Golden Hour

I went out to feed my fish this morning, the garden looks so peaceful in the early morning hour.  I didn’t have time to take picture, but couldn’t resist and here are a few snap shots of my garden this morning.

Snow peas

Beans

Sunflowers

Sweet Basil

Gardenia

All photos were taken with Canon T2i, and EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens.

Saturday Random Photos

Before I start my Saturday Random Photos, or some might call it Saturday ranting photos, I like to wish all the wonderful mothers out there a very Happy Mother’s Day. I have not posted my mother’s orchid in a while and it’s not doing too well this year.  My sister needs to re-pot it soon, the flowers wilted before they even bloom. This year we are heading to the temple to make merit for my deceased mom, she is gone but not forgotten and will always be in our heart.

My second sister’s orchid has many blooms.

Back to my Saturday ranting photos, the hype is fitness these days.

 

Lee has her 5 pound dumbbell set, and a 1 pound weighted hula hoop.  My niece is using my 3 pound weighted hula hoop below.

I like the 3 pound hula hoop since it is padded with foam and it gives a good work out while watching TV.

This is Lee’s normal daily routine.  She has grown by leaps and bounds this year, and I think it’s time for her to move on to using the 2 or 3 pound weighted hula hoop. They had a hula hoop contest and my niece won on this round.

Lee won on the second round of hula hooping 2 hula hoops. If you were to ask Lee she would tell you that this is her talent.

The girls were having so much fun that I didn’t have to pay my niece to levitate this time.

My dad has been retiring for over 10 years now, and he still look very fit for his age.

His Asian corns are growing, and I can see that my second sister has a lot of weeding to do.

The snow peas in the above photo are climbing the teepee trellis.

We used to live up North and I didn’t notice the red clay dirt, especially in New York.  When I was in High School we lived in Philadelphia for 2 years and our back yard dirt was dark from what I could recall.   But as we moved further South the dirt is red, and this is North Carolina red clay soil.

I’m not planting the long string beans this year but my dad is despite the bad crops that he had last year. It must be a tradition and it wouldn’t be a Lao garden without the long string beans.

Cucumber plants

Chili pepper and tomato plants.

My dad bought top soil to mix in with the clay dirt for gardening.

It’s another year of beautiful Pomegranate flowers.

But sadly this might be another year of fruitless pomegranate also.

My dad’s front yard has many beautiful flowers blooming.  This one my second sister planted several years back.

And some are fading fast and this stresses the fact of life that nothing last forever. Time waits for no one.

Dark orange marigold made me think of the Buddhist worship flowers, and also the color of the monk’s rope.  The background was where her fishpond used to be and now it is a small rose garden.

This defeats the whole purpose of exercising would you say, Lee was getting ready to make S’mores and parading around with Hershey’s chocolate.

This is an American classic in every child’s treat especially at camping.

But not so much of the stove since this is a Lao classic stove for cooking.  My mom bought this from Tennessee many years ago, and it is used for cooking back home. The stove is powered by charcoal.

The girls dumped the burnt marshmallows in the stove.

We had a lot of fun in the backyard and look forward to making more S’more at camping.

All photos were taken with Canon T2i, and EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens, except for the first 2 photos were taken with the EF 50mm f/1.4 lens.

My Garden May 10, 2012

We were fortunate to have good rainfalls and thank goodness the April frosts didn’t do any damage to my young plants.

Lee was busy digging away.

The look on her face when she saw her bird house.

I don’t know who is trying to build a nest.  It is a lot of stuff trying to fit into a small little house.

I made a trellis for the snow peas two weeks ago and it is made from crape myrtle branches that Bo cut down before the Spring of this year.  As you can see the crape myrtle tree in the background and the new branches look healthy.

It looks like they are climbing pretty well now, but I had to train the vines to climb at the beginning.

I have never planted pole beans before and I think they need to climb also.

I’m also training the grape vines to climb and will need to make a trellis for the climbing spinach vines soon.

My mom used to plant the spinach vines at the refugee camp in Thailand and it is called pak plunge in Thai.

I planted these pickle cucumbers from seeds, they should be climbing the A-Frame in a week  or so.  It is amazing how fast they grow.

Chili pepper plant.

These are my second batch of radishes and I put them down in time when the ground was still cool.  They are fast growing and should be ready to harvest in a  month or so.

I do love basil and planted many this year.

I planted this one in a pot and a good thing about it is that you could move it around.

More Thai basil in pots.

I think it must be the rain that made everything grow so fast. I couldn’t believe how big my cherry tomato plants have gotten.

The mints and pennyworth plants.

My gardenia plants are budding.

My blueberry plants look promising this year. I just hope that the birds will save some for us.

I would not take my chance in eating these mushrooms.

I was hoping to take a few exposures of the birds. I sat and waited and waited, and they flew right by.

The fish are so happy with the new waterfall.

Lee’s white and silver Butterfly Koi has gotten a lot bigger this year.

Bo’s ginkgo tree.

The peach tree bears many fruits this year.

Bo’s walking path is almost completed.  He still has to fill in the gaps with sands, and so far it’s looking real good.

All photos were taken with Canon T2i, and EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens.

Spring Planting

Spring planting came a bit early for us.  This year I have expanded my garden by building a few more planting beds out of old wooden deck that our neighbor gave us.  The photo below was taken from my deck.

Bo is working on making a pathway into the garden.  It is a work in progress, and hope he will have it done soon because it gets very muddy when it rains.  The peach tree below looks promising and bears many fruits this year.

I planted 3 Cherry tomato plants and used last year’s tomato cages, which add colors and height to the garden.

I thought I had planted beets, but since I have never tasted fresh beets before I don’t know what they are supposed to taste like.  The one I’m growing tasted like radish, perhaps it was radish that I planted.

My sister’s chili pepper seedlings are still very small, so I visited Lowes to buy the chili pepper young plants.

The Sweet Basil is not for everyone.  My second sister doesn’t like it and my sister Bee only plants them because they are beautiful.

I planted the Thai Basil far enough from the Sweet Basil because I don’t want the smells to fuse together.  They both have a distinctive taste and smell and I like to keep them that way.

I planted this from seed. Actually Lee dropped the seeds into the holes and I’m not sure if this planting bed has the snow peas or pole beans.  I didn’t have much luck with the long string beans in the last few years and decided not to plant it this year.

The pickle cucumber

The broccoli

I planted Marigolds with my vegetables because they are plant companions and they keep away the bugs from harming the vegetables.

A friend mailed me Spinach vine seeds and I planted them on the right hand side of the new planting bed (it’s the bottom portion of the photo.)  So far nothing has came up yet.

Just like everything else, bamboo shoot came out early also.

I have plenty of mints.

And pennyworth covering half of a planting bed.  The weather has been very mild in our area and kind of nice to work in the garden again.

All photos were taken with Canon T2i, and EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens.