The Goats, The Garden

Here are some pictures of PJ and Mabel...
PJ is the black and white one, Mabel the brown and black.Here's PJ...



Here is a papaya tree that sprouted up in the compost. Cool!

Actually, we have had about 5 or 6 papaya plants come up, and a mango. I put the mango tree and 2 papayas in pots, I'll put a few more of the papayas in pots this fall before the freezes come. In the springtime, I'll plant them out in the yard, with the hope that by overwintering them, they will be old enough to produce some fruit next summer. Apparently, they need a little under a year of frost free weather. In Austin, we get about 20 freezes per year, between December and March. If I can put a 10 month old tree in the ground in April, then I could, theoretically, have ripe papayas in the summer. I have seen other papaya trees in Austin with green fruit on them, so I know that a single season is long enough to get a tree to the point where it is at least blooming and setting fruit, I think it is the extra time needed to get RIPE fruit that is the rub. Anyways, we'll see how it works. It's a lot of trouble to go to for a fruit that costs $0.89/lbs, but of course, that's not really the point....
Here's the Texas A&M home fruit production guide to papaya:

http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/extension/homefruit/papaya/papaya.html

I also recently planted a flower mixture in the 'wild' patch. I included a number of cool season traditional cut flowers, a native wildflower mix, rapeseed, flax and poppies. The flax and poppies are from the grocery store, just exactly what you would put in a muffin or your granola. I want to create bee food by having these flowers around, and have also planted some other things around the yard to encourage bees to visit. Apparently, bees need our help and one of the best things to do is plant nectar producing flowers to bloom year round. So, that's what I am going to attempt...a year round bee garden! We'll see.





Just so that you all get a sense of what the yard looks like, here's a panorama. The goat pen is behind where I was standing to take the picture.