For those of us who are constantly checking on our plants, garden, and birds, whether we keep them as pets or as part of a business involving plants. When it comes to animals or business, and especially when it comes to plants, this gives us the determination to check on our work every day.
Last year was a tough year since I devoted much more time to structural repairs on my house than I did to my garden and animals. Many of the activities I engage in have declined for one reason or another.
It’s worth noting that everything at home depends on me, on how I delegate tasks to the people who help me, and on my ability to properly supervise everything they do.
Yesterday morning, I devoted myself exclusively to gardening. I’m gradually giving my assistant instructions on how to do things the way I like.
Prune a lemon tree that is already three years old but refuses to bloom. Last year it was invaded by a plague; We finished it off with homemade insecticides. Yesterday, he pruned it, dug a trench around the base of the plant, and we added new potting mix with compost and manure from my quails, along with soil and wood ash. Hopefully, it will soon have enough nutrients to bloom and bear fruit.
He also pruned a medicinal herb tree called Santamaría for me; today, I found many pruned branches on top of the plant, all of them dry.
Then he made me a sort of planter out of PVC pipes. They were already cut to size and had holes for planting. I used them before and planted them in these pipes using the hydroponics method, but I wasn’t able to get good results with the plants. I should have had a better vegetable yield, but the plants faced many challenges in their growth.
Now I’ll fill them with potting mix prepared for planting strawberries. These tubes are already ready for me to add the prepared potting mix. Today I’ll go out to find some strawberry seeds so I can start planting them.
In the afternoon, I went to check on my quail, and on the way, I stopped by to look at the plants. My banana plants needed a new potting mix. In the morning, I told my assistant to remove some of the soil from around them and then fill the space with the compost I have, adding ash, river soil, and quail manure.
That same morning, I watched as he removed the hard soil; I observed it briefly and appreciated the work since he was doing it right in front of me. But in the afternoon, I saw that my banana plant with a small bunch of growing bananas, had fallen over. It came loose from the ground and fell right from the root. Seeing things like this makes me sad. It’s a small garden where I plant many trees and care for them as if I had a huge plot of plants. I feel so proud of the little I do with my plants. I express this in all my posts.
In my country, there’s a saying that goes… “The owner’s watchful eye keeps the livestock healthy.” What I think is that the man who was helping me pulled the plant too far away from its base, and the weakened roots gave way in the afternoon. That’s because there’s a strong breeze in the afternoons—since I live near the coast, close to the beaches—and the breeze blows right toward my house.
When I went to check on my eggplant plants, which are looking beautiful and continue to bloom, I noticed that the only tomato plant I had planted in the recycled tire pot, was now buried in the soil. The man had thrown the potting mix so that when it hit the ground, it knocked over the leaves of my tomato plant, which didn’t have a stake yet.
My plants now have good soil for the banana plants to grow strong. But the loss of two plants made me angry at first and then sad, or I think my reaction was the other way around. The truth is, I shouldn’t move away from my assistant when I’m giving him instructions. I don’t know if he was upset, if it was an accident, or if he simply didn’t care what might happen if he worked without watching what he was doing.
He’s a man who’s been helping me for many years, but I don’t think he knows how much it hurts me to lose my plants.
I have a new seedbed with several tomato germinations, soon I will be planting several tomato plants.
That’s all for today in my garden.
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The photographs are taken with the Samsung Galaxy S26.
