A Day In the Life Of A Gardener

“However many years she lived, Mary always felt that ‘she should never forget that first morning when her garden began to grow’.” – Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

Chipped nails. Dirty hands. Rough palms. They’re just minor disasters compared to the happiness you feel when you are in a garden. I tell you, it won’t be gardening at all if you always use gardening gloves and don’t feel the rich earth in your hands.

It was a busy weekend for me and Josef. He was in-charge of trimming the carabao grass while I re-potted, transferred and planted some bulbs and flowering plants in our small garden. It was a tedious job but all worth it. My Crossandra plants need to be transferred to pots because they are growing everywhere. They produce orange blooms all year round and  they are so easy to grow because they are self-propagating.

These are my Rain Lilies newly planted as ground cover, some of them I planted in small pots near the shade. When in bloom, they look like this. Actually, they bloom after the rain, that’s probably where they got their names. This pink one is called  Zyphyranthes Rosea.  They need full sun though to grow well.

I also transferred my Amazon Lily into four pots. The funny thing is I need to break the original pot in order to  re-pot the bulbs since they are closely clustered.

The dark green paddle-shaped leaves of the Amazon Lily are attractive on their own. Time and again, I’ve blogged about its  sweet-scented and velvety snow-white blooms.  It produces  flowers at least three times a year.

And yes, this is another surprise, I saw a pot of my orange lily breaking into a bud and probably in a few days, it would open its arms to the world.

I also planted another bulb plant in two small pots. It’s the red onion variety which is locally planted and sold in our home province in Pangasinan. Locally, we call  it lasuna and it is best used in vegetable salads and our famous vegetable recipe called pinakbet.

And the highlight of course is seeing our two jackfruit trees  bearing clustered fruits. I am thinking of cooking ginataang langka in a few days.

My only frustration is, I could not trim our Fukien tea plants in perfect round shapes. I would probably need to hire a professional gardener  to do it.

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