Simply Belle

In this day and age, when all the fruits and veggies you buy in the store are not only expensive, but adulterated, and pesticide-laden, wouldn’t it be a good idea to avail of the vacant space in your backyard and fill it up with your favorite vegetables and fruits? Not only that, it practically costs nothing to raise a garden especially in the province where rain is a plenty. Unlike here in our place where water rain is scarce and so it costs expensive to water a garden even with drip irrigation installed.

While I was in the province vacationing two months ago, there was a time that I couldn’t figure out what to cook for lunch. There was no fish available because it was the day after typhoon Frank. I looked around in the property and in no time, I knew exactly what to fix for lunch – “Kamote top salad.” That was really good and refreshing dish! And it is such a good feeling to be able to turn to the yard and make a meal from it without spending a dime. Plus, knowing that it is organic makes one feel good.

Before our Philippine trip, when everything was at an all time high, I suggested to my husband that we start a garden again. I don’t know if you remember in one of my old entries, we had gopher invasion in our garden last year and turned our yard into a complete disaster. They attacked from below the ground and cut off the roots of the plants and pulled the dead plants inside a hole and nibble on them. They did it methodically until all plants were gone. Seems like a battle hard to win, huh?

But not for long…

My husband outsmarted the pocket gopher by putting a hardware cloth, which is a wire mesh fabric, and spread it out at the very bottom of the raised bed. He used blocks to make the garden bed. It took him 3 weeks to finish the whole job. That whole process deserves another post and will be posted shortly.

Two weeks later when all the seeds had a chance to sprout up, here’s a sneak peek of my husband’s hard work.

Pechay

Beets

Tomatoes that we planted in the pots before the Philippine trip so gopher will not get them.

Herbs are being eaten off by some insects.

Figs up close

Prolific fig tree

Delicious Johnny Gold apples

Persimmons

And my lovely visitor that frequents my yard.

9 Comments »

I meant to submit my entry to PMN before the deadline but I missed it again for the second time. I received an email early this morning from Dine reminding me of the deadline but I was getting ready for work so there was no way I could make it. Thanks Dine! Anyway, I thought I would just post my entry here in my blog.

I had this plant sitting on my kitchen counter for quite a while now. When I bought it, it had plenty of red little flowers and thick silky leaves. It was so beautiful that I just had to take it home. I thought it would die right away after several months like any other house plants that I have had but lo and behold, this particular one is still alive and looking good. I hope to see flowers by next spring.

Last week, I went out in the garden and took pictures of the butterflies but only this kind came out half decent.

Bartlett Pear- the best eating pear.

Our fruit trees (left to right) persimmon tree, apricot tree, and apple tree.

Persimmons- my favorite autumn fruits

Persimmons-up close

Apples

19 Comments »

My husband and I went to Phoenix today to do some important errands and to return my daughter’s prom dress to the mall. (See update on prom dress on the post below titled, “It is Prom Night.” On the way over, I noticed that the desert was starting to show some colors. I came prepared for the photo shoot. I asked my husband to pull over on the side of the freeway so I could take pictures of the Sonoran desert. Sonoran desert, by the way, was barricaded with barbed wire to protect the cattle from reaching the highway. Soon, we saw ourselves crawling under the barbed wire. Here are some pictures that my husband and I took.

Note: All cacti have thorns, even the thornless prickly pear has invisible thorns, which are hard to see by the naked eye. Once it gets into your skin, it can be uncomfortable and it is awful hard to remove. My husband went on a quail hunting one day and inadvertently got close to Cholla cactus. He couldn’t remove the thorns and he was hurting so he ended up throwing away the good camouflage hunting pants. So, stay away from those as much as possible.

Buckhorn Cactus

Ocotillo cactus

Prickly Pear Cactus

Baby Barrel Cactus

Cholla Cactus

Dead Saguaro

Hedgehog Cactus

Barrel Cactus

Saguaro Cactus

16 Comments »