I know spring has come to my neck of the city when the Cherry Blossoms start blooming.
There’s a lot of action in my neighbor Bob’s urban garden too.
Turtle is waking up from a long winter’s nap, and the koi fish are swimming around in the sidewalk pond trying to avoid getting eaten. Hey, turtles get hungry! Let’s hope Philadelphia’s water emergency is resolved before it’s time to clean and refill the the tank.
While I am busy playing with my Silhouette Portrait 3, and finding ways to use it with polymer clay and in the pottery studio, my neighbor Bob has made some changes to his urban garden, and more flowers are blooming! How do you identify flowers if you don’t know anything? Try a Google image search. You can upload pictures right from your phone, tablet or computer.
The Allium flowers have opened!
Touch Me Nots
Canna Lilly
The turtle might live in a cage, but his spirit runs free.
My neighbor Bob is at it again. He’s been planting and tending a big container garden up and down our South Philadelphia street for many years, and he’s gearing up for Spring and Summer, 2022. He gets his plants from all over and doesn’t know what a lot of them are until they come up. Others, like the lily pads, he brings back year after year. I made an attempt to identify the plants this year and had a little success. But this is just the beginning. He’ll be planting more as the months go on, creating a wonderful urban oasis in the midst of asphalt and the steamy sidewalks of a South Philly summer.
I think this is a Clementine tree
Corpse flower. This one is pollinated by flies and it STINKS when it’s in full bloom
I couldn’t identify the three remaining plants, although Google tried to tell me that the one below was grapes. I don’t know much, but I know these are definitely not grapes!
I thought this might be a chlamydia until a friend informed me that that was the name of a sexually transmitted disease and not a flower.
I am dying to see what this one looks like when it blooms. Maybe it is some kind of tulip.
If you’d like to see pictures of the garden in years gone by, press here.
It’s been a long month this week. Lots of stuff going on-I was thinking that not all of it is good, but who am I to say what’s good or not? Only time and perspective can make sense of some things. Maybe. In the meantime, all you can do is tend your own garden. And if you are lucky like me, you live next door to someone like my neighbor Bob who tends a lovely garden and shares it with the neighborhood. Here are some pictures.
The crocuses are peeping up in Bob’s garden. What more proof could we need?
It happened while I was at Clayathon. Dark chilly days and then POW! I was sneezing and blowing my nose. The allergy fairy took hold of me and fairly rattled my teeth, even though I usually don’t suffer from Hay Fever, the pollen levels were off the charts!
Spring has come to Philadelphia and to my neighbor Bob’s sidewalk garden
Flowers are popping out all over my part of Philadelphia. The tree blossoms are only blooming for a few days before they fall from the tree limbs and collect on the sidewalk. until then, every walk is glorious Spring.
The bigs news is that Bob built a new Koi pond this year. The other big news is that Turtle has a brand new perch and a big pot of water hyacinth to munch on. He seems happy and does not appear to be eating the new guppies that Bob has added to the pond.
Bob has added new plants, but think he is still deciding on the final design of the garden. He also has a little collection of plants that people are free to take if they want. While I’m sure Boris would like a plant to chew on, I think I will pass on the offer.
Here are some pictures.
Enjoy the Koi pond!
They say that everybody  always complains about the weather but nobody ever does anything about it.   If you are at all into gardening, this Spring’s crazy weather has made things a challenge: Flowers opening early and freezing; buds opening up icing over and and falling off; rain and chilly weather that has made May seem more like  Fall than Spring. Â
So Bob has faced challenges in the garden this spring and it’s not as full and lush as it usually is at this time of year.  Even so, there are four turtles in the Koi pond and sometimes they sit in the sun stacked up on one another.  Turtles really do that.  I don’t have any pictures because they are camera shy, but you can see many examples here. And the turtles come out on the so far rare sunny days to bask in the sun and enjoy the flowers.
Bob’s Garden has really taken off this year! Three new turtles are swimming in the pond and a new banana tree has taken root in one of the wooden barrels sitting out on the south Philly sidewalk. The cacti have come back to life and are are throwing off scores of yellow blossoms. The water lilies are doing swimingly (pun intended) and Barbra the Macaw is keeping a watchful eye over it all.  Here are some pictures.
Bob’s urban oasis is still going strong into September.  A new turtle has taken up residence in the above-ground  koi pond along with two smaller deputy turtles who paddle around furiously.   Bob has put a few catfish in the bottom of the pond to keep it clean.  The dahlias and gardenias have stopped blooming but the banana tree has started to sprout little babies. Â
The water lilies have always been my favorite of the flowers but I am partial to the papyrus that grows in the pond. Â It looks so elegant! Â
Here are some pictures.Â
And how could I have forgotten Turtle?
Ornamento 