Update of the Front Garden (And Other Bits of Happiness)

Time to do an update of the Front Garden. I slacked on doing updates of the gardens last year because they never really got to where I wanted them. Hopefully things will be better this year and I'll be posting more updates. I'm doing the front because is it is really the only garden with anything green in it, never mind something blooming. 

Gotta love petunias and snapdragons.  This snapdragon reminds me of popcorn. 

I'd love to go in here and plant some pentas and divide some irises, but my last frost date is still almost two months away, so for now I've got to wait.  For now, I have to content myself with cleaning up dead stuff and keeping new weed growth to a minimum.  Such a bummer because when it isn't rainy and cold, the weather is down right decent.  Not hot at all and zero bugs.  I've decided that the bugs will keep me out of the garden more than anything else in the summer.

Well here are some things that aren't bummers:

WORMS!!!  Is it gross to take pictures of your compost?  Probably, but I'm so excited I don't care.  Got to love the worm poo!  I've been using the excess water run off from the bin to water plants for a while now, but I can't wait to harvest some fresh new worm poo for the garden.  The worms seem to have taken the freezing temps just fine, but they are very camera shy.

FREE TOOLS!  Okay, not quite free, but close. I found these clippers in a big pile of gardening stuff in the shed. Brand new and in the package! It think it is from a few Christmases ago when everyone I knew got me a pair of clippers.  These got shoved to the back of the shelf and totally forgotten about.  The best part is that I really needed a new pair.

GINGER!  My Disney Ginger survived both squirrels and freezes this year.  Maybe there is hope for a bloom on this one yet??
Well, that's it for me.  What made you happy today??

In The Weeds

Wow - This summer really got away from me! I woke up one morning and all of the sudden the pool garden looked like this:There truly is a garden path in there somewhere. My husband and I looked each other and said "Ahh, a frost will come eventually and take care of this sticky little problem for us." All those weeds are just too much to think about without the aid of a machete.

Fortunately, there are little bits of joy to be had around the garden lately, if you look for them. This week the weather finally cooled and Floridians seemed to come out of their long air-conditioned hibernation to spend some time outdoors. Everyone was outside mowing their lawns, taking walks (I took two! Wha? Wha?) and putting up Halloween decorations. I took the opportunity to do a little gardening, or more accurately, pull a weed or two and look for plants that didn't croak on me after a long summer of neglect.

Ahh, my gingers. A few survived the squirrels and one even bloomed, although I couldn't get a good picture of it. I still love the leaves, especially at this angle from the bottom looking up.
Some coleus, hiding under the gingers. Both were taken as clippings from my Mother's house.
The camellias are really budding this year, and a few have started to bloom. YAY!!


The last hold out blossom on the crepe myrtle bush. Note about crepe myrtle: You can dig up some of those really annoying seedlings that always come up in the spring and replant them! I keep them in a pot in a shady area for the first summer and then replant them where I want them the following spring. It is a slow process, but I've had success with it. Nothing like a free plant.

I thought for sure the that the Globba Ginger were goners after our deep freezes this year, but sure enough I now have about 10 plants and they are all blooming nicely. I wish they were taller, but other than that I totally love them.
Knockout Rose, knocking me out.

A single vinca, grown back from last years planting. This time last year, the vinca looked like hell and I took them all out. This year, the seedlings I let live are gorgeous. Go figure.

The mighty attack cat, hunting her prey. She always looks at me like I'm intruding on her world when I work in the garden. It is very much her's most of the week.

The Best Thing You Can Put In Your Garden

Somewhere along the way I once read "The best thing you can put in your garden is you." Any good gardener knows the biggest part of gardening is being in the garden. Picking weeds, looking for bugs, dead-heading, whatever. Fortunately, I've put a lot of me in the garden in the last few weeks. I've got a ton summer cuttings started in the front yard, the butterfly and shed gardens are picking up and I planted a little itty-bitty veggie garden in the corner garden where I finally gave up on some of my gingers growing this year. This concept applies with a blog, too. I haven't put too much of myself here lately. Who wants to be stuck behind computer when there is a garden to garden? I did take pictures in the last few weeks of some of the best blooms. Hope this will hold you over until I get some legitimate update posts done. Enjoy!

I think this daylily was called 'purple grape'. I call it yummy!

African Iris

African Iris

Daylily - 'Clara'

One of the reasons I LOVE coleus is its diversity. On the right is one from the Aurora series. There was no name in the nursery for the one on the left, so it is now know by me as 'Big-honkin' Coleus.

Crinum Scabrum

Crinum Scabrum

Red Canna

Yellow Walking Iris

Hidden Ginger

'Black and Blue' Salvia and 'Happy Returns' Daylily

The pot didn't work and most of the gingers were chewed up. Moving on to massive amounts of habanero sauce.

WWPD?

Oy - Before Pictures. Whether it is a chubbie chick or an underdeveloped spring garden, they are never pretty. I hate showing them, but I know in a few months it will be fun to look back. Above is the circle in the middle of the corner garden. It was a happier spot once, but the frosts hit the palms and the squirrels decimated the gingers, and frankly, last year I kinda gave up on it. I'm now trying to revitalize it, and, as almost always, with no budget. The biggest problem is lack of definition. Ideally, I'd like to add a limestone border around it, in a more natural shape than the tight circle I originally created. That was a great plan until I priced out limestone. $10, per stone! For a girl that has a garden budget of right around $10 per week, more or less, that seems out of my price range. I could feel the spirits of my ancestors waiting to kick me if I even thought of spending $10 for a rock.

At times like these, I sit down and think: "What would Pearl do?"


Some of you know exactly who I am talking about. For those of you who don't, stop reading this and immediately get yourself a copy of the movie, A Man Named Pearl. It is a documentary about gardener and topiary artist Pearl Fryar. He is practically the patron saint of frugality and creativity in the garden. One of the reasons he took up topiary was that he could take a cheap discarded nursery plant and shape it into something totally unique and special. He is such an inspiration for me. So when I look at the area above, the thought comes in to my mind, "What would Pearl do?" How can I use the resources I have to make something really special? Unfortunately, I don't have Pearl's brain, so I still don't know what I am going to do with this area. I have filled it with with red canna I picked up from the Master Gardener's sale last year and some grass divided from the front yard. But I still have no idea how I'll define the bed. Suggestions, especially for cheap rock sources, are welcome.

The cannas are pretty though.

In case any of you are wondering how the war on squirrels is going, I'm trying a new tactic: physical barriers! On some of my more prized ginger shoots, I've cut out the bottoms of garden pots and put them over the shoots. In other areas, I've surrounded the gingers with branches. Anything to make them harder to reach and get to. I'll let you know how it goes.

Don't tell the Squirrels

Finally. A gorgeous weekend where I didn't have a ton to do. That meant I've had plenty of time to go out and get dirty in the garden. It was a very clear weather in the 70's that makes you wish it was like this all of the time. Okay, I'd be even okay with 48 weeks a year - giving 2 to hot weather and two weeks to cold. That would be just about perfect.

It was a huge relief to see that some of my favorite plants are starting to come back. With a week of hard freezes in January, I wasn't sure if even my most dependable tropicals were going to pull through. The Philodendron is unfurling some new branches.

The canna is going full force.

And, I'm so happy about this:

My gingers are back!!! (Just don't tell the squirrels.)

Updates

I know it has been a while since I posted the corner garden, but it is coming along nicely!

Didn't the pathways turn out good?

Love the Angel's Trumpet!

And lots of new visitors!

Alright. I'm not fooling any of you. These are pictures from the Butterfly Rainforest at the Florida Museum of Natural History. A girl can dream, can't she? If you live near Gainesville it is worth a visit. It may be the only good reason to visit G-ville (stupid Gators.)

Last weekend, I hit up the Master Gardener's fall sale. In past years I have been less than impressed with fall sale. Pretty much the same ol' stuff. This year I got there much earlier, and I don't know if it was the earlier time or just a better show, but I could have bought the whole place. The above haul was for my yard: 6 red cannas, a pagoda plant, a terribly awesome curly-leafed coleus with burgundy spots (I already have cuttings rooting) and the plant on the chair, which is something random my daughter pick out. I still don't know were I'll put them all.

For my mother's yard, I got a fantastic variegated spiral ginger, a peach ginger (Disney??) and two red firespikes.

Now for some ginger blooms from my garden.

Well, it is a big mish-mash of stuff for this post. Hopefully I'll have some real garden updates next week!

In the Garden this Evening. . .

Camelias are blooming already.

I should have more ginger blooms by now, but the squirrels did their damage. There quite a few buds, so I should see more soon.

Recent Flowers

Yep I'm still here! I'm still gardening too. I've just been a bit, err, pre-occupied. Oh well. Here is what has been blooming in the garden:

The cannas have been doing very well this year, despite the leaf-rollers.

The front garden has done especially well. It attracts multitudes of butterflies, and reportedly a few hummingbirds as well, although I haven't seen them yet.

This is an iris from the front garden.

The Globba Ginger managed to avoid the squirrels and blooming nicely - yay!!

September is when the weather cools in this area and the garden and the gardeners start to perk up. I've got some big projects planned soon!

Bastard.