Cactus Bush, For Real?

 

I had thought about taking a picture of this bush myself on my way home from work.  Currently you see more bush than cactus.  In fact you can only see about 5 of the paddles sticking out of a much larger bush than you can see here.  This is actually a street view image copied and posted as a jpg.

About a year ago there was no bush and it was just a cactus on the side of the road.

If you had seen this as an image on social media would you have expected it to be AI?  We watched a video recently on how to tell if an image is AI or not and this one might at first hit some of those alerts if you don't realize what you're looking at.  For instance the shadows on the inlet protection walls look a little  off except for the fact that the wall is vertical that the shadow is falling on.  This was probably taken around 8:00 in the morning in the late spring, looking at the grass and angle of the sun. The grass has been recently mown but the bush is obviously growing well.  The sun shadow is also mostly to the East and is high enough in the sky for a fairly steep shadow in the inlet so this is well past winter.

Do you have any pictures that at first seem like they would be AI but are pictures that you took yourself?

Claudette2 Stressed

So at the office I have had 2 smaller cacao trees growing in the same pot.  It was about time for them to be in their own pots but this really puts stress on them.  The larger one is doing fine but this smaller one that was continually living in the shadow of the other is struggling.  There are a couple new leaves pushing out but for the most part i think it will loose ALL of its other leaves.

I trimmed some of them back in an effort to reduce what it was trying to keep going but I think it may have been too little too late for them.  This is after a week of repotting and is better than losing all of the leaves on day 1 or 2.  It has always struggled though to even put out the smallest of leaves in the other pot, the leaves being 1/4 the size of the other tree.

The soil is still moist but not wet and draining out.  Added a little today to make sure there was enough moisture but it's hard to tell exactly what is needed at this point.  I guess I'll just have to be patient and see how things go.  Probably stop by here tomorrow as well to see how many leaves are left and assess the progress and state of the little tree.  There is still plenty of hope though.  I've heard of cacao trees that have come back even after a year of losing all of their leaves.  They really are resilient trees.

Texas Winter Preparation

 

Winter is coming to Texas.  It got down almost to freezing yesterday in the DFW area. The cities further North probably did freeze briefly.  Just means it's time to start to think about winterizing your more tender plants.  I've always said that I only want to plant things outside that can survive every winter.  Unfortunately not every winter is the same so I can only do my best.  Also the longer a plant has had time to acclimate, the better equipped it is to survive a harsher winter.

Some plants just have to come in of course.  One of our friends had a dozen or more plumeria plants which they kept on casters so they could easily bring them in every winter.  There is no way they would survive outside being tropical plants (trees) even though they have pretty sturdy branches.  We plan to one day have a greenhouse that would effectively make it possible to have a permanent home outsideish but in the mean time it's coming inside for the winter.  Just have to keep the cats away while it's there.

Going to try to protect the fig tree better this winter so it can hopefully come back strong next year.  It has struggled all year to make the few leaves it had and never had a chance to even think about fruiting.  If these new, more tender, branches can be kept safe though we have a chance to really get it going and have the tree we wanted in the first place.  Otherwise I may just have to dig it up and start over.

Beef and Bittermelon

A friend grew some bitter melons, too many to use by himself, and shared some of the harvest with us.  With the word bitter in the name of the vegetable I was warry. That's when having a wife who can find anything, including good recipes, is priceless.  She found this recipe making a stir fry with the bitter melon but more beef than bitter.

Part of making it less bitter is removing the white inner pulp, the source of the bitter.  I didn't want to remove it all though since that is also where a lot of the benefits of the bitter melon reside.  It's bitter for a reason and a little bitter is a good thing.  With the sauce you make for this dish it really compliments it.

We started by slicing the beef thinly for stir frying.  This was boneless chuck roast. We marinated it for an hour in a mixture of corn starch, for thickening, baking soda, for tenderizing, oyster sauce, mirin, and dark soy sauce, for flavor, and a little extra water to keep it from burning to the bottom.

The bitter melon we sliced crossways to add surface area so the sauce could really coat it, it is pretty bitter if you don't offset it. We added garlic, some black beans for texture, more mirin, sugar, more soy, sesame oil and pepper.  You know your taste better than anyone so play around with the quantities to see what suits you best.  In the end there should be 1/2 to 3/4 cup of added stuff.  Otherwise it can get saucy, unless you want more saucy.  It's good over rice.