This has been a glorious summer for zinnias. Heat, humidity and generous downpours have provided a bouquet of pink zinnias weekly. The plants seem to know (the weather doesn’t) this is the last official weekend of summer and the flowers are getting smaller by the day. I am getting a bit tired of pink and just planted some Green ‘Envy’ and ‘Aurora’ zinnia seeds. We shall see what colors fall brings when the plants get going.
One of many bouquets from the garden this summer. The plants are easily four feet tall with 1/2 inch thick stems.
This weeks mix. The yellow leaves and spikey flowers are from ‘Java White’ Copperleaf (Acalphya wilkesiana ‘Java White – a large tropical shrub that has returned with a vengeance from our February freeze. Pink viney flowers are from Coral Vine (Antigonon leptopus) currently growing in the very thorny lime tree, causing a pruning dilemma. Zin Master Zinnias in pink. Coral and white Tropical Red Salvia (Salvia coccinea) and a few invasive ferns for foliage. The container is from an orchid gift from a neighbor. I think I killed the orchid…oops.
Happy Labor Day to those celebrating and a big thank you to Cathy for hosting IAVOM. Follow this link to see more vases http://ramblinginthegarden.wordpress.com
It’s been a while since I have joined IAVOM. I unintentionally took the summer off. While it has been dreadfully hot this summer, the reason I have remained indoors is primarily because I am recovering from brain surgery the first week of July. The grace – I am alive and well and haven’t lost any more marbles! The weather is cooling ever so slightly and I have done a bit of gardening and ordered seeds for fall tomatoes. We had a very rainy summer and plants good and bad went wild, lots to do this fall.
The vase is filled with Parrotflowers (Heliconia psittacorum “Lady Di” in red and “Choconiana” in orange) These produce flowers nearly year round – when it rains. One of my favorite tropical flowers.
The foliage is from Asparagus ferns (Asparagus densiflorus) These are dreadfully invasive in South Florida and very difficult to eradicate. I did not realize the flowers were so attractive and fragrant to boot. The bees were angry when I cut them, but I am hopeful I saved the universe from a few unruly ferns by cutting them for a vase.
That’s all from my garden this week. I look forward to reconnecting with everyone this fall.
For reasons that elude me, the miniature pineapples are having a stellar year. I usually get one fruit once in a while and this year I have three and one has pups (the one on the left). I am not exactly sure what to do with a multi pupped miniature pineapple? I guess I will figure it out, suggestions are encouraged.
A friend gave me this pineapple years ago. I think it’s a “Lava Burst” Miniature Pineapple.
Why unplonked? I dropped one on the trip inside from the garden. The pineapple popped off and was eyed suspiciously by Handsome Rob, the Greyhound, who would eat it in a heartbeat. Consequences of that I do not want to contemplate. The leather gloves came out – the baby pineapples are as sharp as they are cute, and the pineapples were secured into a dog proof arrangement. A fruit loving dog? Weird, but true. This dog eats oranges and adores pineapple. More Greyhound weirdness, but we love him.
Here’s Rob wondering what happened to that delicious pineapple.
What else is in there?
Note the pups on the left. I added some foliage from the “Lava Burst” Pineapple. The big tropical leaf is from Split Leaf Philodendron (Philodendron selloum). Creamy spikes flowers are Juba Bush (Iresine diffusa)
As always, visit Cathy to see more vases. Here’s the link RamblinginthGarden
I’ve been plonking my zinnias into glass jars as they appear and enjoying them by the kitchen sink. I cut the stems at the lowest point on the plant to encourage more flowers. The V shape of the flowers is a happy coincidence of different stem lengths.
I decided to elevate my Plonk by adding Asparagus ferns and Juba Bush flowers.
I like the colors of these Zinnias .. orangey fuchsia red! I think.
Cathy asked me to fill you in on the photo shoot in my garden a couple of weeks ago. It was actually a lot of fun. A lovely young couple appeared at my door. She was the photographer and he was the stylist.
Of course, it was pouring down rain!
It had not rained in weeks, we were 24″ low for rain in a year and the skies opened when the photographer arrived.
The magazine is Homecooked a food and travel magazine. They found me by reading my blog and asked for dessert recipes using fruit from my garden. They wanted to take pictures of the garden and the kitchen and dessert. We started talking about a sour orange pie and ended up with vegan mango filled cupcakes with mango buttercream frosting. I warned the editor I would bake rustic desserts!
Staging the cupcakes in the kitchen:
The rain let up a bit and we went outside and my husband and I were photographed eating cupcakes in the garden. She took a lot of photos of the soggy garden that I will be really interested to see!
The magazine will be out in September. I left some ‘fall’ leaves and rakes around for autumnal ambiance. LOL. In South Florida.
So far, June has been oddly cool. I could cheerfully have tea in the garden. Me being me, I decided to arrange some flowers reflecting the form of the teapot. Design school is a lifelong curse. Where else would these ideas come from?
The teapot is vintage 1950. The year my parents married and one of their wedding gifts. My mother always used it to brew the basis for sweet iced tea, a beverage that is a Southern staple. The tea stained patina on this teapot makes me smile. I remember this teapot as a constant companion to family dinners. I am terrible about not making iced tea, even though I enjoy it.
The closer and more complicated view. While Southern sweet tea is pretty simple water, sugar, tea, and mint and lemon on the side, if you like..there is a lot of stuff in this vase.
The big, pink flower is a ZinMaster zinnia. White flowers are Sweet Begonias (Begonia odorata ‘Alba’). Blue flowers are Plumbago, likely Plumbago auriculata ‘Blue Imperial’, or just darker than usual. Purple flowers are the wonderfully scented Heliotrope. There are a few Mystic Blue Salvia and Juba Bush (Iresine diffusa) above the zinnia and a trimmed palm frond provides a green backdrop. It has a delicious, sweet fragrance from the Heliotrope, Begonias and Juba Bush
Thank you to Cathy at RamblingintheGarden for hosting this weekly meme and bringing gardeners together to see what is blooming where. Follow the link to see more vases.
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’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.
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?
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
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:
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.
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.
The Shrub Queen 