Good changes.....

A new small hugel kultur pit is now home to the potted Calamondin tree a generous blog reader gave me....I treated it to a SLOW drip for a few hours as two feet down, the "soil" (read 'white sand') was POWDERY dry. I am treating as I type the new hugel kultur mound I built around the newly cut back Moringa to an hour long soak. Tomorrow I will dump a few bags of oak leaves donated by neighbors to trap that moisture and help to keep the mound and surrounding soil cool. Thanks SO MUCH to Jim Porter for turning me onto to hugel kultur, and to my friend Mary Jo Clark for bringing over a battery Saws All and one we ran on a power cord a few days ago to free my SW corner from my own trash trees AND ones long encroaching from foreclosed properties.

Nice to see blooms of perhaps my favorite Louisiana Iris, 'Wood Violet' this morning as I cooked a savory brunch of rooster breast meat, onions, garlic, oregano, Lesbos basil, sea salt and black pepper tossed into cooked rotini pasta. Dad is doing great at the nursing home and enjoying his girl friend Mary, all our bills are paid,and the gardens are steadily transitioning from cool weather crops to ones that love summers in Tampa, including eggplant, molokhiya, okra, sweet potatoes, the many variants of Cow Pea (Vigna unguiculata), Chaya (two forms), moringa, Water Spinach in a scavenged LARGE aquarium filled with acidic compost, the true yams now sending up shoots into my chain link fence, Cucusa (Lagenaria siceraria var. longinissima), Currant Tomatoes (Lycopericon pimpinellifolium), Lesbos basil, and various hot peppers.

Life is good on my increasingly orderly, dare I say "tidy" urban farm!