Tag: garden

the plant thief

i’ve mentioned a few times how much i want to bring home all the plants, and how i admire “collection gardens“… so perhaps it was sort of inevitable that i would become one of those people too, grabbing a cutting here and there to bring home. :)

a few years ago on a hike with friends, i noticed the sides of the path we were walking were covered in tiny succulent plants, growing on slates of schist. they looked like little pinecones, thriving despite the harsh conditions. i was in love…

… so i did something not-so-good and brought a small rock home with me. i ended up hiking the rest of the path with a 2kg or so rock in my hands or in my head, portuguese grandma style, to the amusement of the boy and our friend a., who took these pictures.

but look! three years later, this rock is still thriving in a shady corner of the garden, its little “pinecones” now having other species of succulents as neighbors!

i’m really happy about this! every time i see them i can’t help but smile and remember the story that brought them here. may your gardens and plants be filled with interesting stories too!

just life

slug disposal

the garden has been filled with slugs and snails lately, which have been steadily eating all my succulents and stunting their growth. :| i hadn’t paid them much attention in previous years, but this year they’re everywhere and really making some damage. i don’t like the idea of using pesticides and the plastic covering on the ground didn’t allow for beer traps… so this is our current method:

it’s been working more or less, and the succulents seem to be recovering a little. pffew!

ps – don’t worry, they land on a patch of clover on the other side of the wall — no harm done! :)

Post author By ana
Post date April 11, 2020
1 Comment on slug disposal

foooood in thailand

the cooking class

turns out, thai cooking is a lot of prep work, followed by a very quick cooking process. everything needs to be minced, peeled, squeezed, measured and mashed beforehand — mise en place is everything here.

afterwards, it’s a matter of heating up a wok and throwing stuff there in a specific order. voilá!

under the close supervision of our host/chef, we prepared soups, curries, stir fries and even mango sticky rice, all deliciously filling but way more stuff than we could eat…

… so we ended up bringing pad thai and some other noodle dishes home for dinner. :)

we were also treated to a tour of their beautiful gardens, where the host grows a lot of the ingredients for the lesions like chillies, mushrooms and ginger. he had all kinds of plants there, and it was pretty cool to see a coffee tree or taste stevia leafs for the first time.

near the end of the tour, we were introduced to this funky plant that turns its leaves when they’re touched:

they’re so cool!! aptly named “touch-me-not”, they’re a common weed in thailand. after this encounter, we started touching lots of plants on the side of the road, just to see if we could make that trick again! :D

just life pretty things

echeveria setosa

the setosa came to us unexpectedly (like most of our plants) when some neighbors about to move were looking for homes for their plants. we kept a few of their vases, and in one of them came this furry fellow.

we stuck it in our front garden between some rocks, and it’s been doing great ever since. as they go about reproducing and slowly dominating the patch of garden we gave them, the older leaves seem to dry out and drop, while the plants keep growing upwards.

i noticed it doesn’t need to shed leaves to propagate though: new “babies” just appear from the stem or the flower itself.

cute!

in portugal just life

passionfruit update!

around the end of june, some of our passionfruits started turning purple. i confess we’ve been quite anxious for this last step. the vine’s many fruits been growing for over 2 months now, and with an upcoming trip fast approaching, we were running out time to actually taste the literal fruits of our labour.

so when the first mature fruit (a tiny perfect one) fell on our hands last week, we rejoiced at last. let’s open it!

(pardon the dirty fingernails, i was gardening)

look at that! :D it was just as juicy as promised, and immensely satisfying to finally taste something that was 2 years in the making. there’s plenty more on the vine, but sadly i don’t think they’ll ripen before we have to go. oh well, hopefully there will still be some left for our return — and if not, there’s always next year. i don’t think we’ll get tired of passionfruits anytime soon!