Pineapples, plants, and 2 cards.

So if you've read my blog for the last year or so, you are probably familiar with the fact that I like to plant things. It doesn't mean I'm the best at gardening or that I even have time to water things, but I like getting seeds, planting them, watering them once or twice a month, and seeing what happens. 

About 3 years ago, I decided to get a pineapple, eat it, but save the top and plant it. I must've read on the internet or something that you could grow them that way. Earlier that year, I had taken a bunch of extra wood from a fence that we purchased, put them in the ground, and kind of made a border between the mulch and the grass around our house. I decided to put the pineapple in the back yard next to our porch. It must've been a good spot, because it has been growing ever since. 

That picture is probably less than a  year or so after I planted it. I know this because we got the house in October, and I probably planted the pineapple the next summer, and in the winter we had one day where it was going to get into the 20's at night, and I covered the pineapple with a sheet. The next morning, the leaves looked yellow and limp and were pretty wet. I don't know what happened, but I cut the yellow parts off, and you can see how short some of the leaves are. 

Well, the pineapple kept growing, and I slowly took out the little fence border I made.

In March or so of this year, I hadn't checked on the pineapple in a few weeks. My co-worker Butch also has tried growing pineapples, and we planted ours around the same time. He mentioned to me that his pineapple had started blooming. I thought mine was a little behind his and was going to give it a few months and try covering it and leaving an apple core inside the covering if it didn't bloom over the summer (this gives it some kind of gas or nutrient that promotes the blooming). Well, I checked my pineapple after hearing that Butch's was blooming, and look what happened.

Must've done something right. 

Eventually, it started growing the leaves at the top and started looking like a real pineapple. 

Those last 2 were taken about a week ago. I was really hoping the plant would get bigger so I would get a decent amount of fruit. 

Unfortunately, it started turning yellow, and I knew that if it got closer to orange, it would be time to pick it. I have been going outside the last few days and twisting it, and lo and behold, 3 days ago, I twisted it, and it came off. 

Not the biggest pineapple, but I grew it from one that I purchased, and I got a free pineapple out of it, and stuck it to The Man 3 years later. 

I cut the top off and immediately planted it in the front yard in a little planter box I built almost 2 years ago. 

The fruit was really sweet, and I can't wait to grow another one. If you count the mama plant where this one came from, I have 7 pineapples in my yard. I have some that are approaching 2 years, so I might get some next summer, and the others are around 6 months old and 2 months old. I am hoping the mama plant will either produce fruit or give me a couple slips or suckers to plant. So far, I haven't seen any. Both of these are growths that develop on different parts of the plant which you can cut off and plant. I had one pineapple that I purchased that I had ate, planted, and it looked like it had all but died. I took the plant up, and noticed it had a little growth on it that looked like a small pineapple. I cut it off, planted the 2 in a different area, and now both of them are doing pretty good. It was just weird because normally, these grow on the mama plant after the pineapple is cut off, and mine grew from the baby plant (the pineapple top from the one I got at the store). Perhaps they will grow from the one I planted in the front yard. I will be keeping an eye on both the mama and baby plant.

This is what the mama plant looks like now. 

She kind of leaned to one side, and I don't know if that's why the fruit didn't get any bigger. Hopefully she will give me some suckers before she dies off. 

I also have a few plants around the yard that are producing flowers. Nothing too big or fancy, but just nice to see something out of my efforts. 

The one in the middle is from an orchid seed that Butch gave me. He also gave me the plant with the huge leaves to the left. That one is supposed to grow a flower on each stalk.

That's a bigger picture of where I planted it. It's kind of a mess, as the zinnia's have taken over. They are nice flowers, but I just keep getting these white fungus parts on the stems, and some of the plant looks great and has nice flowers, but then the fungus just eats up the rest. The yellow flowers are milkweed. There are a few gladiolas in there, as well as some snapdragons and morning glories. This is a few weeks old. Currently, I have some sunflowers blooming.

The smaller ones are starting to bloom.

Some bigger mammoth ones are going to open up any day.

And then, we have this beauty, which I really hope can give me some seeds and that the squirrels don't get to it. They have destroyed 2 that were nice looking in the back yard.

The box is built around a tree stump, and I thought it would be fun to put rocks on it. There are a few that my son and his cousins painted. The huge one in the middle is from my Uncle Bob's gravel pit in Lake Odessa, Michigan. There are a few painted ones that just showed up. Makes me a little leary of me or my son touching them because of Covid, but I appreciate the generocity and they are fun to look at. The red and green on which is a strawberry, the pink and red on on top of my Uncle Bob's rock, and the blue one at the bottom that is halfway on my shadow are the ones that kind strangers left. I hope they enjoy my flowers as much as I have enjoyed looking at their rocks.

In the back yard, it's just another mess of zinnias and some sunflowers.

There are small ones that have started to bloom.

And there are some bigger mammoth ones that should get flowers any day. I was hoping that we would get a little rain with the hurricane, but we got more in the days before than actually during it.

Well, if you've made it this far, you deserve some baseball cards.
These 2 cards are from the latest package to make it to my house. They came from John of Johnny's Trading Spot. On Friday, I played in his bingo game, and I came out winning the postage stamp bingo. It was a fun game, and worked out that I wasn't really distracted when I was playing, and all 5 people playing won a prize. I am pretty happy with my cards. Both are 1/1's from the Honus Bonus set from 2017.  I won a Chris Archer, which will go in my Rays binder, and a Nelson Cruz, which will go in my fun/shiny card binder. If I am counting correctly, these 2 cards double my 1/1 count in my collection. My first was a printing plate of Jose Contreras that I pulled from a pack of 2007 Upper Deck, and I purchased a Brody Koerner 2015 Elite Extra Edition 1/1 Gold card on eBay.

Thanks, John, for the fun bingo game and the cool prize. 

It is kind of weird today. This is my first day off with nobody home and no lawn to mow since early March, and I kind of don't know what to do. I'll probably work on some customs, straighten and mop the house, and maybe go through my sunset page and try to pick some out of my binders which I missed. Hopefully I can be productive at whatever I choose to do.
I hope you enjoyed looking at my gardening projects and the cool prizes that John sent. You can sign up for future bingo games, just send him a few cards on his want list.

Thanks for checking out my latest post.

-Jeremy