A Mango Sprout!

Did you know that you can plant a mango seed? I didn't, until a few weeks ago. 

I love Mangos and right now they are kind of my go to food. Mango's in salads, fruit salad, cooked up to go over chicken, mango gummies, the list goes on and on. So, a few weeks ago I started to wish I had my own Mango tree so that I didn't have to buy Mangos anymore.  I googled "How to grow a Mango Tree" and sure enough tons of videos popped up. I learned that all you have to do is separate the husk from the seed and then plant the seed. I'm not sure if the plant will actually ever bear fruit but I figured it's worth a shot!

 The other part of this story is that I planted the Mango seed as part of a Value Project for Personal Progress. Have faith the seed will grow, take care of it for at least ten hours and then harvest whatever you planted (I planted some herb seeds as well, in case the mango tree never grew). I have been in Young Women's for a while now and finally decided to crack down and start working on Personal Progress. Well, I planted the seed and a couple weeks went by and I started getting nervous that maybe I had planted it wrong or it died but then one day I went out to water and low and behold a little sprout had shot up. I couldn't believe it! Below are some pics of the little sprout.

 I kind of think it looks like that character from star wars called Jar Jar or something, the one with the big ears.

My herbs are also growing....slowly...I don't remember them taking so long to grow last time. I can't wait to make Pesto with the basil, now I just need to figure out how to harvest pine nuts!

Remember a while back I posted about the plant our neighbor gave us? I thought for sure we were going to kill it when we moved it inside our house and planted it in a new pot. The old pot was actually prettier but had a huge crack down the side of it. The plant lost a few leaves but it finally bounced back with new leaves that are brighter and bigger than ever before. So happy we didn't kill Joy's 15 year old plant! 

San Diego

San Diego is our used, new to us, house plant. A couple of months ago our neighbor gave us this amazingly large plant because it was getting too big for her (she kept it outside in the summer and inside in the winter and she was tired of moving it around). I was hesitant to accept the plant from her because I tend to kill houseplants. I tried to to tell her that I kill house plants and she said "Oh, this plant is 10 years old, you can't kill it!". Well, when we first got the plant it had about 6 leaves....now we are down to 3, well really 2 1/2 because one is half way brown. There is a one new leaf that has grown since we've had it in our house and it made us really happy! I really hope it doesn't die completely because I don't know how I would tell our neighbor that I killed her un-killable plant. Dusty named the plant San Diego because it's one of his favorite places and the plant looks like it came from California. 

Does anyone have any tips on how to keep houseplants alive? All we've tried is water so far. 

Life in TN

Okay.... so I guess we are an "update the blog once a year kind of people". Between our last post and now we moved to a new place and so far we really love it! The house we found was only 3 minutes from where we were living so it was a pretty easy move. Here are some updates.

We planted so little planters on our front porch. Don't worry, the planter boxes are attached to some pre-existing fastiners that were already in the porch so our plants don't go flying around when it gets windy, and it does get REALLY REALLY windy. Like, blow the neighbors 4ft diameter tree out of the ground, roots and all.

We have also been working on a garden. We made these raised garden beds that should hold up for awhile. We put weed blocker stuff on the bottom and also chicken wire to keep the moles out.

Above is our yard pre-garden and below is our yard with the garden beds in place. The tall thing with the string is for our pole beans to climb up.