimes he allowed it...sometimes I would get a love bite. 

He was a stinker at times, but I loved his cuddles. 

His favorite spot was laying on the bed. 

During my workouts he was already ready to rub against me while I was on the yoga mat. Lol

Here's some of my most recent pictures of our babies. 

Well this is not the picture of the turtle ladies, but their newest home we built for them! 

As of right now, they are in their winter home in the tank in the garage. 

They love to bask on the dock on a sunny day. They still do turtle stacking, even though they are longer than my hand. 

First the oldest fur baby, Lucius

His gotcha day just passed, Lucius has been with us for 10 years! 

 

Lucius begging for milk. 

Each night we have a glass of milk and it has become almost a ritual for him. 

As soon as he hears the clink of the glasses and the fridge door open he comes running down the stairs. He will sit as close to us as he can. 

Then after we finish drinking most of the milk, the drops that are left Lucius gets. 

When Nemo turned 10, we started doing this for him too. 

milk nose

Love how Lucius is such a snuggle boy! 

Next, our middle child. The alpha. Nemo

Nemo LOVES sitting on my lap! Anytime I'm on the couch or have a blanket, he's there. 

If I'm at my desk and on the computer, he will be there to block the monitor or to lay on the desk. 

Every morning when he hears me wake up, he will jump up on the bed and lay next to me. 

Sometimes he'll sit on my night stand and just stare at me until I get up. 

Our youngest is our boy, Ziggy! 

He gets silly sometimes and likes to play with the blankets. 

Rubbing his face in them or burying himself in them. 

Ziggy with his favorite toy, Froggy

Ziggy's 9th Birthday! 

A trip to Petco for some goodies! 

He has his own little cabana for him to rest in while we are in the pool or outside in the backyard. 

He is one happy boy! 

Loves pup cups (whip cream), rides, walks, treats, Froggy, and seeing his dog friends. 

Christmas 2021

Under the tree is their favorite place to be! 

All 3 boys snuggling :)

We have such sweet babies! We are so thankful for them!

Summer of 2021- Florida

 Joey and I have had a pretty busy June and summer as of today! I am so thankful for a fun filled summer after this past school year. *insert awkward smile* It was...stressful to say. So much so that I got shingles back in May. Thankfully it was on my mid-section along my stomach and back. I hear you can get it on your face- which can make you go blind. Crazy! 

Anyways, June started off with a trip to west Florida! Some of this I already posted to the social medias, but something I didn't think about is that once those platforms are gone, so are all my posts. I wanted to make sure our adventures were documented, so back to blogging!  

So why Florida? Joey works for Orange Theory Fitness as the head of IT. The studios he supports are in Houston and west Florida. He needed to go to Florida to complete an audit of all the technology goods (AV and computers). Since he happened to be going when I was on break. I was able to go! I helped Joey with the audit of the computers that are used in the front desk. I made sure they were running at optimal speed and working correctly as well as checked the network speeds. 

----Something Joey and I learned during the pandemic is that we love working together. In March/April 2020 when schools were closed, but they still had no idea what teachers should do I used that time to help Joey with his work. At that time, he was rolling out tablets to put on the water rowers at all the Houston studios. I helped get the tablets ready and then while all the gyms were closed, we went to each studio and got them all set up. I really enjoyed working on something that was completely different than teaching and also being able to help/spend time with Joey-----

When the opportunity arose to help Joey again,  I said yes please!! 

I have only ever been to Disney World in Florida so I was excited to get to see other parts. 

We would visit studios during most of the day and the late afternoon/evening have time to explore. 

We visited Fort Myers and Naples first. 

We ate at the Village Pub- highly recommend! 

The pickles are complementary and delicious. Even prettier is the view that you get! 

The views from dinner! 

After dinner we headed to the beach to see the sunset. On the way to the water we saw a turtle nest! 😍

The sunset was gorgeous! 

I also discovered that Florida sand is SO much better than Galveston sand. In Galveston/Texas around us, the sand sticks to you and is gritty. It leaves me feeling gross. In Florida, I took my sandals off to walk in the sand and the sand brushed off no issues! It was a pleasant surprise! 

After Ft. Meyers and Naples area, we headed up to Gainesville. 

Joey and I were both surprised to see hills on the drive up there. After coming from all palm trees, it was so nice to see big oaks and normal trees. 

Gainesville is a college town. The University of Florida is there and it really reminded us of College Station here in Texas. One of the studios we visited was right next to the university so we got to see some buildings! 

I really liked the huge trees with the moss. 

After Gainesville, we headed to Tampa and St. Petersburg. St. Pete was our favorite stop! We stayed in a hotel that was on Central and you could walk to many different restaurants. 

Tampa was the first city we saw with a skyline! The weather was also the exact same as Houston. 

We drove by Tropicana Stadium. 

We got the most delicious Cuban sandwiches from Bodega. We highly recommend this place! 

We drove by the Don CeSar (built in 1928) a hotel visited by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Al Capone, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and other rich/famous people in the Jazz Age.

The morning before our flight we walked St. Pete pier, it's at least 1.5 miles long. It has very pretty daytime views and at night we have been told you can see all the city lights. I recommend taking some water if you go during the day. 

We had delicious food, of course, during our visit. 

Naples/Ft. Meyers: The Village Pub

Gainesville: (it's a chain, but not in Texas) Bahama Breeze- I enjoyed my jerk shrimp bowl. 

Tampa/St. Petersburg: Olivia, On Swann, Bodega

Florida was a great start to our summer! I enjoyed helping Joey and also getting to go on adventures to new places for both of us!