Mango trees in bloom

Is that time of the year, when all the mango trees in South Florida are in full bloom.  It looks like we are going to have a good mango season this summer, both my trees are cover with flowers.  The top branches are already showing fruits.  Mangos needs both a good dry and wet season, too much of either and it could be a disaster at harvest time.

My neighbor's mango tree 

This week at the DragonFly Garden

This week I repotted must of my collection of cactuses.  These plants have a hard time thriving in this sub-tropical weather, at some point I will need to decide if is worth the trouble.

My herb and tomato garden is doing great, producing a good amount of cherry tomatoes.  My new lunch obsession is cheese and tomato sandwiches with olive oil and and fresh basil.

This female painted bunting was one of the few bunting that visited the garden this year, it has not been a good year for birding.

I took out my Rangoon Creeper plant that has been in this corner of the garden from the very beginning.   The Creepers are aggressive plants that need pruning several times a year.  The shade from full grown trees affected the production of flowers this past summer.  I have not decided what's next for this corner of the garden.

 

Let the water flow

It has been a while since my sprinkler system stopped working, repairing the entire network has been on my to do list for a while.  The reason, I was not too keen on the idea was, that I knew it was going to be a messy job.  The original system was install almost 30 years ago, when my garden was 80% grass.  Over the years I did must of the repairs and changes to the system.  This time I needed it a license professional. 

The cost and the mess was more than I expected.  The system need it a new pomp, a timer and all new sprinkler heads.  The unexpected problems were, finding the original well to bring the water up again and fixing the many pipe brakes throughout the old system.

The water well turnout to be under the pavers in the front of the house.  They had to take out must of the pavers and dig a big hole to find it. 

 

I built my own garden workbench

With so much time on my hands and no place to go, this past week I decided to put my limited knowledge of carpentry to work and build a garden workbench.  This bench was built with treated-wood, so it should last for a few years.  

My old bench lasted about a year, I bought it from Amazon and problably came from China.

Flowers in the garden this week:  This hibiscus plant does not look all that great but it flowers all year around.