It’s Mother’s Day in the US this Sunday. As I collect flowers, my thoughts are always with my mother, the Greatest Generation Southern Belle, Miss Betty, who would have adored In a Vase on Monday. I am certain if she was still with us (she would be 98 years old) I would be printing out blog posts and mailing them to her. Computers were not happening in her world, ever.
My father’s mother, Blanche (yes) was the Blue Willow collector. I suspect there is a gene as I love the pattern and china. The teapot was found on a shopping mission with my mother.
The Sunday Madness? A Food and Travel magazine contacted me a couple of months ago – soon after the historic freeze, and they wanted to photograph food in my garden. I agreed. And am madly putting things right. This week I am baking! I will share more as things progress.
A closer view. The white flowers spilling down the side are Sweet Begonia (Begonia odorata). Orange flowers are Mexican Honeysuckle (Justicia spicigera). Blue flowers are Plumbago (P. auriculata). White spikes are White Flame Salvia. Scent is added by chartreuse culinary dill flowers.
Foliage is ‘Mammey’ Crotons and Asian Sword Ferns.
Please send me positive vibes for the photo shoot. To see more vases, visit Cathy at RamblingintheGarden!!
It’s time for the weekly garden tour hosted by Jim at GardenRuminations Follow the link to see what is going on with gardeners around the world.
In my South Florida garden spring is rapidly shifting into summer. I’m trying to get the garden tucked in for the oncoming blast furnace of heat and humidity. The rainy season officially starts May 15, but the usual May forecast is hot and dry. I’ve decided to try some tropical vegetables. I bought long bean and winged bean seed and have Roselles coming up from seed. I will post pictures when they are coming along. As usual, I have some unusual things going on.
Desert Roses (Adenium obesum) love the heat. These plants fry is a cast iron pot on my driveway and love it. I rarely water and throw a little liquid fertilizer on them in the spring. A gift from African deserts.
The last White Bird of Paradise picture, I promise. These are shattering from the heat.
Some new container plantings and a washed up mermaid were added to my front garden.
I read up on using Purslane as a summer annual as everything I have ever tried has burned up in the full sun. Charco broiled Begonias are not pretty. My Bronze leaf Begonias will grow anywhere theory was quickly roasted in the SoFla summer. This is a named cultivar (name already lost) of a native Purslane. Despite the propaganda stating these plants do not like rich soil or water – you guessed it. The one planted in the container with rich soil and water is twice as happy as the ones in the supposed perfect gravelly soil! Unless the mermaid has magical purslane powers. Hmmm.
Several people have asked me about this plant I use in flower arrangements. It’s the ferny thing – it’s called Asparagus Fern (Asparagus setaceus). It’s not the usual thing, it was once grown around here for use in floral arrangements. Native to Africa, it escaped cultivation (have you heard this before??) and is now invasive along with the other types of Asparagus Ferns that are common houseplants. These appeared from who knows where and grow up the stems of the Lobsterclaw Heliconias. They are thorny and pretty enough to use in floral arrangements, so that is how I control them.
This is a new plant in the garden. I realized when I bought this it was quite possible I had eclipsed horticultural norms by having pineapples and bananas in a foundation planting – is this an American term? Pineapples and now a banana are planted in front of my house. I bought this as a Red Abyssinian Banana. Having never seen one before, it doesn’t look particularly red?? Anyone have thoughts? Thank you! My husband has a near phobia of bananas, so I sought out an ornamental.
Happy Spring Gardening to all. Cheers from South Florida!
It is still officially spring in South Florida…but we already hit 90 F/ 32 C and the humidity is rising. There is always some point when the heat and humidity hit critical mass and I begin pining for fall. We are definitely not there yet, however, the colors in this vase reminded me of my future fall aspirations early.
There are some strange things going on in the garden. The mango trees that were hit by frost in early February have all come back, seemingly from the dead and are producing flowers. This usually happens in early February followed by fruit in June. We have dead foliage, new foliage and flowers on the same tree. I am puzzled, but think I should fertilize them. So weird. Creatures are eating the buds off the zinnias I planted in tall pots for cutting – giraffe rabbits??
The closer view. This is mostly flowers from trees and shrubs. I really enjoy cutting from these plants as they are rarely seen in this venue. The white flowers are White Geiger tree (Cordia boisserie). Yellow flowers are Esperanza tree (Tecoma stans). Orange tubular flowers are from the native Firebush (Hamelia patens var patens) Red fruit with foliage is Brush Cherry (Syzygium paniculatum), a common hedge here. The bronze foliage is an unnamed coleus bought locally.
I’m adding to the weird by buying obscure tropical vegetable seeds to grow over the summer. I planted edible Hibiscus (Roselles) recently (the calyx is the edible part, tastes like cranberries) Yard long and winged bean seeds go into pots soon..more weird to come…
That is all from South Florida. Thank you to Cathy for hosting IAVOM for all these years. Follow the link to her blog RamblingintheGarden to take the garden tour.
It’s time for my weekly garden tour. I noticed a lot of white in my garden and decided to focus on the different types of white flowers. I realized eventually and unintentionally I like to add white to offset all the high colors in my garden. I have a lot of color – reds, oranges and purples mostly and the white adds a cooling touch to all that color.
The White Bird of Paradise (Strelitzia nicolai) is making another appearance as it is adding on layers of color as it continues opening.
The native salvia (Salvia coccinea) is showing off in white.
Another favorite native is Juba Bush (Iresine diffusa). These are lightly scented and make a good cut flower.
Miss Alice Bougainvillea is making a shy return to her former glory. She was knocked back by the cold.
White Geiger (Cordia boisserei) has been flowering for a couple of weeks. This is sometimes called Texas Olive as it is native there and produces odd, olive like fruit. The fruit is edible but oddly gelatinous and best left for wild life. My greyhound will eat it if left to his own devices.
White and pink Shell Ginger (Alpinia zerumbet) are budding and blooming.
That is all from South Florida this week. Gardeners here continue to do rain dances. I read it would take almost 2 feet of rain to break the drought here.
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.
I decided to try some different container plants. Verbena, Callibrachoa and an unknown succulent.
The flower of the unknown succulent. I hope it drops some seed right there!
The Pinot Noir Bromeliad (Aechmea ‘Pinot Noir’) is showing it’s true to its name. This will flower later this summer – I hope.
The miniature pineapples are bearing fruit.
We have been enjoying tomatoes and herbs from the garden.
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.
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!
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.
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
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.
A totally different flight landed in the front garden. This is a Great White Egret easily four feet tall.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
The Shrub Queen 