Crepe Myrtle The Tree of The South

My Crepe Myrtle tree is blooming this year.  The year is two years old and froze this winter during are hard 3 1/2 day freeze.  I lost half of it and just had a 6 inch stick in the ground.  This tree is a beautiful part of the south and you see them everywhere.  I have noticed grow through almost anything so I left it alone.  To my great surprise it grew very fast.
The crepe myrtle is an attractive tree with it's leaves turning nice colors in the fall and the trucks of the tree are both unusual and pretty.  I found this link to a Southern Living article on the tree:  www.southernliving.com. 
This tree came from www.arborday.org .  I had made a donation and received 10 trees.  We planted them and then recorded their growth for a homeschool science project.   One thing is true if you visit the south you will see that the crepe myrtle is the tree of the south.

Black Mission Fig

On Earth Day we attended a educational event at the Alexandria Zoo  and among the plants we got there were a black mission fig and two longleaf fir trees. 
I have wished I would have written down what she said about our tree but I believe she said ours was
developed into bush type instead of a tree which would be nice as these trees can grow from 10ft to 30ft.  Coming from Asia originally these trees have made it to several European countries and Spain before coming through the missionaries to California.  The black fig is extremely popular for it sweetest and fairly easy to grow fruit. 

Here is a photo of the fig we got on Earth Day.  It is starting to send two shoots up from the roots along the base of the plant which reinforces my belief that she told me it was a bush type fig.  ❤

http://www.gardenguides.com gives some good information on planting and growing bush or tree figs as the growing is the same just the size of plant is different. 

This should be what our little bush fig should look like and I am excited as you can see it is a compact heavily leaved and very pretty. 

Here is some food value facts about figs:

These come from http://www.nutrition-and-you.com check this link out to get the rest of the article.

New Seedling Trees

Some photo's my and Maegan's new seedling trees.  The cherry on the top is older being planted in the bed up front and the lemon and tangerine seedlings are the newest just being started last month.

We got the longleaf fir trees and the last photo a fig tree from Earth Day at the zoo.  They are all growing well but slowly as I guess one should expect.  I am keeping them outside in a tent type storage shed to get the light they need and fresh air. 

How Well Does My Garden Grow?

When I bought my Mobile home a couple of years ago I decided to put a small garden for tomatoes and hopefully other vegetables in the front year.  In the meantime I decided to plant some other plants too and get some shade in the front of the home.  We get so hot in the summer and fall and the front of the house is very hot.

So I began planting.  The other day I took a look at my front garden and realized how full it was.  Every thing has grown so much this year that I saw that I was going to have to move my vegetable plants to somewhere else before I plant next,

Mystery Tree

I have some young trees that we got last year from the Arbor Society.  We were using them as a research project to see how they grew.  We had red buds, crepe myrtles, and dogwood but one of the trees was not a red bud and we do not know what it is if anyone can help answer the mystery we would welcome it.  The tree grows very fast and is now about five feet high. 

The branches that hold the leaves are red while young and tough it grows straight and very strong the trunk starts out as green seeming to be softer then it is to look at.

If you know send me an email at suekaren4@gmail.com .