Today was nearly a perfect fall Sunday in South Florida. Clear blue skies, a light breeze, the native flowers blooming luxuriantly in my pollinator garden buzzing with green bees and butterflies. Unfortunately, it was 88 degrees Fahrenheit/31 Celsius. Too hot to hang around outside very long. Summer can last seemingly forever here. Endless Summer is not just a Beach Boys song. Though the vegetables and what the rest of the Northern Hemisphere considers summer flowers are thriving in the heat. I am hoping for bouquets of Zinnias and baskets of radishes, herbs, and tomatoes later in the season.
A closer view of my native flowers:
I love the striking green stems with blue flowers, these are a native (according to some, the native plants’ people get tiresome to me), I think they are Stachytarpheta jamaicensis- Blue Porterweed, maybe the latin means they are native to Jamaica, I don’t know. These flowers are well behaved in my garden and flower nearly year-round. Orange and red daisy-like flowers are Gallardia (Gallardia pulchella) these change with the pollinators and reseed producing different flowers, fun to watch – last year I had some pinks. The pink flowers are Tropical Red Salvia (Salvia coccinea) in a lighter shade; purply pink grasses are Muhly Grass (Muhlebergia capillaris), my favorite Florida grass. Greenish white spikes are from Juba Bush (Iresine diffusa) Ferns are Boston Ferns (Nephrolepis exaltata). The bowl vase is a handmade thrift store find I love.
In my garden, we are hoping for cooler weather and the fruit already out to ripen. Papayas and Passionfruit:
I hope to catch a Passionflower soon! Happy Monday and Happy Gardening. For more vases, follow this link More vases. Cathy hosts the vase extravaganza every Monday.
The Shrub Queen 
Your papayas look great. How do you pick them? Our weather finally broke, so I am finally able to get outside.
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Thanks, right now I can reach the Papayas, if it gets much taller I will have to wait for them to fall off or get a fruit picker device (Like a light bulb changer) There are highs of only 80 predicted over the weekend. Fingers crossed, got lettuce seeds ready!
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Ok, I couldn’t tell by the photo. They looked very high and big. Good luck on the lettuce. I must have planted mine at the right moment, as they started up in less than a week.
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Bought some new potting soil yesterday, lettuce soon!
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The Muhly grass makes that arrangement for me, Amelia. Every year I admire it when I see the plants in bloom along one of my regular routes and remind myself I should plant that grass somewhere – and somehow I always manage to fail to act on that intention. My husband would be gaga (or as close as he gets to that) over the papayas.
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The Muhly is my favorite. Other native Florida grasses just look like weeds to me. And I am too far south for any Miscanthus. I think you should try some Papayas – just clean and let the seeds dry from one and plant them. I grew that one from seed.
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Yes, ‘nearly perfect’ is an apt title for this week’s arrangement. Love it! I think if I lived there I would grow all of those.
The papayas are looking promising. Any key lime trees to go with them? My favorite way to eat fresh papaya, is drizzled with lime. 😉
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I have enjoyed all these reseeding natives. The Muhly is very polite. I have a Rangpur Lime tree (the leaves can be used like Kaffir Lime) it is not quite big enough to bear fruit. We are a bit too far north for Key Limes, they are very cold sensitive.
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We have those blue skies today but not the temperatures! Thanks for warming us up with your hot blooms
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What a gorgeous arrangement and there’s your lovely muhly grass again. The blue flower with the unpronounceable name is new to me, very pretty. I envy you your papaya. I have several passion flower plants grown from seeds from Madeira. I forcefed my husband and friends with different kinds of passion fruit from the market last year so that I would get a range of seeds.
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Thank you, Liz. The P. edulis just pops up in the garden. I have yet to eat one, they fall off when ripe and you have to be quick to get the fruit before the critters do.
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A wondrful arrangement again. Especially love the Muhly grass as a backdrop. 🙂
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Blue porterweed is an odd one. Yours so often have such oddities that I have ever seen before.
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