My Saturday morning garden tours always bring a few surprises, happy and sad. I discovered my first Avocado! And I missed some bromeliad flowers. Oops. I found a few other things along the way to share with my fellow SOSers. Follow this link GardenRuminations to visit Jim’s blog for a Saturday morning world garden tour.
TaDa, the avocado. This is a Cuban or Catalina Avocado, a pebble textured, green skinned avocado. It should be the size and shape of a football (the American kind) when ripe towards the end of the year. Fingers crossed I get to eat it.. A friend grew this from seed and bought the seedling to me in 2016 – it takes a while to get fruit. A rare self pollinating, true to seed avocado, these are native to Cuba.
These are summer Florida avocados my neighbor picked at a friend’s house. This type is the result of many crosses between Central American avocados and available in several skin colors. The black ones are especially good. Guacamole is in my future. Food forests do exist!
Fruit on the White Geiger tree, These eventually turn white and are enjoyed by wildlife. Supposedly edible, but not tasty.
Another invasive lizard. The red headed Agama. UGH.
The Bridal Bouquet Plumeria (Plumeria pudica) hedge is flowering.
One of the most reliable summer flowering perennials in my garden. The Firecracker plant (Russelia equisetiformis)
That’s all from South Florida. Rain dances shall begin shortly.
The Shrub Queen 
Avocado! I dream about being lucky enough to pick an avocado or two from my tree. We will see. Lovely Plumeria. I am a big fan of Russelia.
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Thank you. Russelia is a great thing.
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I’m with Tracy in the comment before mine…I would love to grow Avocados. Alas, the pits I’ve tried never do much and I end up tossing them. Could be I live in a four season climate. It’s near lunch. Your photo made me hungry. I buy bags of mini-avocados for a decent price and love to cut them up in cottage cheese. Time to eat!
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I love those mini avocados. I’m hoping the ones on my counter get ripe soon as I have been talking about avocados all day!
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An avocado the size of a football!!??!! That’s a LOT of guacamole! The ones we get in the grocery store are about the size of a baseball – and not even a softball baseball!
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They are impressive. People freeze them in scoops here, but I have not tried it. I’m not sure how well these ship or it may be people just wouldn’t buy them due to the size. They taste like the green Florida avocados. Every creamy fruit.
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Lovely Bridal Bouquet plant. And a lovely tale of Avocados.
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I am also stuck on the football sized avocado. Does it taste the same as small ones? The favorite here seems to be Haas. Firecracker plant (which I call Fountain Plant) does well here and hummer like it. It has been raining all week here and we received around 6 inches. I think it might be more, but that’s the closest official reading. There was about 14 inches for the month. The wet ground sent trees on the power lines causing a big explosion and an outage for 11 hours. Your family south of here probably got more rain.
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These are similar in taste to Florida green skinned avocados. Hass was bred for shippablility if that is a word. There are a lot of the thinner skinned varieties that never make it out of the tropics. Very perishable. Interesting tastes. I can’t believe how much rain you have had, zip here for several days.
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Also, the Haas tend to be ready when black, but the green skinned ones, though tastier, are less desirable for the commercial market. We used to sell Fuertes at the bottom of our hill, 12 for a dollar, back in the 1980s if you can imagine.
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Yum to avocados, nothing like fresh guacamole. 🥑
From your photos, your garden even looks steamy and tropical!
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LOL, it is steamy and tropical!
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Awww, the red headed Agama used to greet me at the Fairchild Botanical Gardens! They’re admired over there. 🥹
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When I was in Miami, I found Russelia rotundifolia (Round-Leaf Red Firecracker) at the Fairchild. Here’s the post: https://tropicalfloweringzone.wordpress.com/2020/07/04/russelia-rotundifolia-round-leaf-red-firecracker/
I lived in Miami for five years before coming back. I miss it but the city is just too urban.
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Miami is too urban for me, too.
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Not so much in my garden. They suck the juices out of limes on trees and eat butterflies.
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I imagine. The pet trade brought them to Florida.
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Gads! Another breed of Godzilla! Most of the best avocado trees that I remember grew from seed. Most kids of my generation and just prior grew them suspended by toothpicks over a Dixie cup of water. We were not concerned if they were true type, or that they needed a few years of vertical growth to bloom and fruit.
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LOL, we’ll see if I get a shot of the Jesus Lizard!
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When I was in high school we had 31 avocado trees (Fuerte). It was bliss! we ate avocados daily in season. It looks like the drought has wiped out the trees. We were all on wells and I guess that the people in the hill could not get adequate water for the trees. It is sad.The entire hill had been an avocado plantation.
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Sad. I have been puzzling over how much water for the avocado tree.
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It’s bad enough that we can’t grow Avocados here without all the discussions about loads of different sorts. I’m a little envious. I’d love to be able to grow Russelia too, we saw lots of it around Brisbane and I much admired it. The lizards you can keep.
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I never realized how many sorts of avocados there are!
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I am also envious of your advocados. While I could grow them I now have no space left in my garden.
Your invasive lizard look cute. Are they a pest in the garden? We have lizards but they are not as handsome.
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Thanks, the lizard is a pest, they eat butterflies and fruit and poop everywhere.
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As Cathy said below … he is huge. Our lizards are tiny by comparison.
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That lizard looks enormous! (Do they bite?) And did you really say those avocados get as big as a football?! Guacamole for a week! Yum! The Plumeria hedge is lovely too. 😃
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What does your planet do with the unwanted lizards Queen?
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My neighbors shoot them. I avoid that and hope the black racers eat them.
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Even though you are a Queen…you are not God.
Good approach to anhilliation. (sp?)
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Maybe 2 n’s?
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