In A Vase on Monday – Many Miniatas

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The garage sale Bromeliads continue to amaze me. The red flowers are from Aechmea miniata, a Bromeliad I stumbled upon at a garage sale a few years ago. Five bucks is my limit for a plant unknown to me, as this one was when I found it. Bromeliads tend to run anywhere from 12 dollars for a small unnamed mystery plant at the Big Box stores to $100 and up for a named, big, lush specimen. The problem with these named, expensive plants is generally no one can tell you where they will grow “move them around til you find a place it likes” or “I think it flowers”. I am too frugal for this sort of nonsense and think if a plant is sold for prices like that you should get some reasonable directions. Or at least knowledge of whether it flowers. More Florida gardening nonsense. The market here demands nothing.

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I have been trying to decide if the flowers look more like trees or broccoli. Neither, really. The flowers are crunchy and last about two weeks in a vase. The green swirling fern is a cutting of Asparagus Fern I twirled around the base of the Miniatas.

20180819_132030-1The Miniatas are flowering madly and have been for a month or so. The tree that shades them got a fairly major pruning after Hurricane Irma last year.  The normal olive colored foliage has burned from the sun (or lack of rain) but has been bravely sending up flower after flower. Time will tell what happens next should be interesting, the other Garage Sale Bromeliads are producing pups – I should have hundreds of dollars worth of Bromeliads shortly. Unfortunately, I hate having garage sales.

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Sad news from my garden this week. I lost my sweetest, spotted Greyhound to bone cancer on Friday. Farewell, faithful Charles.

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Charles

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In A Vase on Monday – New Summer Favorites

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I am embarking on my sixth year of gardening in South Florida. What a ride. As always, I am amazed by what will grow in infertile beach sand. My summer favorites have changed with my gardening location. I used to love Hydrangeas, Roses and Clematis. Now I am loving the contents of this vase and more…20180812_150621

The smorgasboard of plant material that grows in South Florida continues to boggle my mind. I love Bromeliads and there are 200,000 varieties! Mind boggling. My garden is on the northern end of tropical, so the trick of siting the plant and maintaining a proper environment has been a challenge.  Then, there’s always the native plants to consider.

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So, my new favorites are a little bit of everything.

The white flower is a Tropical Gardenia (Tabernaemontana divericata) – not a true Gardenia, mine was rescued from the underbrush and is now recovering at 8 – 10 feet tall, I continue to prune the jungly interlopers.

The red flowers with blue tips are Miniata Bromeliads, Aechmea is the genus, I think – then again there are 200,000 others?!

The pink and red Salvia are Tropical Red Salvia (Salvia coccinea) – a reseeding native perennial that never dies but doesn’t look very good unless it is raining.

The foliage. Well, Asian Sword Fern is hard to beat in an arrangement and the garden. Considered invasive, it would take a bulldozer to remove it from my garden. Finally, the striped foliage, the indestructible New Zealand Flax (Dianella) if only there was a dwarf variety…. It would be my new favorite.

In A Vase on Monday-The Green Swan

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I was going to call this post swanning around, but there are way too many interpretations of that term to have it in a title. Mind boggling how many ways a saying can be taken from sexual to merely showing off.

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The late summer daisies are showing off – in yellow, Beach Sunflowers (Helianthus debilis) the red ones are Gallardias (Gallardia pulcherra). The white flowers are Bridal Bouquet Plumeria (in full glory) and Sweet Almond Bush (Aloysia virgata) backed up by a few Asian Sword Ferns.

The Green Swan is actually a candy dish I inherited from my mother. She was a collector of swans and loved to say ‘Why, I’ll Swanee’ – the polite Southern lady version of I swear.

Happy Monday.

 

The First Sign of Fall

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Fall is greatly anticipated in South Florida. Humidity and temperatures um, fall. And we love it.

Here is the first sign. Berries on the Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana). The butterflies have been enjoying these flowers and now I will enjoy the fruit. Floridians (not me) make jelly from the berries (usually described as astringent). If I find some jelly, I will buy it – having recently learned about Jamtinis, you guessed it fruity cocktails –Jamtini ideas. 

73 Days until October 15. The usual date for our first cold front.

It’s time to plant vegetable seeds! And have a Jamtini.

In A Vase on Monday – Gift Bag from Zeus

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Zeus, I am told, is the Greek God of Rain. He gifted my garden with several gentle showers this week. I, in turn, was rewarded with flowers from my thirsty garden. The glass handbag was a thrift store find I happily filled with flowers.

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The white flowers are Bridal Bouquet Frangipani, made especially happy by the rain and flowering in earnest. I cut these to use in arrangements as they are very prolific, but a bit different in form from other Frangipanis that tend to be small, deciduous trees. These are a little more than a foot wide and planted to screen my neighbor’s fence. The fragrance is subtle, first thing in the morning when the dew is burning off the flowers – the scent (in front of my garage) divine. The foliage is also semi evergreen.

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The rest of the flowers are:

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From the left side: in red and yellow Parrottflowers (Heliconia psittacorum); in orange, Mexican Bush Honeysuckle (Justicia spicigera); pink are Rain Lilies (Zephyranthes, no clue on species, but another Greek God); red flower, Miniata Bromeliad (Aechmea miniata, from last week). A few of my favorite indestructible ferns for accent.

Happy Gardening and I hope Zeus is kind to all gardens this week.

In A Vase on Monday – Tropical Blues

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July in South Florida can give any gardener the blues. The temperatures have been in the mid 90s with a similar amount of humidity and it has basically refused to rain here despite the calendar’s insistence this is our rainy season. The tropical plants with big leaves are scorching, actually the weeds anywhere not served by our irrigation system are scorching, withering weeds incite a gleeful response from me and offset the gardening blues to a certain extent.

The summer blooming tropicals I have sited properly (always a good trick) are coping well and flowering, the others are, well, scorching. My blue vases are from the happy tropicals! The tropicals not getting quite enough water are really blue. And scorched.

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The big red, green and yellow bud is from Heliconia rostrata, Lobsterclaw Heliconia. I decided to cut this just to see how long it will last. Waiting for the flower to open seems to shorten it’s vase life. It will be interesting to see if it opens as it usually takes a week or so to get this:

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The small footed vase holds some Firebush flowers and Parrottflowers (Heliconia psittacorum) The Parrottflowers are having a tough year and seem a bit shrunken. Drought does not defeat Firebush here and they are feeding my butterfly brigade. Here is Zebra Longwing enjoying the nectar.20170608_152406-1

The blue violin holds a Miniata Bromeliad, the huge tree that shades this ground got a haircut from Hurricane Irma and yes, they are a bit scorched, but have graced me with a flower accompanied by a bit of Asian Sword Fern.

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The blue vases are all heirlooms, the violin belonged to my grandmother, the bottle is from my mother and the footed vase belonged to my in laws. No one was scorched.

That I am aware of.

In A Vase on Monday – Summer Surprises

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Every gardener gets a few surprises. Some are better than others. I have been doing a lot of design work lately, hence the funky picture.

My summer surprises have been the good kind and primarily pink this week.

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The Shell Ginger (Alpinia zerumbet) is in the pink champagne bottle a friend left after a holiday celebration, these are reported to flower three times a year – this is the first year for a second flowering, surprising me.

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In the grey round vase, it seems the Garden Gods have rewarded me with a Pink Cactus Dahlia, not.  My Dahlia quest continues.

This is one of my ubiquitous $5 garage sale finds. No one knows what the Bromeliad is or where to plant it, but one can be had for $5. For five bucks I got a wonderful surprise and there are pups. I think it is a Aechmea ‘fasciata’  variety- please let me know if you recognize it.

The leaves are from a nearby Sweet Begonia ( Begonia odorata)

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The third vase has the survivalist pink and chartruese Alabama Sunset Coleus I had lost hope for and pink and white (yes) Tropical Red Salvia (Salvia coccinea). Another surprise.

My biggest surprise this week was the hatching of the rare Atala Butterfly in my Coontie (small shrubby palms)

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