In a Vase on Monday – Sage Advice

wp-17766287054335413728679404299389

I am joining Cathy and the intrepid vasers again this Monday sharing a Vase of flowers collected from our gardens. To view more vases follow this link to Cathy’s blog RamblingintheGarden.

My vase features all types of sage grown in my garden. My advice – plant some!

It seems to be a very good spring for sage in my garden. I planted some new plants a few weeks ago and they are thriving to the point I need to cut the flowers. The bees were not happy with me, but I emerged, clippers in hand, from the flowers unscathed. The annual sages seemed to have enjoyed the rare freezing temperature we had in February followed by a lot of rain and popped up all over the garden. They are already producing seed. For some reason, they are mostly red.

The close up:

wp-17766294916875955736804383679498

Sage is, of course, Salvia. This is Salvia with a few wildflower friends, a side of Golden Dewdrop in a mason jar with a dried bromeliad leaf collar. Only in South Florida!

The red spikes are Scarlet Sage (Salvia coccinea). Blue flowers are Mystic Blue’ Salvia. White spikes are ‘White Flame’ Salvia. White daisies are Bidens alba, cream colored spikes are Juba Bush (Iresine diffusa) These are both wildflowers. Chartreuse foliage is Golden Dewdrop (Duranta erecta). I also have River Sage (Salvia misella) in the garden. This is reportedly a dense mat forming native that grows everywhere and out competes weeds. Bahahaha, need I say more. It is not vaseworthy. More Sage Advice.

Thanks to Cathy for hosting. Happy Gardening.

I will sign off with the fact that it is so dry here I am seriously considering going outside for a rain dance, the sky looks so promising!!

Six on Saturday – Spring Bounty

Saturday morning is prime time to tour my garden and take pictures to share with Jim at GardenRuminations and the rest of the international gardening gang. Follow the link to tour more gardens in the comments.

The White Bird of Paradise (Strelitzia nicolai) is progressing, but not quite open. It surprises me how long the flowers take to get going. I have been watching this for three weeks.

wp-17765185919237644308319888364277

I decided to try some different container plants. Verbena, Callibrachoa and an unknown succulent.

wp-17765189271036757911464833649222

The flower of the unknown succulent. I hope it drops some seed right there!

wp-17765190965502041477325109442749

The Pinot Noir Bromeliad (Aechmea ‘Pinot Noir’) is showing it’s true to its name. This will flower later this summer – I hope.

wp-17765192999852580315990603830285

The miniature pineapples are bearing fruit.

wp-17765200359026607137441203506865

We have been enjoying tomatoes and herbs from the garden.

wp-17765201740336308992385770592065

That is all from South Florida this beautiful spring Saturday. I bought some Cinderella Fairytale Purslane cuttings I must pot up, so it is back outside. Has anyone had these? I bought them for the name as much as anything else. I wanted to try purslane and it supposedly makes it through the summer here.

Happy Gardening!!

In a Vase on Monday – Mystic Magic

wp-17760300579318113008825000097857

I have confessed my love for Salvias on more than one occasion. My favorite, Mystic Blue, has been flowering so profusely it needed deadheading. I did not resist, trimmed all the stunningly large flowers and proceeded to vase making.

With all the rain (11″ in a week measured nearby) the White Flame Salvia and Blue Plumbage are also flowering luxuriantly. They were relieved of a bit of the bounty and all was plonked into one of my favorite thrift store finds – the ubiquitous grey pottery vase.

Being from much further north, this still seems like a midsummer vase to me, and here in South Florida it is entirely possible I can recreate this in July. Since it is mid April, I am enjoying it and savoring the beauty as Florida tends to fry things before their time!

wp-17760355453589108225662959612771

A closer view. This is simply two kinds of salvia and Plumbago. ‘Mystic Blue’ and ‘White Flame’ Salvia and plain Plumbago auriculata and the cultivar P. auriculata ‘Imperial Blue’. The Imperial Blue is closer to hydrangeas in color, I think. Though I like them both. Oddly, the flowers stick to my greyhounds long noses, so I associate them with my dearly departed Charles, who loved sticking his nose in them and always came out covered with blue flowers.

That’s all the blue news from my garden this Monday. To see other gardens and vases visit Cathy at RamblingintheGarden.

Six on Saturday – Florida Garden Fun

I’m joining the SOS gang this week to share some recent happenings in my garden. Spring has truly sprung here and the pollen has been in full force, my sinuses cannot recall a thicker more long lasting coating of pollen. I think the February freeze inspired the oaks to flower. To travel the world via SOS – visit Jim at GardenRuminations

wp-17759146959427819887490888666524

Artemis blasted off over my garden on its way to the moon. My husband was squealing in the back yard. It was quite a sight. We are a few hundred miles south of Cape Canaveral.

wp-17759148991662304903999485942084

A totally different flight landed in the front garden. This is a Great White Egret easily four feet tall.

wp-17759150398061129022952510976087

The Sweet Begonias (Begonia odorata ‘Alba’) have been very sweet this spring.

I have been picking tomatoes for a week or two. Here is a lesson in open pollination. I saved seed last year thinking I would get large yellow pear tomatoes. I got some! And some much larger pink campari style tomatoes and small red cherries. Fortunately, they are all delicious.

wp-17759155293873956002428519913791

This is a bud on a White Bird of Paradise (Strelizia nicolai) This has been in the garden for 7 or 8 years, is at least 12 feet tall and this is the second flower! I keep going out to see if it opened yet.

wp-17759158743174710636587287036673

Spring snow is starting on the Hawaiian Snowbush (Breynia disticha) The foliage gets a bit whiter and then goes back to green. This is a bit of a garden thugs and difficult to pull up.

That is my garden update. I’m wondering if this is the first garden rocket in SOS?

Happy Gardening!

In a Vase on Monday – Ta Da, Spring!

Spring is asserting itself in my garden. Warmer weather and a few showers have brought the more tropical plants back to life. I usually have Shell Ginger in February, but this year it waited until late March to produce flowers. I enjoy these unusual flowers and am happy to see them again.

The flowers and foliage in this vase are all from the most protected part of the garden. These plants weren’t even burned, surprising me. The Strangler Fig that stands sentinel over this area took the brunt of the cold weather and has almost replaced its foliage. The tips of the branches are still naked, there is still time for a full recovery. Fingers crossed.

wp-17754187047474280497094161993167

A closer view: pink flowers are Shell Ginger (Alpinia zerumbet). This is an interesting ginger, edible roots, but apparently not as good as culinary ginger (I can’t grow that for some perverse reason) the leaves are used to wrap fish and vegetables and then steam them. I rolled up the excess leaves and put them inside the vase to hold the heavy stems – they smell wonderfully gingery.

The tropical leaf is from a Split Leaf Philodendron (Philodendron selloum). The windy sticks are from Asparagus Ferns. I cut these to get them out of my way as they are sending up shoots that are very thorny. I liked the way they looked, so they were added to the arrangement and the trimmings were stacked in front – for a horizontal line. Just for fun.

That’s all from my garden this Monday. Happy Gardening and thanks to Cathy for hosting – follow this link to her blog RamblingintheGarden.

In a Vase on Monday – Celebrating Americans

wp-1774812359616130572299841517125

I’m not sure what possessed my garden to produce red, white and blue flowers this week. Perhaps a quiet celebration of No Kings on a floral scale. I’ll take it! I was astonished to see some 9 million fellow Americans staging peaceful protests yesterday. Just Wow.

Spring is progressing and the landscape is slowly recovering from the February freeze. The resilience of plants never fails to amaze me. Many things that we grow here are labeled not frost tolerant – it seems maybe they are! The truly tropical plants like Frangipani are gone, the insides of the trunks look like a black dessicated cord, I have never seen anything like it. The cold weather inspired some other things to flower, I think.

wp-17748133292932362223122165676526

The Red Amaryllis in the vase appeared from the cosmos. I have never planted these and suddenly there it was. I decided to cut the stem because it was too windy for the flowers to last long.

wp-17748134289637460490898565025489

Spilling over the edge of the vase are Sweet Begonias (Begonia odorata ‘Alba’) a stalwart here. The red, white and blue flowers are from a bromeliad, Billbergia vittata, these last longer in the vase than in the garden and have been flowering off and on for two months. My new Salvia, Mystic Blue, is having a good run and I am enjoying cutting it. The foliage in the vase is a chopped up frond from a Cabbage Palm (Palmetto sabal) I trimmed the frond and stuffed what I chopped off around the edges, not sure Martha Stewart would approve.

That’s all from my garden. Happy Spring Monday to all. Many thanks to Cathy for hosting. Follow this link to her blog to see more vases. RamblingintheGarden

In a Vase on Monday – Scents of the Sugar Belle

My South Florida garden continues tutoring me in the finer points of growing things. Today I learned about black citrus aphids. The hard way, discovering the new growth on my Sugar Belle Mandarin orange tree covered in tiny black bugs – who knew aphids were black?

I decided to plant an orange tree after reading that the new variety of mandarin, Sugar Belle, is reportedly resistant to the scourge of Florida citrus, Huanglongbing bacterial disease. This terrible sounding thing causes citrus greening, basically ruining the fruit. I planted one of these trees last fall. It is settling in very well and has too many flowers on it, so I liberated one for a Vase, cleared the bugs off and will give it a dose of Neem spray later. Fingers crossed that clears up the problem.

wp-17742072627093635014006585796753

Here is a closer view. The orange blossoms are in the foreground. The fragrance has permeated the house. It has a sweet scent and the range of travel is impressive. I am also enjoying my new Salvia plants again. In blue, Mystic Blue and the white is White Flame. I plucked a varigated leaf from the Pie Crust Croton and added some climbing Asparagus Fern for contrast.

Thanks to Cathy for hosting. To see more vases and celebrations of spring in the garden follow this link RamblingintheGarden

Happy Spring Gardening!!

Six on Saturday – Florida Freeze Rebound

Greeting to the SOS crowd from South Florida. I am pleased to report my garden is bouncing back from the historic freeze in early February. There have been a few casualties. I lost two out of three mango trees and a specimen tree form Firebush (It looks terrible in black – I did not know plants could turn black!) Otherwise, the skies are blue, the birds are singing and the citrus trees are setting fruit!

Citrus trees are more cold hardy than I imagined. This is a Sugar Belle Mandarin orange I planted last fall. It is setting fruit – there is a tiny orange on the right side of the photo. I will probably remove most of these as the tree needs to put its energy into establishing itself. The flowers have a wonderful scent.

The Rangpur lime is also flowering. The orange seems to have a stronger scent.

wp-17740995235247928625544000404704

I was very happy to see the Nemesis Papaya coming back from its roots.

wp-17740996160238845598990569423139

I found a surprise in the front garden. It looks a lot like an Amaryllis, though I never planted any Amaryllis. All will be revealed soon. I hope it is a Butterfly Amaryllis!

wp-17740997709712527330345296728600

I replaced some Salvia. These are Mystic Blue. A favorite.

wp-17740998711354496359789524779640

New growth on my one surviving mango. You can see the dead foliage still hanging on around the edges. This is a Glenn Mango. Some of the older mangoes on my street are setting fruit. Fingers crossed.

Happy Spring, Everyone! Things are definitely looking up here.

Follow the link to visit Jim at GardenRuminations and see what else in going on this Saturday in the gardening world.

In a Vase on Monday – Salvia – How Do I Love Thee?

wp-17736068833512495807572882068298

Oh yes, let me count the ways…heat tolerant, nonstop flowers, short lived perennials, thrives in sugar sand. Elizabeth, need I go on?

My love affair with Salvia continues. The freeze or drought or something lambasted what remained of the White Flame and Mystic Blue Salvia in my garden, so I replenished my supply. This involves meeting a friend for Thai food, then traveling to our local favorite https://pindersnursery.com and stocking up. Of course, a few other items were purchased…and in the vase.

A closer view:

wp-177360977215372333845556449540

The white flowers are White Flame Salvia. Red and coral flowers are from the reseeding annual Salvia coccinea. The buds and bigger leaves are from Mystic Blue Salvia. Possibly my all time favorite. A few stems broke off the plants from the nursery, so I am hoping the roots continue to grow in the vase. And I will have more!

Purple flowers are new to the garden, Heliotrope. I am told these don’t like heat – we will soon find out about that. The fragrance from these plants is used to scent baby powder, reportedly calming. I have had these for a few days and can’t smell anything. Could be the oak pollen or perhaps I am calm. One never knows.

wp-17736105108438552295667236172659

The foliage is from Golden Dewdrop (Duranta erecta) with a few fronds of native Boston Ferns. The vase is from my florist collection.

Happy Spring Monday from my pollen infested garden. I am hoping the incoming rain clears the air. Please visit Cathy at RamblingintheGarden to see more vases.

In a Vase on Monday – Hong Kong Orchid

wp-17730017361485671586735675507902

I like a catchy title and the name of the biggest flower here serves its purpose well. The lavendar flowers are from the Hong Kong Orchid tree next door. The tree is actually my neighbors, planted by her grandmother in the 1960s, so it has been around for a while. I filched a few flowers that are encroaching. It’s one of those love/hate types of trees. In March the sight of this tree covered in these Lavendar orchid shaped flowers makes me sigh with gardening pleasure. Later in the year it drops a million pods and then the seedlings come up with summer rains. Then I am sighing from the effort of trying to remove all the little seedlings that seem to have suction cups attached to their roots.

wp-17730022881393038205476542080237

A little closer view. The Hong Kong Orchids are Bauhinia purpurea. The white flowers are from Sweet Begonia (Begonia odorata ‘Alba’). Blue flowers are Plumbaga auriculata. Burgundy spears are from Aechmea ‘Burgundy’ Bromeliad. Ferny bits are the creepy Asparagus Fern. The vase is from the Ute Indian tribe in the Southwestern Us.

It seems to have started raining again. The forecasters are saying our weather pattern is shifting to La Nina which means cooler weather, more rain and fewer hurricanes. This sounds good to me. I am slowly reclaiming the garden from the freeze of a month ago. One mango tree is dead, one is coming back and a third the jury is still out. I decapitated the papaya tree, so fingers crossed it comes back.

Happy Monday from South Florida. Visit Cathy at RamblingintheGarden to see more vases!