A spot of light gardening.

Today the sky was blue, with little fluffy clouds, Junior went to bed for his nap early and I decided to do a spot of gardening before the rainy season kicks in properly.

I only do gardening when Junior is asleep as I don't want to encourage him to wreck the garden any more than he does already! If he sees Mamasita cutting branches and pulling up plants he'll think that's ok!

We're not too fussy about the garden, and I really don't mind when he pulls out lengths of bamboo to play with, and pulling off the occasional flower to present to me is cute - but I would like to keep the garden looking a bit respectable!!

We have a gardener who comes in every 3 or 4 weeks or so. He cuts the grass, weeds the borders and has a general tidy up. He's here for about an hour and he charges $5. He is the gardener in our residencia and the gardening jobs he does after his day job probably make his meagre wages liveable, so I feel like we can't not have him.

He came last Friday, and we were that impressed with how nice the garden looked post tidy up that it inspired us to do a bit more.

I bought some new flowers from my friend Sue, who sells plants and produce at local markets. Two lovely lily plants, with long slender leaves and dainty yellow flowers that open each morning and two buzy lizzies (impatiens). I can't believe that I bought buzy lizzies - they are native to this area and in our last house that was all we had, which meant that they soon lost their appeal.

Papacito dug the holes for the new plants at the weekend, and the plants took really well to their new home, which was even more of an inspiration this morning for me to do some pruning.

 new lily plant

A close up of the lily flowers when closed

 Buzy Lizzy

The main reason for me doing some gardening today however was to cut the thorns off the lime tree. You might think I am being over cautious, but believe me when I say they are nothing like rose thorns. I cut all the lower ones off a while back, but now Junior has grown and can reach higher they needed a new trim.

If you think I am exaggerating about the thorns, take a look at this picture

That is one serious looking thorn......and I must have cut off about fifty similar ones today! One less thing to worry about!

If you are interested to see what else is flowering in my Salvadoran garden right now, then take a look at Tropical Plant Pics: My Garden in April.