microb's blog: Time races by

I just can't keep up with all the blogs. i try and read a few and can't understand why i am not keeping my garden activity records going. Maybe its because i can read last years activity report and this year reads just the same.
I seem to have a knack of attracting plant trading activity. Last week a friend came for a garden tour with a young couple (in their 20s) they have staying with them from New York. They lost their jobs due to Covid and have been here for a number of weeks so well quarantined. They arrived with a bucket of Coleus cuttings and I had already prepared a large pile (1/2 a truck load) of Azalea cuttings and some pond weed, and an orchid in return. Had a really fun garden tour. When we visited the bird room the masks were put on but not sure why. We were not going to catch anything from the birds and if our visitors carried Covid it was "curtains" for us already. The young lady from New York had never been close to a Scarlet Macaw before and had never walked through a rainforest garden. I'm so happy when people can have new experiences. It helps reinforce how lucky we are.
Anyway back to plant trading. A few days earlier i made contact with a guy on facebook who was looking to buy Australian Tree Ferns. I jumped right in and said "don't go buying them. I throw them away) A few days later he came for a visit and in return for the tree ferns I got a packet of Tobacco seed and 6 pots of orchids and some orchid magazines from Malaya. Nice pictures.
Two weeks earlier I had visited the garden of the same friend that visited with the NY couple. After a tour of their garden i came away with a large bag of Coleus cuttings and an armful of Gardenia cuttings and a root of varigated ginger.
Tomorrow I'm off to visit a friend, give him some of my excess plastic pots and pick up some more plants.
Its an endless parade of new plants coming to my yard and all this is true.
On facebook I established a connection with a plant fanatic in Florida. He grows a similar mix of tropical plants like mine except that he has ones i don't have and back at you. So we are now on our second USPS "if it fits it ships" exchange.
Back in late June I delivered promised Hawaiian Tree Fern plants to a friend who had given me clumps of bamboo. This is the lady who is having her garden landscaped. I'm not going to go into what she is having done. Its mind boggling. Anyway i came away with five huge roots of red Ti plants that she could not be troubled to have put back in her landscaping. Oh that visit I was on my way to trade ginger plants with a local nurseryman.
Throughout all these adventures I'm getting home and hauling these plants out to The End garden and amazing myself at how many plants have been added. As more plants go in the chainsaw comes out and clears more forested area.
The new garden beyond The End garden will be called the Wood Pile garden. While clearing The End garden i was throwing the branches over the new fence to defend against pigs and, of course, some of that area will be within the expanded fence line and I'm not going to move those branches twice.
Otherwise everything in the garden is normal. Bamboo shoots are coming up on the clumping bamboos and I have just passed 700 new canes on the running bamboo. Thankfully the running bamboo is slowing down. The Giganteus Cane that was 12ft high in my last blog is now 60ft high and a second one is 20ft high. I have about 20 blooms on the Bulbifur amorphophallus. Orchid Cactus are still blooming well.
The bench wire in my greenhouse and the outside bench is rusting badly so today I purchased a 5ft by 16ft length of wire with a 4 inch grid. Needed to cut it into two pieces to get into the van. Luckily my potted plant count is down a bit as things get put into the ground so not too much to move around so that I can take off the rusted wire grid and put in the new one.
The hibiscus cuttings a got about a year ago are doing well. Most went in the ground but I have about 20 to move into two gallon pots so I can put then in the sun on the driveway so we can enjoy them close to the house. Who wants a 15 minute walk into the forest to see one or two monstrous hibiscus blooms?
Volunteer work at the Zoo is still disrupted by construction. We have to trim and weed where we can get access and walkways are ripped up and replaced and everything is made ADA compliant. A few cuttings and bromeliad pups find their way into my trash bag but that is accepted.
Weather is a mix or rainy days followed by hot sunny days but that is OK as it is our hurricane season. A couple of weeks ago we had a 4.6 earthquake which woke us up one evening, followed the next day by a 4.3. No big deal, just aftershocks from the 6.9 quake two years ago.
As you can see life goes on as normal. if I end the day tired, soaking wet or covered in mud and forest debris I'm happy.

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