My Bellaire Blog

After the hard freeze we got over a month ago and the desolate landscape of dead plants lying lifeless both in my front and back yard, imagine my surprise this past weekend when, taking advantage of a couple of rays of sunshine, I went out to discover numerous purple blooms on my peach trees!!!

 These trees are only 4 years old and were started from a seed.  Last year, we had about 6 or 7 fruits on each tree, but by the time they ripened, there were only 4 in total left for us to enjoy.  The squirrels had beat us to them, although they had plenty of papayas to satisfy their hunger (and thirst, in the hot summer days).  They were sweet and fragrant white peaches!  Yum!

I wanted to share my first attempts at growing food in Bellaire.  For so many years, after being discouraged by the hard clay that surrounds our home, I gave up my passion of growing vegetables and fruits.  Finally, this summer I reconfigured the backyard, cut out the tree that was shading it as well as the evergreen bushes, and spread bags of soil around the beds.  Finally I could experiment with my green thumb.  Well, as you can see in this photo, I have quite a few tomatoes!  Papayas have also done extremely well:  I just pray we won’t get a hard freeze before I pick all the ripened fruits.  Bell peppers are not doing so well.  I put them on a southern exposure but they are shaded by my neighbor’s house.  Other than that, herbs are flourishing:  Basil, parsley and fennel.  I have a few sprouts of Swiss Chard but they are taking forever to grow! 

How about you?  Have you tried your luck at gardening in Bellaire?  What works and what doesn’t?  I would love to hear from you.   One house on Evergreen has a loaded tangerine tree.  My mother on Azalea Trail was successful with eggplants and figs.

My Papayas