Second Spring Surprises

Have you ever had an extremely gorgeous weekend that just begs you to spend time in the garden and you have to spend most of it doing errands, or worse, work? It is enough to make you cry a little. The weather has cooled dramatically in the last few days and is just wonderful. I had to stay inside and clean the house before my husband threatened to move out. The plants have really enjoined their second spring and gave me a few surprises.

This is plain ol' lantana, but I like this shot.

The butterflies have been plentiful this season, but it seems like only the dull ones stay on the flower long enough to for me to take a picture.

The purple pentas are perfect.


The elephant ears became HUGE over night.

The butterfly ginger are gearing up for round two - yeah!

And the most massive surprise of all, a completely jaw dropping one, was that a stargazer lily from last year decided it would bloom after all, sneaking up behind some salvia. It's almost October! I was so disappointed that last years bulbs didn't bloom. I suppose it was just trying to be fashionably late.

Word of the Day: Soggy

Well Fay left us a soggy mess. The storm was not intense, but the wind and rain stuck around for a while, over 24 hours, and we still may see some outer bands of rain later this morning. Fortunately we are not seeing the flooding that some parts of Florida are and we haven't lost any trees like our neighbors have. I thought I'd stroll around the yard and show you what did happen:

The major thing was this branch falling in the corner garden. The branch was dead and hanging ominously over the garden. We cut down as much of it as we could, and since we couldn't afford a professional to trim it up, we hoped that when it did eventually fall that it wouldn't take out the fence or the palms. Fortunately, this is what happened. It did squish my gingers, but they will bounce back with no problems.

This picture of the pool shows how truly concerned we were about this storm. We forgot to take the umbrella down, and it is no worse for the ware.

My oleander in the front garden is strange . . . it didn't really fall over, more like it is bent over. Not sure how to fix it. Maybe prune it back so it is not so top heavy.

My lantana tree fell over, which is not a surprise because it falls periodically even without a storm. Before Fay it was on the agenda to spend some serious time weeding this garden and that certainly hasn't changed. This is the only real damage. I think the branch broke some slats in the fence. No big deal, but I'm sure the neighbors will leave it there for another three weeks. Do you like their paint job? A few months ago they painted as far up as they could reach and then left like that. Attractive, huh?

All Stressed Out . . .

Gardening is supposed to be relaxing, right? Then why do I feel such anxiety when my plants don't come up right away? It is like my child is late coming home late. I'm poking the ground, looking for signs of life, wondering when, when, when? Finally my hidden ginger came up, then the white crinums came back to life. But what about the pine cone ginger that grew against the fence (2.)? I knew they would be late because last year I planted over them with Mexican Petunia when the sprouts forcefully found their way up.
So I was pretty happy when I saw these little sprouts popping up. My ginger is back!!!!

Epcot Part 1

This weekend, me and my family went Epcot for their Flower and Garden Show.

One of the highlights was seeing Ellen Zachos from Down & Dirty Gardening speak.

She was demonstrating how to make a dinosaur garden for little gardeners. Ellen gave my daughter a dinosaur toy and she's slept with it the last two nights. I guess I'm going to have make my own dinosaur garden now! I've forgotten most of her suggestions, (Did I mention it was a long day?) but one plant really did stand out: the Alocasia Stingray. Cool, huh?

We also met this lady, who did not want to be photographed . . .

But she gave us lady bugs to release into the garden.

That is my husband's hand. My daughter was too scared. In fact, I had now idea that Epcot was such a scary place. Between the bugs in boxes to the grown adults dressed up like animals wanting to randomly hug small children, I thought my girl was going to have a full on breakdown.

The Evolution of the Corner Garden

Since it is the end of the year, it seems like a time to reflect how far the garden has come. Since I took the corner garden from nothing this year, I thought I'd feature it. In May, I drew up some plans:

This was the before, back in May.

Here is the corner in September. I didn't get the bamboo in, elephant ears and gingers replaced it. In the corner, in the plans showed a raised bed that would be a mini bog area. Didn't quite happen. In fact, none of the borders were put in. That is on the to-do list for January. Instead, my beatiful crinums reside in the corner. Not sure if they will stay there this year.

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The most notable element missing in this picture are the trellises. I was short on cash this summer, and expensive plans like the trellis and the borders just had to wait. Hopefully we will be able to put them in this year.

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The before. The crinums were temporarily planted there before moving to the corner.

This part of the garden really turned out better than I planned.