Greetings Growers & Lovers of Green Things

The Tropical Grower welcomes you to the online version of Our Garden. Check out our What’s Bloomn’ slideshow featuring last week’s flowers, cruz the latest topics at the Blog Page for information, enjoy the Photos, or just check out what’s happening this week in Garden Dirt. While we are Growing Tropical, growing is for everyone, and we’re here to share the green.

Garden Dirt

May 11, 2026

All Hail Mothers!

We hope all you mothers out there had a moment of special, all to yourself.  It’s such a thankless job.  If things go right, nothing, but if things go wrong, All Your Fault.  LOL!  Oh yeah, there’s some joy in there too.  Parenting.

The good news, if you teach them, they can probably learn how to cook, and you get to trade-in your surprise marshmallow toast on actual food for Mother’s Day.  My Son and Hannah made brunch, by hand.  There were donuts, actually fried in our kitchen.  And Crepes, filled with a yummy cheesecake goo and fresh strawberries and/or blueberries finished with a drizzle of chocolate sauce.  Eggs and bacon.  It was all delicious.  And we’re getting pedicures on Wednesday.  Woo-Hoo!  It does get better.

Sunday was also a day for us to show off all the new improvements to Our Garden.  My Son climbed through the tunnels I’d just cut in our undeveloped lot up front with me.  He thought the same thing I did.  It’s really cool in there.  Both in temperature and environment.  The kids also got a look at the ⅓ of the Shell Circle, completely refurbished, with mortar and the new concrete pavers My Mom and I made last week.  Super fun.

Around Our Garden

Indeed, it’s been a race to finish the last of the improvements needing dry days to set.  While I wish we could have gotten more of the Shell Circle finished, I doubt we’ll get a chance.  Identifying 2 dry days in a row correctly is almost impossible, and we’re not big gamblers.  Just saying.  But, we did completely finish a ⅓ of it, mortar and all.  That means we can sweep, keep the shells from being kicked around, and, hopefully block any future weeds in the area.   Woo-Hoo!  Time well spent.  And, it looks fantastic, the ⅓ of it finished.

We also finished making the concrete pavers for the new path.  Yes, absolutely, this needs an actual post, hopefully soon.  Making concrete pavers is easy if you have yard sand.  It only costs time and the number of bags of concrete you’ll need, maybe a bag of grass seed, for after.  That’s a huge savings if you’ve ever priced pavers from the store, even the less expensive concrete ones.  And, you can make them any size or shape you want, completely custom.  Since we inherited about ½ of what we needed for our new path, we put it on the project list.  Last week, it came up, to beat the rains.

My Mom worked on her molds for 2 days.  The fact she did it at all was pretty amazing, cutting shapes into the sand.  The trick is you have to wet the sand, and not just the top.  It requires very wet shapeable sand, and you have to keep lightly wetting it, just like the master sandcastle builders.  I took the heavy lifting, taking the 5, 50 pound concrete bags to the back and mixing them a half bag at time.  Not going to lie, the last bag was difficult to lift, the bucket with the wet mix even more so, but we got it.  My Mom patterned her pavers more rustic with deep impressions where I went light details.  They’re dried and cured, waiting to be lifted from the sand and set in place.  Woo-Hoo!

Harvest

We took more Peaches!  Woo-Hoo!  My Mom put the 1st batch, ripening in the window, in the fridge this morning, claiming they are soft.  We’ll see.  The remaining Peaches are staying where they are, and we’re going to try to tree ripen.  I don’t have much hope the birds will leave them alone.  The fishing line works pretty well to deter, but we’ve had a couple of pecks.  I get it, they’re hard to leave alone once they turn their bright peachy color.

We also got our 1st Cheyenne Pepper, pretty and bright red.  Woo-Hoo!  The Orange Bells are right there, getting ready to get their color.  You have to watch them because while the birds don’t like them, they will taste them.  Then, the bugs can get in.  Dang.

The rest of the Veggies are coming in regularly.  We got more Broccoli, Tomatoes, Cabbage, Lettuce, and some Swiss Chard.  Unfortunately, most of the Arugula followed the Buttercrunch and has gone to seed.  Dang.  Heat and Drought are never good for Veggies.

Flowers

We’re featuring the Purple Dendrobium Orchids from last week.  These little beauties blasted up the fences and pergola wall last week.  One day, nothing, the next, flower spikes everywhere.  We have several baskets, in different locations, and they all bloomed at the same time.  Woo-Hoo!  Guess they liked the weather.  LOL!  Few Orchids match the number and longevity of the Dendrobiums.  The little Purple ones are slightly sheer, sparkling purple tips in the sun.  Just Gorgeous.

Few flowers are so different and changing as the Indian Blanket Flower.   We have big patches of it, all different, all beautiful.  The Zinnias, gaining their summer girth, are in heavy competition with it for the most flowers in Our Garden.  LOL!  Try: How to Grow Wildflowers in Your Yard And, the Double Lancaster Tiger Lilies, while only so far throwing a couple of flower spikes, with magnificent flowers, just sent up a mess of spikes. They’re coming. If you don’t grow bulbs, you’re missing out on easy blooms. Check out: How to Grow Bulbs and Rhizomes .  Enjoy!

Check out What’s Bloomn’ slideshow for more flowers or visit Garden Dirt Diary to catch up on what’s been going on around Our Garden.