Monday, June 4, 2012

Owning a Home in St Thomas, USVI - Landscaping Part I - 5-19-12

Along with owning a home, comes the landscaping. I had a pretty green thumb at our old home in N. Nevada, problem there was only 9 inches of precipitation a year and winter. I am excited to see how my thumb does here with 45 inches of precipitation a year and warm year round!

As you already may know we bought the home here in 2009. I came down in 2010 to live in the upstairs and do repairs and clean up. While I was here I went to a nursery on the North Side. I bought 3 lime trees and two banana trees. Since the tenants weren't keeping up with the general trimming and weed whacking, I hired a landscaper to get the yard back in to shape and come for a monthly service. So I had the landscaper plant the banana trees below the septic tank and the lime trees on the side of the driveway hill.

Here we are 2012 and I have yet to have one piece of fruit from either. One of the banana trees died, the other one had two stalks going and one blew down a week after we got here full time. One of the lime trees got whacked by the landscaper (yes the same landscaper who planted it?).

The Lime tree is big, but no limes?

DUMB Banana Tree that does not produce any bananas. Maybe it is a plantain tree which take longer?

Well enough of not having fruit, I went to a different nursery and got a new banana tree (looks different than my dud tree?).

Now I had planted an avocado tree when I was here in January, but when we got back down here it was just a stick, no one watering in dry season here I guess? Well, I give up on avocados and going to go more for a tropical fruit, so I bought a Mango tree.

I planted a hibiscus tree in January, and was almost dead when got back on island, it is recovering though.

in its glory and below where it is now.

Our old hibiscus in the front isn't doing so hot. The plant was infested with mites when we were in January. It is watered with Gray water from our kitchen sink. I think combined with no water and the mites we came back and found it all trimmed down. I guess the landscaper did this. I brought some garden insect dust with me, and sprinkled it on there, it seems to being doing much better!

Of course we have our favorite palm tree!

Which of course produces coconuts! I brought a nice machete down with me to enjoy this fruit! No limes to put in da coconut though.

Since I now have my weed whacker, pruning sheers and bought a leaf blower I am going to move down a scale with the landscaper to just quarterly tree service.

Crime here with regards to break ins can be a problem too, so I added

some yard art to discourage that behavior. Notice we have prickly pear cactus growing here? See the plant next to the ADT sign? That is a wandering wild orchid or something, can be irritating to dogs and people's skin, so we removed it in the backyard and I threw some Bermuda Grass down.

There are other birds other than the Thrasher, I have seen two different kinds of hummingbirds and we have some random lizards here, I will start to gather the pictures for a future post. We have large Iguanas.

Hermit Crabs

And moving rocks!

This Red Footed Tortoise came to visit us yesterday!

And my father's favorite critter, the tarantula!

Let's not forget all the frogs too!

I will update another time, hopefully when I have some fruit!

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