Safari Park, San Diego. October 2018
sing like wildflowers
My full and kooky life as a homeschooling mommy to 2 great kids, raising a child with HLHS (Hypolastic Left Heart Syndrome), coping with depression, following Jesus, and being much too camera happy.
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Scoping out the tiger trail entrance This bamboo trail leads to tigers In lush habitat, a tiger taking an afternoon siesta Showing off his lean muscles. -
Reminds me of Hawaii and putting one behind my ear -
Discovered along one of the trails at San Diego Zoo; their plant collection is one-of-a-kind. I love their collection! The zoo grows and cultivates plants native to the animals’ original habitats.
I didn’t get the name of this flower…still working on journaling their names.
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Something fun about buckets and pails. When my kids find an empty, round vessel around, they can’t resist: they have to at least try to sit in it, stand in it, squeeze into it, or put it on their heads.
The other day my kids helped me wash vegetables; when they were done, the rinsing bowl went missing. As you can see in the picture below, Ellis said she was a robot and started chasing her brother. Both took turns.
While I was washing something, Ellis decided to stand inside the pail. 
Heavy duty rubber bucket at grandpa’s farm. These buckets are so versatile to use but too clunky for storage. -
We’re taking gardening to a new level this time around!
First of all, none of our plants have died since we planted them this summer. Second, we’ve pruned, remedied some overcrowding issues in our tomato pot, added crushed egg shells for extra nutrition, and added support sticks to help long stems. Third, we studied our plants by checking their leaves, researched online about how to make our plants thrive, and generally invested more time and interest in caring for our green friends.
And drum roll please…
We hand pollinated our pumpkin plant!! I didn’t even know this was possible. Our babysitter who has gardened extensively looked at our plants and told me our pumpkin plant only had males. She didn’t see any bulbs on the stems, which would be the female flower. Facts learned: first blooming flower is a male; a little bulb on a stem that will sprout a flower on top is a female; if no fruit has grown that means it hasn’t been pollinated by bees; and placing the plant in a shaded area could stymie bees (that mainly like sunny spots) from pollinating.
I found this amazing and helpful website that explained how to remedy the lack of fruit: Pumpkin Plant Not Producing: Why A Pumpkin Plant Flowers But No Fruit (https://www.gardeningknowhow.com)
Hand pollinate. Ellis rubbed her finger on the pollen of the male flower to get the pollen and rubbed it around the green emerging bulb on a stem (not sure if it was a bulb but it felt harder than a budding flower). As you can tell, we improvise a lot.
Circled areas show where pollen was rubbed on green bulbs There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments.
— Janet Kilburn Phillips
When Elliot learned the yellow stuff was pollen, he worried about his allergies flaring up again. Ellis came to the rescue and offered to do it instead.
Kids problem solving together with no tears = happy mommy.
Update: No fruit has emerged so far. However, we feel very proud to have been proactive in doing something useful to help our plant grow fruits. Also, kids learned the important roles of bees in helping flowers to reproduce and continue the life cycle of nature. This is just a thought, but I think this hands-on lesson would be good for explaining to older kids in learning about the reproductive cycle.
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