thagirion | Entries tagged with garden

Gosh I have sucked this month at making posts here. It's not like I haven't had stuff to talk about. It may just be because I've been making so many videos for youtube and that's been keeping me busy. I need to post those vids here and keep up better. So the baby budgies are nearly weaned. The oldest is pretty much weaned and flying around. The middle baby doesn't want to wean and the youngest eats on his own at times but is still being hand fed. Luckily the oldest feeds the white one. Just when this is almost over Emma has seven eggs. I thought it was six but I found an egg today dumped on the bottom of the cage. I don't know how long its been there. I cleaned it and it was not broken so I marked it and put it in the nest. She's sitting on it so maybe it will still develop. If so and it was a middle egg it will now be the youngest despite having been laid in a different order. Development starts with incubation and heat.

Speaking of incubation, I finally got an incubator. I have to test it out. I'll do that today. I mostly got it to be a brooder for baby birds. I really don't want to incubate eggs unless it's an emergency because feeding day one olds for the first week is a nightmare. Round the clock feedings every hour. I've never been able to do that. Young babies need heat and humidity for the first two weeks so using it as a brooder will help at least. Luckily these are small budgies because there's not much room in this small incubator. Later on I may get a larger one.

I have been very busy with plants too. I'll spill the beans here as it's been hard to keep the secret on youtube. But I don't think people on youtube read my LJ. So some will know. About two weeks ago I finally got a polytunnel. It's basically a tent that's a green house. The only thing is I can't install it because the ground wasn't level and pavers have to be moved and added. Our friend Mike came over yesterday finally with the tractor and helped get the ground somewhat level. It was so cool having a tractor in our yard. The funny thing is when we first got the house. I put in two posts and set them 8 feet apart saying that I wanted a big gate in case I ever needed to get a tractor back here. I had no idea why we would need a tractor but it would be good just in case. Wow, that was 13 years ago and guess what? I was right and we finally needed to get a tractor in the yard. Amazing. The next step is to get the pavers out and hand level the ground. Buy 4x4's for the foundation and to anchor the frame so it won't fly away in the wind. Then we can start building it. It's a 10' x 20'. This will be amazing. But ideally I would like to have several greenhouses for different habitats. For now this one will have everything but I'd like to have one just for nepenthes and tropicals, one for cactuses and desert species and one for vegetables and seeds. I think four greenhouses (two big and two small) would solve this problem. But for now this will have to be all purpose. But it will be a long time before even the first green house is done because Chris isn't home much and the few days off he gets he's tired. I'm not strong enough to do some things and I have to wait for help. I've noticed problems like this aren't always about money. Sometimes they are about lack of ability. Another example is the bags of soil I need for the lotuses. They are cheap. I can afford them but they weigh 40lbs each so I can't carry them or get them in the jeep. Or the lumber we'll need. I can afford them to but they don't fit in the jeep and Chris's truck with the topper dosn't fit a lot of stuff at times so I have to wait for help on stuff like that. Seems all my projects have annoying hindrances like this and something that could be finished in less than a week take months. I'm rather sick of it really but can't do anything about it.
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Happy December everyone. Christmas is here. I'm still reeling from such an awesome thanksgiving. It's back to work for Chris. I think this will be his first busy day as everyone is coming back from Thanksgiving. I really shouldn't be online right now but I'm taking a break before getting to work today. I have a lot to do thanks to the stupid weather. I saw we were getting a cold front and the low for tonight had been posted as being 40 degrees F. Well they changed it and now it's supposed to be as cold as 34. That's only two degrees above freezing. Yikes! That means EVERYTHING has to come in. Birds and all plants. I've been working on the garage because I hope to clear a wall so that I can set up shelves and lights in there since we only have one working bathroom now. I can't put the plants in the bathtub of the guest bath anymore. But I didn't make it in time. So I have to bring in plants and figure out what to do with them. I'm also sick of the stupid pink lights I bought last year. They work fine and the plants do like them. They are full spectrum LED's and they do save electricity and money. All that is nice but they are pink. I can't see the plants. I have to turn them off to see the real colors and I'm sick of that. They finally make normal full spectrum colored LED but can't afford them yet. That reminds me. I need to make a wish list for this year. I'll post that tonight. So anyway annoying pink lights. This is one of the ones I have.
LINK

If you look at the review photos you'll see why I'm starting to go crazy. I do like colored lights for ambiance and decoration. Like behind a TV or computer. But when I'm trying to work and see things as they are this totally sucks.

So as far as plants go I've gotten a lot of new cactus and succulents. I've gotten Stapelias, Huernias, Orbea and one rare plant that turned out to be a disaster. A friend of mine was recommending a rare plant that is majorly endangered in the wild. I wanted one because I strongly think that the survival of many species lies in the hands of captive breeders and private collectors as habitat is destroyed for one reason or another. So I got one of these little succulents the other day and I was so happy. Hardly any info is known about them. It's an unrooted cutting which I'm not a an of. Luckily the guy had two so I went ahead and ordered a second one since it's a breeding program and you need two of everything like Noah's ark. Well I was taking some photos yesterday and closed my blinds because it was too bright in my room. I keep the plants in the windowsill. I forgot to open the blinds and it turned into an oven and my poor plant got cooked. I felt terrible. I almost cried. It's still alive but shrivled and looks nothing like when I got it. I was so happy when I first unboxed it. So now I have it in a special "intensive care" area. I watered it despite being a super arid species. I didn't mean to recreate Mars like conditions. I have a motto. "If there's green there's hope." There is still green but it looks so bad. I hope it makes it. I will be more careful with the next cutting but if this one doesn't make it then I'll only have one. Assuming I can get them to root. I don't like unrooted cuttings but there's not much choice in this case.

I'm taking down the Thanksgiving decorations and slowly putting up Christmas. I'm not doing much this year. Mostly it's the little dinning area that gets decorated now til things get back to normal. And I need to finish the stupid wall paper in the master bath already. So I hope to try to work on all that today. Bring in plants, put away Thanksgiving, work in garage and work on master bath. Ha, yeah that's not happening today but I'll try to do some of these four things. And I'm extremely creative. I want to work on Fear art and stories but just can't right now.

Lastly budgie update and I really should get going. Minion is doing great. He's up to 120 words. He's learned "Shiver me timbers" and "Walk the Plank". but not all the words. He can't say "walk" but says everything else but not in order. The funniest thing he said the other day was "Minion's a plank!" Chris and I both laughed so hard. We also had a short funny conversation. He has learned to say "YES!" He says it very confident and forceful. I hadn't realized my YES was so strong he picked it up. He was saying gibberish the other day and some bad English he said, "Nautica taste." So I asked him, "Nautica wants to take a taste?" and he looked and me and yelled "YES!" Like of course you stupid human. Haha. Or he didn't like being reminded he'd left out a bunch of words in his sentence.
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It's been a busy last few days. Yesterday was a day off and we really enjoyed it. I went on one job with Chris and finished reading most of my Parrotlet book.I know a little more about breeding them now but still unsure if that's what I want to do in the future. Still bugs me Melville is taking up space and eating food. What a mistake that was. I love Nautica and may not want to breed them together since there's risk involved to the females of egg binding. Even without a male I worry so much about her coming into maturity at one year since they don't need a male to lay eggs. I had enough of that with Punkin my pigeon and some scares with Bullet that luckily she pulled through. But Natuica is doing well. I have taught her to hang and to wave. We're working on shake which she doesn't like. But because she has learned hang she finally knows how to use the ladders on the cage to get back down and into her own cage. Before she would just jump off the play guy which is like jumping off a four story building. Then she'd climb up the ladder on the ground.

As you can see I made a new icon of her. I have regretted not making one of Bullet though I had tons of pics. I don't know why I never did and to do so now would just be a bad thing I think. It would make me down to use her icon. Not making that mistake with Nautica so here is a pic of her. Though Chris suggested I should draw her as the Empress and use that. That could work since that's a fictional cartoon version of her. One thing I don't like about Natuica is I can't touch and pet her. She does not like it and bites. I also can't brag her like I can most budgies. I can even grab Melville and he doesn't bite or struggle. But perhaps I can train her to like it by using a skewer and the reward method. It will definitely take a long time but it could work. When her first molt comes I'd like to be able to preen her with my fingers.

Here is the pic I used as the icon. I noticed my camera really pics up the blue in the room from the walls and the cages. They come out over saturated in blue and green. So from now on if the photo is worth it they will be color corrected. This one looks like real life finally.

( More pics of birds and garden )

Well the lotuses aren't the only things growing fast. So are the weeds. My poor front garden is not as nice as it was in Spring and I can't keep up with it. Grass has popped up everywhere. Disgusting bugs are out for summer. Stink bugs, leaf footed bugs and for the first time this year a type of ridged black beetle has attacked my tomatoes. My four plants are a loss. I got to harvest some tomatoes but the plants are bug eaten and diseased. I have new plants on stand by but worry I would be wasting them planting them. I did some research and found out the problem is other than cherry tomatoes, tomatoes don't grow in Florida in summer. All this time I've been planting on a northern schedule the rest of the country follows. But I've now realized the "typical garden info" does not apply to FL. We're totally different from everywhere else. Here's what I learned about growing.

* North Florida - Tomatoes may be planted between February and April
* Central Florida - between January - March
* South Florida - between November and February. They may be planted for late season crop between August - September.

I'm Central Fl so I planted in April. Way too late. Give this time table to any other state and they'd laugh because you'd be hitting their winter. August is the worst month but perhaps bugs will be on the way out by Sept. I could try for end of August if I can keep my current plants alive. Cherry tomatoes are year round.

I also found out about a native tomato that grows in the heat called Everglades. It's a tiny cherry. I'll try to get some of those seeds as well as a small sized tomato called Floridade. Developed in Dade county which is Miami to withstand the heat. Well heat is fine but bugs are another matter.

Last thing. Chris downloaded the game on PS4 called Hungry Shark World.

jokerforever, I think you told me about this game a while back. I was a cellphone game that I guess is now on PS4. So much better that you can have a big screen and a controller. Anyway you play as different cartoon sharks and level up by eating to unlock other sharks. You find things to wear that give you different abilities. The art style is very funny and cool. It's definitely a dark funny game. Chris got as far as the Megamouth shark and unlocked the arctic. I may play this and start my own game. Oh gosh that means if I do everything will go on hold. Haha.
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Sorry I have not been on much anywhere. I think I'm finally getting better. I still wake up with mild tummy pains but they are so much better than what was going on last month and other things seem to be getting back to normal. I'm actually doing quite well. I've had energy to work in the garden. I've been weeding the front garden and am half done with it. I planted four A. paeonifollius and four tomatoes. I pruned one one tower of dragon fruits because they were growing too many side shoots at the bottom and they need to focus on their main stalk. My other trellis is doing well. I have four types on that. Brunei which is the fastest growing and almost to the top. Condor is also growing well. Amazing to me how this tower with single stems right at the base is doing better than my other one that is chaotic. Frankie's red took a burn from the cool but is still growing. American Beauty got burned badly. I hope it recovers. If not I have one cutting left to replace it with.

I've gotten my first lotus plant. It's a micro lotus. Here is a short video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU9Ltm5VZgM
Not much to see yet and I am new and don't know much about these plants. It is a micro lotus called First Fall and supposed to be able to grow in a tiny bowl. But the tubber I got was too small for my first tiny pot. I was a bit disappointed in that because I have seen photos of them in very small pots with tiny leaves and flowers. I don't know if those are real photos or I just got a root that was too big. Speaking of water plants, some of you might remember that years ago I picked up some really cute mini water lilies Nymphoides spp. I had at least two types. A white flower and a yellow flower type. Unfortunately we stopped doing our yearly pond clean up and they all died from leaves falling on them and then duckweed covering the surface. We will clean the pond again this year but I had something very rare. It's been so hard finding a store that carries them that is legit. The place I got them from last time has a bad reputation and my experience with them was not so good, but not as bad as what they have done to other people. I had found another one called Arizona pond or something like that. I even went as far as registering, but then something told me it was odd they had everything I wanted. I decided to check for reviews and oh my gosh they had worse reviews than the other place. I kept finding others and then read a review they were all the same company. WTF? What is it that these kinds of plants attract psychotic people that just lie and rip people off. I don't understand how companies like this stay in business. When I sell something I give my best customer service. When I sold birds my babies were the best and my customers were always happy. In theory bad companies should bust but they don't. I don't get it. Anyway, I found one other place that looks legit. They even have a youtube channel. They are PongMegaStore. I ordered Nymphoides geminata, N. indica and N. crestata. I have to be careful to not confuse these N's with Nepenthes. They had mostly good reviews on Dave's Garden Watchdog. So I ordered. I hope they ship soon within the week. As for where I bought my lotus from, Begen Water Gardens, I am nothing but pleased with this company. I wish they carried Nymphoides.

As for art I am majorly behind on projects. I am working on a commission that should have been done by now. Got a nit picky customer and hopefully the last version I sent is finally right and things aren't a millimeter off. This is the first month I have not finished a Bullet Journal which sucks. And I basically missed all of last month as far as writing in it. I was going to do Gilligan's Island but that will be too hard for characters I don't know how to draw yet. So I will do a fast layout with easy drawings. This month's theme will be budgies and I'll draw and use stickers mostly to try to get it done soon. I will still do Gilligan's Island. It will just be for another month.

Today is a day off and I'm looking forward to going out some places. We are celebrating our monthly anniversary a day early. We're still playing Subnautica. I need to find time to make a video for that too. But right now I'm also super behind on videos. I have sorted the driving videos for Novemmeber and need to start editing those. I'm doing a two part packing travel video. Need to finish part 2. And a bunch of plant updates also need to be done. This year has been nothing but delays. Oh and one bit of bad news I'm not happy about. I missed my April 1st deadline for my resolution. Not happy about that. It is not bumped to finish the stupid house by June 1st. I hope we make it.
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Usually I'm good at keeping track of the weather but I haven't paid attention to it for a week now. So yesterday afternoon a huge storm came in that's very unusual for our area. It's not like Tampa and Lutz that get the dangerous lightning storms that cause you to lose power and fries all your electronics. So the wind kicked up, the rain was heavy and the lights were flickering. Three circuit breakers went out so I lost power in the living room and kitchen for a bit. But I kept right on working. Chris later told me about tropical storm Gordon. What? I had no idea. So that's what that was. Haha. By the time I checked the radar it was already out in the gulf heading north west. Oh well not my problem anymore. Most Floridians don't freak out about storms anyway until they reach category 2 hurricane. I even mentioned to Chris it was only 60mph. Not so bad. Makes me think of the scene in ID4 where Will Smith wakes up and asks if there's an earthquake. His wife goes, "Not even a 4 pointer. Go back to sleep." And he does. That's what it's like here with storms.

Our land line is back. Chris found out what was wrong. We have a wall mirror. It had fallen over and pulled the cord out of the wall. I knew the mirror had fallen but didn't think anything of it. I'm glad it wasn't something that the service provider had to fix. It was nice having peace and quiet but I'm glad I don't have to use my crappy cell phone anymore in the house. It works great everywhere else but my house.

And more good News. Bullet seems better. Yesterday I was very worried but last night Chris pointed out she looked almost normal. The other night she did throw up one seed that I saw. But last night she stuffed herself. I think her strategy is to eat everything. Her crop sticks out and is round and hard. She hopes SOMETHING has to pass through. So I was happy to see her tight feathered and slightly active. Today she looks good. So I have to make sure to keep her food filled so she can just constantly eat and stay full. So I won't be posting the depressing video I had filmed yesterday but I will post an update video on her soon.

So time for some photos.

Hoya archiboldiana finally bloomed for me. I call this plant Octopus suction cups. It's waxy and hard feeling. Biggest hoya. I've had it for years so I'm glad it's finally bloomed.

Starfish plant bud. This thing is huge. About the size of a tennis ball. I can't wait for it to open.

( More pics )
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The Realm

Musings of a demon

Big stuff in the works

Battening Down the Hatches

Nautica Lotuses and much more

A Bit Better

The State of Florida is fun

About the Demon

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