Gardening for Beginners

Thought i'd just draw this Charantia vine. Altho we do not consume it that much, the wild or ampalayang ligaw (abbreviata) variety with small 2-4 cm ovoid fruit easily grows around and i let it for the dainty vines being blown by the wind is a pretty site with the small yellow flowers. Both have alternate leaves, with 3-7 deeply separated lobes, with a slight difference in shape, and simple tendrils.

The larger oblong fruit looks like this:

I absolutely adore gardening. I love growing my own herbs, fruit and veggies in my own back yard. I know I'm banking on longevity, looking after my brain and my body from eating natural earth grown foods rather than hormonally injected chemically filled poisonous garbage that people unashamedly destroy themselves with. I will include some of our gorgeous flowers in my next post and the pic size is rather large.

Here's my watermelon (delicious) from last year and mangos we got from a great farm in Queensland this year:

Been watching a few of these by late bloomer kaye kittrell the past weeks. You may want to see too.
[video=youtube;fQDSIG99yWc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQDSIG99yWc[/video]

well if you need myrrh or sage just get me in lol it grows and grows and wont stop lol! i love gardening..just not all the spiders

Got plenty of sage but could go with some good myrrh. Sure, i'll take it, another one of God's natural fantastic remedies gifted to us.

'Piders.. *shudder*

Sounds like your just as much of a spider fan as I... would you like to cut my rose bush and my other plants?? its full with wolf spiders and stuff

My garden in America, looking forward to going back in 2017:

Part two of my piece of heaven:

whew, i need to take a course on saving a labor of love, as someone said, w/o affecting the resolution as i reduced the file to less than 20 kb. reducing and saving the file took longer than actually drawing, i'm ashamed to admit. how simple is this...

Me too....

Hi laura,
Did u say... great minds? This is one ive been wanting to post about since months ago ha2-).

This from an article on treasures yet undiscovered which Jose Rizal mentioned himself.

...Despite the unremitting human assault upon Philippine waters and forests, these precious resources are still home to a wealth of species of animals and plants, to which even National Hero Jose Rizal sang praises. Although Rizal was not a scientist in the true sense of the word, as he lacked the education or specialization required for such a title, Rizal became a serious collector of animals and shells, and also an avid student of the local flora and fauna of Dapitan during his exile there from 1892 to 1896.

Rizal’s passion for Nature first took root during his childhood. Some of his sweetest reminiscences were of the fruit trees that shaded the nipa hut in their garden at Calamba, or of the birds that frequented their garden: the maria-capra, the culiauan, the maya, culae, and different kinds of pipit.

Later, as a college student at the Ateneo, his knowledge of Nature deepened through his academic studies:

“Physics, lifting up the veil that covers many things, showed me a wide stage where the divine drama of nature was performed.”

There were moments when the need to study nature in the taxonomic way as taught at school conflicted with his spontaneous appreciation of nature. For him classifying plants and animals seemed to diminish nature’s beauty:

“Ah, how beautiful is science when the one teaching it knows how to embellish it! Natural history seemed somewhat antipathetic. Why, I asked myself, if the perusal of history and the description of the birds and flowers, of animals and of crystals captivate me so much, why do I loathe seeing them reduced to a harsh order and wild animals mixed with tame ones?”

“Shells pleased me very much for their beauty and because I knew that they inhabited the beaches of which my innocent imagination dreamed and treading on them I imagined the most beautiful waters of the seas and lakes lapping at my feet. Sometimes I seemed to see a goddess with a shell that I saw in the shelf.”

When Rizal was exiled in July 1892, he proved that his life need not be paralyzed by isolation. He filled his days with varied activities: he treated patients with eye problems and opened a school for boys; he built a water system and engaged in trade; he studied the local ethnology and embarked on the preparation of a Tagalog grammar. And he became a dedicated naturalist, collecting and sending animal and plant samples to his European friends. Among the fauna that interested him were reptiles, birds, mammals, insects, fish, and shellfish.

When Rizal’s friend Ferdinand Blumentritt wrote him about his son Fritz’s inclination toward the natural sciences, Rizal wrote back, not without patriotic pride– “my country can offer him treasures yet undiscovered. There are many species still unknown in zoology and botany, judging by the discoveries that are being made.”



And these some sketches when he was in Japan, 1888.

Rizal and the Japanese Language | Mister At Misis

hi demi,
Here's ur wolf spider! No problem, the wolf spider which chases and pounces on its prey, with big eyes and very good eyesight, lives in a silk-lined hole in the ground and comes out only at night to hunt.. So bug book here says.

It's only 30 mm too. It is hairy, but caterpillars that look itchy scare me more.

hell naw. You can keep it im not into spiders.. I think ill be having nighmares now LOL
well the thing is that my flowers and herbs are FULL with their nets and sometimes you cannot avoid em and some are pretty agressive and they bite you like 3 times in a row and go back into their hole.. I cant count on how many times theyve bit me

thanks Mar', I just loved the video, she and 'us' have a lot in common, although I couldn't
help but notice that 'greens', such as kale-mustard-collards-etc, weren't mentioned...
and sprouts...these are very pertinent to our 'home-made-juice-drinks, we really don't
think that we could stay as healthy as we do with these plants, plus quite a few more,
one of the best being beets...I wonder if anyone notices, that she was probable in her
early 60's and my how healthy she looked and her energy was palpable...

thanks again sweetie for sharing...we so Love and Thank our dear sweet Lord for giving us
the ways and means to be the best that we can be, and it is so rewarding to boot!!!