Greener

We haz new AC!

G snapped this mid-install this week.

It was getting pretty warm by the time it was in place, but thankfully it’s been deliciously cool (and much quieter) since it was replaced. The old one had gotten so bad, when it was running it sounded like there was a small helicopter on the roof. I’m not sorry to see that part gone. We shall see how the new baby handles it once the temps outside scale upward of 110º, probably next month. I’m sure it’ll be fine, long as Mother Nature doesn’t mow down miles and miles of power lines again, like she did last summer. I never bet against Mother Nature.

Lookie our baby lemon tree! It’s FINALLY growing again. (Below and on the right of the compass rose.) It’s amazing how much difference it made once G realized I wasn’t kidding, nor deluded, when I said you had to water it for half an hour.

The bush/tree at the far right edge of this photo is a mimosa. Our neighbor said it was a formosa – which doesn’t grow here – but we started tracing from there. Mimosa is a “sensitive” tree. Within seconds of cutting off a leaf, it curls up.

The picture at right was taken literally 30 seconds after G plucked this one from the tree. It was flat when he pulled it. We were comparing pictures and the leaf curl confirmed it.

We’re going to try to propagate it from a cutting, then make another attempt at murdering the big one that just won’t die, at the corner of the house. I honestly would love to have one and let it shoot up to 50 feet (which yes, they can).

… Just not when it grows into our roof to reach those heights.

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The backyard garden is a mixed bag. We’ve added a lot more plants – both in the planters and in the ground. We took the kitchen-sink approach and are hoping at least some of the stuff we planted will stick.

The tomato plants are ginormous, though we only have two tomatoes and they’re not really getting any bigger. There aren’t a lot of pollinators around, and I didn’t see any blooms left or I’d try to hand-pollinate them.

The oleander (Nerium oleander, left) is growing and blooming nonstop. I got the dwarf variety so it should top out around 10 feet-ish tall and wide. We may prune it to tree form, which we didn’t even know was a thing until this weekend. We spied some that had been tree-trimmed in city landscaping, in meridians and along main streets.

We also have several Mexican petunias (Ruellia brittoniana, below), and they’re like the oleander – healthy and blooming.

You can only see a falllen purple bloom on this photo. The blooms are short-lived but showy, and we typically get them en masse, rather than the stray one you can just barely see here. These will fill out and be more or less green puffball-shaped shrubs around 3 feet at their highest. The photos aren’t the greatest. I ran out and took them at lunchtime, and the light wasn’t ideal.

We put in a bird of paradise – which is looking surprisingly good, though it’s far too small to photograph yet. At full-size it has a kind of wide-spaced “feathery” look to it. At 6-8 inches high, it’s barely visible unless you’re right on top of it.

Even if we can only keep half of these healthy, we’re way ahead of where we started.

On the not-doing-as-good side, I just yanked the last dregs of the bell peppers, which had stopped growing. The small peppers were rotting on the plant. That leaves a kind of climbing spinach plant (yeah I never heard of them either) in one of the galvanized tubs. The last staunch onions are coming to the kitchen for cooking, and the lettuce is a lost cause. Other than maybe the mutant spinach, I think we’re going to pull everything from that tub and repurpose it.

The potted plants to the left of the main window in the photo above — the tall green stuff — have outgrown their pot (by a long way). I think we’re going to relocate those to one of the galvanized gardens tomorrow after I get off work.

There are at least five, and possibly six, different plants in that single mid-sized pot, including one that is either a baby tree or a shrub. The leaves look familiar to me – I think it’s either tecoma stans, aka yellow bells, aka trumpet bush — OR — a Chinese elm. There are no blooms or buds so I can only go by the leaves.The tacoma, in any of its variants, tops out at max six feet. The Chinese elm, as its name implies, is a tree and can soar over 60 feet. Since I’m not positive which I have, but am leaning toward the elm, I need to locate accordingly.

Besides the mystery plant and some hollyhocks (which are a no-brainer since they’ve already bloomed), the pot contains mums, purple heart (purple queen tradescantia pallida), and spider plants.

The spiders and purple heart are easy to identify. The only thing I have to go on with the mums is the leaves, too; but I’ve seen enough mums I’m pretty confident that’s what they are. In the top-down shot, you can see they’re growing in a classic mums crown.

Some of those need shade to survive here. Let’s hope when we transplant, we can separate them enough to try and save the shade-loving varieties.

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There’s a saying: God protects little children and fools.

My BIL is in rehab, and so help me, he’s outdone all predictions. I’m not complaining, just shocked. My sister and I both misunderstood. His calf muscle is intact and his shin muscles are intact. The bones in his leg were an unholy mess — that hasn’t changed — but he may indeed eventually walk again. Not like before, obviously, and he’s still got a long way to go. But he taught himself to talk to talk while he had a tracheotomy. The doctors have no idea how he did it. It should’ve been physically impossible.

The trach is removed now, and other than the bandage remaining on his throat, you’d never know he had it. There’s no whispery or hoarse quality to his voice.

He’s posting on FB again for himself. He was bemoaning how he’d never ride another motorcycle. Not that he’d sworn off motorcycles; he was unhappy that he’d never be able to ride another motorcycle.

Little children and fools.