Winter Garden

Welcome to 6 more countries!   Dominica, Poland, Egypt, The United Arab Emirates, Greece and Japan.  That makes 31 countries and 6 continents.



The only good thing about January is that my grandson has a January birthday.  That is it.




I am a month shy of my one year anniversary of writing my blog.  New catalogs are arriving daily, so Alice and I will soon pull out the seed box to see what needs to be ordered.







I have been a little disappointed with the wildlife around here.  I have been blessed with the absence of deer damage at my home garden.  There is enough free space for them to avoid my garden.  I was shocked to see that my native bushes have been eaten by bunnies!  If I had not seen them munching away with my own eyes, I would have assumed that the deer had moved in.   When spring comes, I will be better able to assess the damage.




Winter is not my favorite season around here.  So we left.  Took a cruise to the Caribbean. I made a point of taking tours of the Islands we went to to learn about their life and work.  In La Romana in the Dominican Republic,  We went to a sugar cane plantation.  This one was 250 square miles large.  They don't use a lot of equipment that requires fuel.  We saw carts (looked a lot like our hay wagons) being pulled by a team of oxen.  The trains then come right into the fields so the sugar cane can be loaded onto the train cars.  Very labor intensive.  All the cane is cut by hand - machete.

Went to a nursery that grew orchids, cacti and all those beautiful indoor plants you see in our nurseries and Lowes, Wal Mart and Home depot.

Orchids

Also  took a tour of a cigar factory.  All cigars rolled by hand.  This factory employed 4,000 people.  It was good to see people employed, but tobacco does so much harm to our country.

Hands in constant motion.  They are paid by the piece - a minimum of 300 cigars a day.

Another island I really enjoyed was Curacao.  The northern part of the island was more agrarian.  Saw an interesting way to keep goats out of your yard - a cactus fence.  This island is just beautiful.

Willemstad

Just a pretty wall

On the home front, broccoli still going strong!  Seeds being spread by the native plants.  And of course, one of our inconvenient snowfalls.  Just enough to slow us down a little.

Really!  This picture taken Jan 7 2012.

Winter berries - good food source for wildlife.  A wonderful native shrub.

Butterflyweed pod with more seeds to spread

This is how I feel in January!

Bye for now.  Next Blog post will be on my indoor herb garden.  Have to spruce it up a little first:)