Spring 2016

I started this blog two years ago as a way to journal and keep up with what I have in my garden and then got busy and never kept up with it. I am going to try again....

March 31, 2016 Franklin, my  fifty year old+ red footed tortoise passed away today. After months of going to  different veterinarians and trying out different medications and treatments, Franklin was finally diagnosed with liver cancer. Franklin was the tortoise who started my whole new gardening trend, gardening with tortoises in mind. Planting things that not only were good for tortoises to eat but also not planting anything that could be toxic or using any chemicals in any of the gardens the tortoises have access to. Franklin lived in my library garden at school for 9 years and came home with me on Christmas and summer vacations, so I had to maintain two tortoise friendly gardens. Franklin made many human friends over the years, both children and adults. I know there have been many children over the years that only came to the library to visit Franklin and it gave me the opportunity to try to hook them into reading something while they were there. Franklin and his garden even had a full page article in the newspaper a few years ago. He will be missed by many, but mostly by me. I will never be able to walk into my library garden without thinking of his sweet face coming over to see if I have a treat for him.

                                

April 2, 2016 My greenhouse is finally finished so next winter my orchids and other delicate tropicals will have a happy place to live (besides my downstairs bathtub). An electrician is out there while I am working on this, putting electricity in the greenhouse so I can have a heater in the winter and a fan for circulation in the summer. That way a tortoise or two can live out there at night. 

        

I have loved gardening since I was a little girl, my dad and I planted a garden together every year and my mother loved her houseplants. But now that I have my tortoises, it has given me new interests and new things to learn about and research. 

Last year we started making outdoor areas for the different species of tortoises that are now part of our family. We started with the cut off pieces of pilings from the dock that we have put in and then we got permission from our dock builder to come by and get the discarded piling pieces from his trash pile behind his business. They are a perfect fencing and fit right in with our nautical style.