Tag: elephant ears

Watching Growth

From plants to chicks to rising bread: we all grow at a different rate!

June 18, 2018

Watching Growth

Have you ever watched bread dough rise?  It takes FOREVER!

Have you ever planted a seed or set out a new plant in your garden?  You sometimes don’t see the slow growth – sometimes you don’t notice until, “Oh, wow, there’s a red tomato on that bush!”  The plant was watered, de-bugged, and looked after for about 100 days but never really watched.

I planted my elephant ears in spring… now they are taller than me!

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Our baby chicks were cute little fluffs of fur, totally dependent on us to keep them safe, feed, and water them.  Now, they are nine weeks old.  Fully feathered, they look like miniature adults.  They don’t need us to pamper them and hide them from the rain or help regulate their body temperature; just some food, water, and a cat-proof shelter is fine.

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My oldest daughter is almost considered by the state to be old enough to command a 1-ton vehicle!  I still see her as the tiny bundled angel in the picture on my wall.  Of course, I literally see that she’s grown.  Sometimes she doesn’t see it.

Sometimes I don’t see my own growth.

God is always working on us.  Since none of us are dead, we are still improving.  Sometimes we get frustrated at ourselves because we don’t see any growth.  Maybe instead of imagining ourselves as rising bread, we should think of ourselves as growing plants.  Maybe not elephant ears – okay, sometimes we do grow quickly.  But with some things we are like the White Cedar (growing about 6 inches per year) or the Saguaro cactus (gets only one to two inches tall in the first 10 years!)

Sometimes slow growth is hard to see.

A wise man plants trees under whose shade he will never sit.

Wow, that thought says to me that those who choose to invest in long-term growth are wise.  So rather than expect instant results when I’m allowing God to work on my life, I understand that sometimes tiny steps in the right direction eventually lead to the finished product.  I will choose not to be frustrated with myself for not being a fast enough learner; I will choose to rest in His care and allow time for growth.

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

 

 

Elephant Ears

May 24, 2018

Elephant Ears

One of my favorite garden bulbs is what we call “Elephant  Ears.”

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These are from three bulbs that we dug up in some weeds when we first moved in.  They were tiny, neglected, and crowded.  With good fertilizer and plenty of water, (we didn’t have to water them, God did it with the rain!) those three multiplied into fifteen by January when we replanted them in this nice half-shady strip between the carport and the side of the house.

We also leave the wild flowers that don’t crowd out our bulbs.  Tiny white flowers that spread like ground cover are some of Jillian’s favorite because they look like “stars on green sky.”  (Those are under the star lily in the above picture, but their blooms look like dots in the picture.)

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These are the smallest ones.  The elephant ears are now growing alongside a few lilies, six pineapples, tomatoes, and squash.  (The clump of bushy leaves on the right corner are tomatoes.) The plants are called elephant ears because their leaves get to be the size of African Elephant’s ears.  I’ve grown some before, which by their third year, had leaves that were five feet wide!  (Since you have to clip the ears off at the stalk when the ears fall to help encourage new growth, the girls would save the clipped stalks for umbrellas!)

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These are some of the “wild” tomatoes.  This means we didn’t sow them there, they just came from our fertilizer/compost and we tended the plants as they sprouted.  Jillian has the worm-picking job because we don’t use pesticides.

I love Florida bulbs, they are easy to grow and propagate quickly.  I can give the many extras away and cover my yard in little groves of them within just a couple of years.  Now if I can just get fruit trees like fig, citrus, kumquat, pineapple, and bananas to grow as well!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

 

Spring Seeds

March 3, 2018

Spring Seeds

Florida likes to tease our tropical plants a bit with a fake spring.  It’s really the start of spring weather but we will have at least one more cold snap to remind us that we do participate briefly in the season the rest of the country calls winter.

My favorite plant (outside of anything edible and my personal favorite trio of roses, gardenia, and Camilla) type is bulb.  In Florida, many bulbs thrive with minimum care.  Our yard had a few worn beds of overgrown bulbs when we arrived.  Year one was break them up and replant.

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Year two is sprouting.  (See how I love bulbs!  Fast growing, hardy and results in a year!)

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Elephant ears are one of my favorites, but this yard has two types of elephant ears, bananas, gorgeous lilies, fire-flowers, a yellow-red lily with a huge 6” bloom (just a green few in the picture here as tall, cup-like leaves with “spokes”), and the normal replanted ones like celery, onion, and garlic.  Celery bottoms replant and grow until they are tired of being stepped on.  We have one two-year pineapple and two newbies.  Two garlic cloves are growing. Dozens of onions dot the design.

And we have what we call “bonus plants” these come from our fertilizer.20180302_173445.jpg

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We fertilize with an organic mix of hay, biodegraded plant material, and chicken droppings.  Since our philosophy is to waste nothing, our chickens end up eating a lot of kitchen scraps that include seeds.  This often leads us to wonderful “bonus plants.”

These gems are usually milo, wheat, millet, collard, eggplant, citrus, pepper, or tomato!  We’ve noted cucumber, sunflower, and pumpkin as well.  When we find a tomato, we baby it.  Usually, though, the next day the lizard hunter has trampled it even though the gardens are strictly off limits.  Any lizard who makes it to the house or the garden is safe!

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But this spring we were babying one tiny tomato in the front porch garden when today, voila! ~ ~ We discovered this literal bed of tomatoes hiding under an elephant ear!  We’re so excited we haven’t figured out if we want to attempt to dig them up and separate them while they are small or just leave them in this area they appear to like.  (I’m beginning to believe a single chicken must have eaten an entire bag of tomatoes last season!)

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All of our young pullets are finally hens, laying and regularly producing so we have an average excess of 10 dozen eggs a week!  Now our chickens pay for themselves and the dogs!  (The money we get from the market for our eggs pays for chicken feed and dog feed.)  I love the seeds of spring!

20180302_173503.jpg(So does Lucas, who had to have his picture taken without his dirty shirt.)

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

 

 

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