Spring at the Sonora desert

While I was in Mexico, we had some relatives visiting from south Mexico, so we went around town showing them the city. One of the places we went was a small ecologic reserve outside of town. The place is a little like a zoo and a little like a ecologic center. It is very fun to visit, especially if you live in a different climate, because you get to see first hand the wildlife in the desert. We were really lucky because at that time spring was really showing and we got to enjoy all of the amazing displays that spring at the desert has to offer.

The humming birds are abundant in spring

The Sonoran desert is one of the hottest and biggest deserts of the world (Arizona and Mojave desert are small pieces of the Sonoran desert). Life is hard in there and plants struggle to survive, but there is one important thing to remember, even though is a desert, spring always means life and color. So, when the time comes there are plenty of blooms around and life awakens and fills everywhere.

The sahuaros bloom as well

The flowers are a bit more rough than in other climates, as most of the plants are too, but this is just as expected from desert plants. They have to be tough to survive in those conditions. I think they are incredibly beautiful nonetheless.

This one is called fireworks

Just as japan has the Sakura, in the desert we have our own version of spring bloom trees. Ours are called "Palo verde" (meaning green tree), it is a native species from our desert. The name of the tree comes from the unusual colored bark. These trees retain the green color on their trunk and their branches even when they have fully matured and have several years old, because the photosynthesis is carried on in the bark.

The palo verde is the desert sakura

Everywhere around the wilderness and also in many streets and houses we have a lot of of these trees blooming every year. The same as the sakura, the trees flower all at once in an impressive and beautiful demonstration that only last a week or two.

The spring blooms in the desert are amazing

It is an amazing sight to see them blooming every spring.

Please help japan with a donation or good thoughts.

My best hope for those in Japan. You can help donate here.



Amazon

Google Checkout

Donation For Japan Earthquake 11th March 2011

American Red Cross

International Medical Corps

AmeriCares

Donate with Paypal

causes.com

Buying plants at a nursery in Mexico

Back when I was in Mexico, I had the chance to go with my family to buy flowers for the house. My mom wanted some plants to decorate the entrance and to hang out in the back. So we went to a little urban nursery we like close to our neighborhood. They don't have a big range of plants, but they have a lot of very nice ones.

The little nursery close to home

As I have said before where I live is plain desert, so the range of flowers we can grow is a bit limited by the weather. Having tulips for example is completely out of the question, but there are still many other great plants we can have. One common flower to have around there is the petunia. They need a bit of extra care to resist the dryness, but they are able to take the extreme sun, and that is important. We are used to see them around the streets in the city blooming in spring.

They had a lot of great plants

The petunias are in full bloom

So, we went to the nursery with petunias in mind to see what else was there. Most of their stock was petunias, and they had a great variety of colors, but they also had daises, cactus, dahlias, alyssum, cyclamen (in there is as a indoor plant, would not make it outside) and many others.

It was hard to pick which ones to get

Petunias are a must have

Of course at the end we went a little crazy and got a bunch. My mom loves geraniums, and they had some with great colors so we got a trio too. I hope all the plants are doing well at home.

Being in Mexico Dahlias could not be missing

Neither does cactus

I really enjoy going for some plant shopping. It was interesting seeing the difference in how things work here in Japan and back in Mexico. Hopefully I will get a chance to visit other countries in the future and see the difference there as well.

At the end this was the loot

Please help japan with a donation or good thoughts.

My best hope for those in Japan. You can help donate here.

Amazon

Google Checkout

Donation For Japan Earthquake 11th March 2011

American Red Cross

International Medical Corps

AmeriCares

Donate with Paypal

causes.com

My little garden in Japan March 2011

Today was a very long day. I was out all day with my family and had a lot of fun, but running around with a six year old hyper kid, a seven year old little girl and a one year old "starting to run" baby, drained my energy completely. So, I was not on the best mind state to call a bunch of companies and deal with a lot of little mishaps I had. The most frustrating was dealing with my flight's travel itinerary. Turns out that my flight to Tokyo was cancelled because of the problems that Japan has been having with the nuclear plant, the earthquake and the tsunami. I can understand that, it happens. But, the problem is that the new flight they can book for me will have me stranded in Los Angeles airport for one day, and will add six hours to a already long flight. I will end up going in an almost one day and 20 hour flight!

This on top of having my luggage lost on the way to Mexico. Which by the way, happened right after I took some time mid trip and went to the Delta counter to ask if my luggage was doing ok. I had two connections, so I wanted to make sure it will get home with me. I asked, they told me it was on route. I got home, the bag was not there. Definitely not good. And, if I add having to deal with a very unfriendly customer service person from Delta Mexico, this has been the most problematic plane ride I ever had. This time was definitely not the best airline experience.

Well, ok, not much more left to do. There is not a waiting list for a better flight at delta. Oh, and for the record, delta's customer service from tweeter was better, too bad they also weren’t able to help.

Now I will have to take that twenty hour flight, my last hope is to try and see if at least I can get them to let me stay at the delta skyclub to spend the night while in LAX. It would really make my day. Anybody has an idea how to get that?

Spring blooming starts

Anyhow, back to the gardening matters. Hopefully my little garden in Japan will not be dry if the landlord helped me out and watered the plants. If not, it will be a very sad sight when I return. But for now I am still at Mexico, so here is how my little garden in Mexico is doing.

Even in the desert there are a lot of flowers

Here the spring is at full. There are a lot of flowers and life is at full. Perfect for brightening a frustrating day.

Papayas growing among the bugambilia

The aloe starts to flower

The petunias are blooming beautifully

The desert plants start to grow again

The oranges started to grow

And as always, there is a hummingbird in the garden

We have a bunch of new plants because we went to the nursery, but I will let those for a new post. Hope everybody is having a great spring!

Please help japan with a donation or good thoughts.

My best hope for those in Japan. You can help donate here.

Amazon

Google Checkout

Donation For Japan Earthquake 11th March 2011

American Red Cross

International Medical Corps

AmeriCares

Donate with Paypal

causes.com

My Bougainvillea

One of the favorite plants on my garden at Mexico is my Bougainvillea. It is a beautiful bush/tree that blooms and continues growing all year round. Almost everybody compliments on it, and it has been one of the landmarks for our house.

My bugambilia in full bloom

Last time I came to Mexico, I had introduce it. But back then, because we had had some very strong winds that took down a lot of the flowers, I was not able to show it on its full glory. This time I was more lucky and got to take a photo of it on its prime.

We have around ten different plants on the garden. They started as little plants that we put around the outer fence. At one point they took over the whole front and looked amazing, but they grew too thick, so we decided to prune them in a tree form better. Also, at the beginning they had rarely any blooms. But, one time when we were at the garden, we (my father and I) said that it might be good to prune it away, because it didn't seem like flowering much. Since that time it started flowering like crazy to the point that my dad never ever wants to prune it at all.

The other bugambilias are also blooming nicely

The biggest bugambilia (spanish) we have are actually two different plants. They grew so big that they mixed together and made one big bunch. They look amazing all bloomed, we are so happy it decided to flower already. Other thing, after they started blooming so much, my dad started getting cuttings from them and planting more around the house. Now we have one on the sidewalk and others on the back. Even my grandmother has one at her house from our garden. They all seem to be growing nice.

It is a very beautiful plant to have, and I would recommend it to anybody with a big and sunny space to fill.

Please help japan with a donation or good thoughts.

My best hope for those in Japan. You can help donate here.

Amazon

Google Checkout

Donation For Japan Earthquake 11th March 2011

American Red Cross

International Medical Corps

AmeriCares

Donate with Paypal

causes.com

World garden, the best of your garden! My favorite plant now is nochebuena (poinsettia) and yours?

Time for the carnival. I hope we get a lot of nice plants to showcase.

My favorite plant now is nochebuena

First of all want to thank everybody! I started this blog just as a little journal of what my little garden has gone through, but I have gotten such a nice response and a warm welcome from fellow gardeners all around the world, that it have become much more.

I set some goals at the beginning, to be completed on three months. All to decide if I should continue, or if it was just a nice experiment. I hoped to have more than 1000 unique visitors, have one day with over 100 visits, pass the 10$ in advertisement (to cover what the domain costs ), and have 50 followers on Twitter.
I am very happy to say, thanks to you, pretty much all of the got accomplished. This blog is a bit past its three months, and so far we have 1,123 unique visitors, with the day with more visits being November 15 with 112 visits. We also reached the goal for advertisement, and are just two followers shy of 50.

My little garden in japan has grown so much because of your comments and your visits. It is quite an encouragement . I will keep up with this little project and I hope you will continue to follow my journey.
So, once again, thank you very much!

Here is my little attempt to give back to the online community. A little blog carnival so everybody get to know each other and show their beautiful gardens and plants.

Ok, here is my submission to the carnival. I hope is the first of many to come.

My little nochebuena

My favorite plant now is my nochebuena (poinsettia), which I got back when I got the rest of the flowers.

I really like this plant. First, because is native from Mexico, which makes me a little proud; second because it represent this winter holidays, which are one of my favorite seasons; third, and most important, because it makes me remember my garden in México. Back at home, my mom and I used to go get some nochebuenas every winter. They look beautiful at the entrance of our house. It was one of the little traditions of the holidays, one that I sure loved.

My nochebuenas back at home

We tried to keep some to last for next season, but they mostly burn down in the hot days of summer. They are meant to live in the colder weather of south Mexico. There is where they really thrive, I have seen trees of nochebuena (poinsettia) down there.

For my mom, our little tradition

Then, being here in a more tempered weather I had to get some. I also was fascinated by the many kinds of nochebuenas (poinsettias) they have here. They have some pink ones, some shaped like a tree, some mini ones, and some even are sprinkled with glitter.

Pink poinsettias are new to me

I don’t know if mine will last the season, but I certainly hope it does.

Now is your turn, which is your favorite plant?

I disabled the links temporarily to make room for the new carnival. Please wait while I upload the old links into a list.

For the blog carnival, please input a link to one of your posts on the little widget below. Just click the blue button that says add your link, add a comment if you like and let us see which one is your favorite plant.

My aloe and my maguey

Last time when I was in Mexico, taking care of the garden, I felt a bit nostalgic. They were so many plants there that I had seen grow for years. So many memories and experiences in that garden. I remember shopping for flowers with my mom; Trimming all the fence's bugambilia and seeing it bloom so many times; Planting the trees with my dad, then witnessing them grow so big; Raising butterflies from the orange tree; Taking photos of the hummingbird; Planting flowers on top of a huge old tree root every year until the root was all gone; And so many other things to remember.

But now, I don’t live there anymore. That house is not my house, and that garden is not my garden. I will probably never live there again, I won't get to see all the changes through the seasons nor enjoy seeing how new plants grow.

It is a bit sad, but so is life sometimes. Now my path has lead me to a whole new world where I will make new memories and have new experiences, but of course I will always have a place in my heart for my home.

My aloe and my agave

Because of all of that, I wanted to bring a little of my little garden in Mexico to Japan. There are so many plants I would love to have here, but most would be impossible to bring and some others would not grow well here.

In the end I decided to risk it and bring an agave and an aloe. I think they are very representative of my house and my country, also they can survive well and I like them a lot. The maguey(agave) has the potential to grow several meters, but If I keep it on check and in a small planter it should stay small.

The only thing is that, in my garden here, I don’t have hummingbirds to come visit my aloe in bloom every year. I guess I have to settle for a Japanese bumblebee.

So far the plants have been ok. It has been a bit to rainy and cold this last days, and they seem to have resent that a little, but now a couple weeks of sun are coming. I hope they will be enough to allow them to settle down before winter.




Para mi papá, mi mamá, y mi hermanita.
Los extraño mucho y los quiero aun mas.
Gracias por apoyarme para estar aquí.
~fer

My little garden in Mexico II

Continuing with the tour around my little garden in Mexico. This time I want to talk about the plants we have in the back garden.

We don’t have as much plants there because there is not as much space, but that garden has always been very full of life. It used to have a lot of petunias growing along a little trail to from the house to the service room, but now my father has some more aloe and other desert plants growing there. We also have a little nursery for baby seedlings on top of a huge old dried tree trunk, another chili plant and some other wild but pretty herbs and shrubs.

This beautiful desert plant changes from green to purple depending how much water it has

The back garden is mostly for the trees. There is an uvalama, this is a native Mexican bush/tree that gives out little blue berries. It looks like an overgrown blueberry but the flavor is different, although it is very sweet. In Mexico we use this plant as a natural medicine for upset stomach and many other things.

On the same patch of land there is a sour orange tree. It has been there growing since I was eight so it is one of the tallest trees of our house. We got it as a gift from my uncle, we thought it was a sweet orange, but turn out to be sour. Since it is very pretty and started to grow nicely my father leave it be. It gives tons of oranges every year. I used to try to harvest them all, but I gave up because they are too many of them. The last time I try to take the oranges down I took 50, but the tree still looked full. Now it continues growing, and giving fruit even though it still has a lot of oranges hanging from past seasons. My dad has plans to do some grafting on it to add a branch of sweet orange and one of a tangerine, but that probably won't happen soon. Oh, also, this is the tree that usually has the humming bird nesting every year.

This tree has too many oranges we can't harvest them all

On other patch of land we have a very sweet orange. This one is also very old, but it did not grow well the first years, It is only half the height of the sour orange. With this tree we waited year after year but no fruit, we even try fertilizer but it didn’t work. Finally around five years ago it finally flowered and gave 13 oranges that year. From then it has continued to flower every year, giving more and more every time. This year's harvest I think will be around 45. This particular type of orange is called "Ombliguda", meaning big belly button, in Spanish, because it has a big lump coming from the bottom that resemble an "outie" bellybutton.

This season's oranges seem to be growing well

Also on the back we have our own lemon tree. It is the son of the big lemon tree in the front. It is the most successful of all the trees in our garden. In a period of six years it has grown from seed to become one of the tallest trees in the house. It started blooming on its third year, and hasn't stopped since. From the start it bloom with hundreds of flowers, but only developed about 70 mature lemons for the first year. On later years however the harvest has reached the hundreds. I think that particular strand is a very hardy, easy to grow and sweet lemon, I wonder if I can get some seeds to japan.

This lemon grew from seed

In the back garden there is also another bougainvillea of a different color, it is not as big as the one in the front but it is growing slowly. We also have a couple of papayas, we started having them since some years back when we threw away some left over seeds to the compost pile and they started growing. Now every year we have some growing, they usually last two or three seasons before they die, but we always get some nice papayas of each one.

I counted four papayas growing on this one

That is one thing I love about my little garden in Mexico, we never really have put much attention on the hole sowing or preparing beds or any of the set up for the garden. Usually for plants to grow all that is needed is to throw away some seeds in an empty part of soil and then wait. After the seedlings are out then you can worry a little about giving it enough water to survive the intense heat, but that is not that hard. I guess that is the nice blessing of being on the fertile land of Mexico, plants just grow by themselves, there is nothing you can do to avoid it.

Some papaya seedlings ready to get a permanent home

For example, the big lemon on the back, It grew from a seed that was in a used lemon somebody dropped in the garden at a party. Some days after the party I was cleaning the garden and saw the seedling already growing ready to be transplanted to a new home.
In this same way we have found many pleasant surprises close to the compost pile, usually after the rainy season. One time I found a watermelon ready to be eaten, and other time an avocado tree already 50 cm tall, and also the same for a mango tree.

This rainy season surprise a melon

I really love my little garden in Mexico. I hope the next time I go there I have some time to tidy up and get some flowers. I am sure that my dad will continue to take care of it, and it will keep on being as lively and happy as always

My little garden in Mexico

As promised, here is a little tour around my garden in Mexico.

My little garden in Mexico a bit shaggy but full of life

First of all, my home city in Mexico is called Hermosillo, the city of the sun. It is located in north Mexico, It is the capital city of the state of Sonora. There the climate is mostly dry and hot, it is the middle of the desert, think Arizona in the US, It is the same region desert. Being a dessert the temperature varies considerably during the day, for example in winter it can be 0 Celsius at night and 35 Celsius during the day, this is considerate as normal. In summer it can get as hot as 52 Celcius, yes 52 Celsius, 125.6 Fahrenheit, that means you can literally melt plastic, get second degree's burns or cook an egg all on a car's hood, I know because I have done it (not the second degree's burn though).

However, as unbearable as it might seem, you do get used to it, and it is all ok once you learn how to hide from the sun on those terrible hot days. And of course, the plants also get used to it, they only need a bit of extra water or some shadow for those hot days.

My garden In Mexico is spread around the front and the back of my house. Over the years it has had many different plants. Including a mango, an avocado, agaves, nopales, beans, melons, watermelons, radish, chillies, papayas, lemons, oranges, petunias, geraniums, snapdragons, palms, nochebuenas, callas, marigolds, daisies, and many other trees and flowers. It also has a lot of wildlife growing including many little lizards, bees, a lot of butterflies and birds, an also almost every year some hummingbirds that make a nest there.

We always have hummingbirds on our garden

The front garden is usually covered with flowers and many other beautiful plants, but on later years, with me living away and my parents starting to get more involved in other projects, it has been lacking some proper care. My father is the one that continues to care of it when he can, so at least it continues to live although a bit shaggy.

In there now the little plants are mostly desert plants, my father loves them and they take care of themselves so they thrive. We also have a chili plant that is quite big and full of flowers now and a red rose, but this last one got attacked by ants, so no flowers for now. The big ones we have are a big "arbol de brasil" giving a big shadow in the middle and a bunch of bougainvilleas.

This aloe is in a pot, but its offspring took completely over its surroundings

In our garden we have several landmarks that are always complimented by everyone that visit our house. But the one that gets the most every time is definitely our Bougainvillea. This is actually several plants, they have been there almost since the house got built around 20 years ago.

It has very few flowers because of a hurricane took most down before I went, but it continues to grow happily

We struggled with it for years since it hardly ever flowered. That until one season, while looking at it in the garden my father and I, we decided to prune it away once the last flowers of the season had fallen. Since that year it has not stopped giving flowers all year long. It was almost as if it had heard us. Now is almost as tall as the house, probably around 6 meters tall and continue to flower like crazy.

The bougainvillea on the other side also have some bald branches but is recovering fast from the strong winds

We have many desert plants on the front, they all reproduce like crazy and my father doesn’t have the heart to throw any away so now we are a bit overpopulated. We have a bunch of aloes, nopales, choyas, and many many others.

A very small part of my dad's desert plants collection

I think the one we have the most is the offspring of two gigantic maguey (similar to an agave) we used to have. They were two meters wide each and both gave a huge 4 meters tall flower. Each flower gave hundreds of tinny sprouts that just covered all around with little baby magueyes. This kind of plant dry out after flowering so the big ones are gone, but we will probably have more judging by the amount of babies around.

Finally for the front garden, although technically not ours since it overflows from the neighbors garden, there is this huge lemon tree that is older than our house. It gives tons of very juicy lemons year round and is the official lemon provider for half the houses of our street.

I even suspect this lemon tree is older than me

I will continue the post next time so it doesn’t become too long, but there are still a lot of plants on my garden in Mexico that I want you guys to meet.