NEW RACK LAYOUT

In the dark

NEW STUDIO
Plants are not the only thing we grow here at P2.

Music production on our horizon, happy new year!

PEAFOWL PLAYING BY POND

This is an area at the far end of our pond, we're in the process of clearing out a bunch of overgrowth there and preparing to plant new tropical looking plants to replace a bunch of average looking non-tropical plants.

I had the 400mm lens mounted up from shooting other faraway images when I noticed a flock of wild peafowl hunting for lizards and playing among the plants. Their blue and green feathers look like live plants roaming around, nothing like them, we are so blessed to have them spending their daytime hours at P2.

Good bye 2016!

BABY HUEY THE HERON

This big guy mainly fishes in the pond at night. He stands over 48" tall when his neck is fully extended. At night he intimidates the raccoons, he is so big that they are afraid of him even though he has no way to inflict pain on them.

We call him Baby Huey to keep him separate from the other herons that come to visit, Huey is a very unique bird and he prefers to fish alone (note to other herons, stay away when Huey is here, Hero, be cool!).

HAWK, ANNA AND KINGFISHER

Mr. Hawk has been hanging around a lot lately, probably eating rats and squirrels (horror rushes over the faces of woodland creatures). He has our Ibis all freaked out, they're afraid of him and they fly away when he makes a swooping pass over the pond. 

We hear the Hawks screechy call sometimes. A Hawks gotta eat!

Anhinga is a very strange bird, this one is female (we can tell because of the colors), we call her Anna. She is an excellent fishing bird who swims completely under water for up to two minutes at a time. Several times I saw her come up with a fairly large fish in her beak, then she began the task of reorienting the fish so she could swallow it whole, nom nom nom.

The Kingfisher has been an elusive bird to photograph. We don't know he's here until he dives at full speed and crashes into the pond with a big 

S P L A S H ! ! !

By then it's too late to get a picture of the King. One day I was looking out the window and there he was sitting on a branch, fortunately I had the 400mm lens already mounted and I got these pictures of him right before he dove into the pond.

RACON, RACON, RACON

Had to have one last cute raccoon photo to close 2016.

Here is a fat little guy who broke into a bag of Ole Roy (he has a very sensitive palate), he is enjoying himself and is very comfortable. 

Dog? Dog? Dog?

BAMBOO PHOTOS FROM 2016

Here are a few photos of bamboo to close out 2016. We recently acquired three large 5-gallon pots of Sea Breeze bamboo and ten 3-gallon pots of Sea Breeze to fill out our inventory of plants. 

Also some photos of Mary in front of our mature Emerald bamboo which was moved here at the beginning of April, 2016. Fall, 2016 brought us over 60 new canes that are well over 25 feet tall. 

With the 400mm Canon telephoto lens on my Canon DSLR camera I could not get Mary and the full height of the bamboo included in the picture, I did this to give a reference of just how tall this bamboo really is.

Six-ish Bamboo Planted New Years Eve

We love our bamboo wall...  and we're planning to extend it south very soon.

More on that later, but I wanted to make a note that "Six-ish", a 7 gallon Seabreeze Bamboo from Beautiful Bamboo, was planted 1/31/2016 between Six and Seven of the 10 Emerald Bamboo clumps.  So we named him "Six-ish".  He really fills in the blank spot with plushness and happy greenness.

WINTER GARDEN

Two pots of radishes and a four foot planter that is half carrots (on the left) and half onions on the right.

These seeds were planted the first week of December.

KILLING ANTS WITH DIATOMACEOUS EARTH
As we're developing our fruit and vegetable crops we've become aware of how many ants there are in the agricultural area. Mary decided to try this since nothing else has been effective.

We don't want to use poison because we drink water from wells on our property. The ground is so permeable that pesticides get down in the water table very quickly.

We called the big mound The Matterhorn, we've never seen an ant mound 18" tall before. We are hoping this treatment will put a dent in our ant population.

HOOKY IS BACK
Last fall our favorite Peacock began spending nights in a tree behind our house. He makes his loud "Me-haaaaah" call throughout the night. At the end of May when the babies were born Hooky went back to sleeping with the tribe at night.

Now we're approaching mating season again, he's growing out his magnificant tail and trying to seduce a lady.

Tonight was the first night we were aware he is back in the tree behind our garage again, defending his turf. We went out to put away tools and heard his glorius Me-haaaaaah call for the first time this Fall.

Welcome back Hooky, we're sure glad you're here.

AUTOMATIC WATERING
Yesterday we completed installing the automatic watering system on banana circle #1. The artesian well provides enough water pressure. The half-inch black plastic pipe has a 1/16th inch hole to emit water at each future banana plant location.

The stakes for the black tubing are PVC half-inch pipe, the end in the ground is cut at 45-degree angle. We drilled two holes through each stake and used wire ties to attach the black tubing.

THANKSGIVING DINNER 2016

MMMmmmmmmm...
Delicious👍

SILLY YOUNG FLORIDA PEAFOWL
Here's a pair of youngsters nomming black-oil sunflower seed off the window sill.

Blue male on the left, green female on the right.

FRUIT FROM OUR FARM
We have orange and grapefruit trees growing in our agricultural area. A few days ago we harvested a test specimen from each tree. Mary reports they are ugly but delicious, a very sweet grapefruit.

OUR FIRST TRIP TO THE DUMP
We went to the Sarno Landfill to pick up free mulch today. There was this field of retired "white goods" across from the massive pile of wood mulch. It was washing machines, dryers, furnaces, air conditioners, freezers, and refrigerators all lined up for recycling. Most impressive!

Raccoon Running

Banana Circle in the Sand

I have been doing extensive reading about banana circles, and how the bananas thrive with the composting pit in the center filled with organic materials which are decaying constantly and providing organic food to the bananas.  Here's the result of many days of digging...  I hit water!  

I expect that the water is at the same level as the pond which is replenished with well water.  The well water is high quality, low sodium, and the plants love it.