Category Archives: Treasure Coast Living

Mom Nature Lights My Fire

This plant appeared in my garden a couple of years ago. I thought it was some sort of Amaranthus blown in from across the Atlantic Ocean and decided to leave it to see what happened. Amaranthus can have some interesting flowers (Love Lies Bleeding, etc.) The foliage started getting red around the edges, confirming my thoughts, then the stems started getting woody. Maybe it wasn’t Amaranthus at all.

Then it flowered.

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Definitely not an Amaranth. Not a clue what it was. So, I took this to the Native Plant Society meeting and they said Firebush. Hamelia patens var patens? I said no, it couldn’t be, this is my Firebush, Hamelia patens. Orange flowers and the leaves are half as big.

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Firebush and Friend

Then it dawned on me, there is a great deal of arguing about the true native Firebush. I  usually ignore this kind of argument being more designer than botanist, but think I am agreeing with the Hamelia patens var patens crowd. The orange flowering one is supposed to be from the Caribbean somewhere instead of Florida. Given the seemingly magical appearance of the patens var patens in my garden, I think that the red one is the native.

Mother Nature really is a good designer, she placed the Native Red Firebush in a bed of red and yellow Heliconias behind some yellow Beach Sunflowers and across from some red Bromeliads. Perfect.

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Now if everything would just grow together. And be happy.

 

In A Vase on Monday – Jungle Gardenias

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As a teenager, I determined I needed a signature fragrance (too many magazines and/or romantic stories once again) I chose Jungle Gardenia as my fragrance. Unfortunately, I soon realized most people did not want to ride in a car with me due to the robustness of the perfume.

Growing up in the Deep South, I associate Gardenias with summer and sleeping by an open window  (far away from the shrub) with breezes drifting in wafts of the fragrance of my mother’s Gardenias. A pleasant thought unless you consider the windows were open due to lack of air conditioning and July is miserably hot. Nevertheless, I have fond memories of the fragrance of Gardenias and was looking forward to the flowers on my tropical Florida Gardenias.

Florida Gardenias are different from Gardenias I grew up with. Botanically they are Tabernaemontana divaricata, native to tropical regions of India and Southeast Asia, these are tropical and frost will kill them. The Gardenias I grew up with are Gardenia jasminoides and they will tolerate some frost. The Florida Gardenia in my garden was unearthed after clearing out the overgrown missteps of a previous owner (polite description) I was surprised to find a 10 foot tall sort of oversized Gardenia growing under all sorts of junk that hadn’t seen fertilizer, water or the light of day in who knows how long. I cut off a few bad pieces and hoped for the best. It has bravely regrouped and is flowering, I hope someday it will be a nice tree form Gardenia, the foliage is lovely and somewhat bigger than G. jasminoides.

Here is a close up of the Gardenias, the Gardenia jasminoides is in the center and the Florida Gardenias are on the sides. Some people call these Pinwheel Gardenias for obvious reasons.

Rounding out the posy in pink, Coral Vine, the foliage is from Culinary Fennel and Boston Fern. The cobalt blue vase was a Christmas gift from my brother and sister in law years ago.

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In A Vase on Monday-Tropical Posy

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I am beginning to think I should call these posts “In a Repurposed Object on Monday”. This particular arrangement evolved as I was meandering in my garden with clippers and scissors. I was hoping for some tropical Gardenias but they are still tormenting me with only buds, no blooms.

I was enduring my usual design lecture from myself, must cut 5 flowers followed by foliages (colored)- 3 each,  with contrasting green elements 1 each (coarse and fine textured) As I gathered my elements I realized it was a tropical posy! Relying on my new posy identification skills, a nosegay was formed that was too small to be considered a bouquet. Delightful. If I ever (unlikely) marry again, I wouldn’t mind carrying this. However, a white dress would be out of the question.

The elements of my repurposed object include, the gold glass vase, which I used for a while to hold olive oil by the stove (it has a cork). I determined it would be just as easy to keep the olive oil in the cabinet in the bottle it came in and not worry about how to clean the gold bottle. Reading too many Home and Garden magazines causes these sorts of dilemmas.

The red flowers are Heliconia psittacorum, a prolific flowering perennial, the two colored foliages, in red spots are Piecrust Croton and Ornamental Pineapple in grey green. The green foliage is a Split Leaf Philodendron and Asparagus Fern. I will admit to buying the Split Leaf Philodendron (Philodendron selloum) but that Asparagus Fern just sort of pops up sometimes and I cut it for arrangements.

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In case you were wondering about the Ornamental Pineapple, here it is. The foliage is red and green striped and the pineapples are tiny and inedible, but very pretty. This one was gifted to me by a new gardening friend. Not a clue about the botanical name.

Happy Earth Day

In honor of Spring and Earth Day, I propose we all shed something unnecessary, like this guy. I think this is a Brown Anole  Lizard and it took about a half hour to shed the skin.

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I am considering shedding my design neurosis. It probably looks just like lizard skin and my sustainability would undoubtedly improve. I would save gas and the environment by not driving around looking for gray foliaged Gazanias and settle for plain green. Nah.

In a Vase on Monday- No Pansies Here

 

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I usually start with one idea and end up with something completely different. After suffering a planting design lecture from myself, I ended up with this. The Orange (called Dwarf Red) Ixoras have started flowering in earnest, so I plucked a few of those and began to make a posy (thank you, Cathy , our meme hostess at ramblinginthegarden) for the new term I love. A posy would be called a bouquet in the US, I can’t speak for anywhere else. My posy just wasn’t working out even though the design principles were solid (more lecturing) fine textured orange contrasting with coarser yellow flowers (Beach Sunflowers) the big coarse purple Solar Sunrise Coleus leaves edged in chartreuse picking up the color of the finer textured Boston Ferns. I give myself a headache thinking about these things sometimes.

After the failure of my posy design to gel, caused primarily by structural issues due to poorly considered stem lengths, I sought a small vase for my finely considered composition. The vase was my mothers favorite pansy jar. A none too fine pressed glass jar from God knows where that was frequently filled with pansies in the winter during my childhood. Perfect for oddly too short stems. My mother, not being much of an arranger, would have loved this one. The below photo is my mother (in 1948) overlooking the pansy jar.

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Pansies in South Florida are an ill considered indulgence. Lasting when temperatures are perfect, maybe two weeks, and requiring more vigilance than I possess I have forsaken them for more tropical flowers. So, no pansies for the pansy jar. But a few new plant friends have been made to grace this heirloom vase.

Gardening in the Rain

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One day this week I was waiting for the rain to start so I could go work in the garden. I stopped to think – this seems really stupid, do other gardeners do this? And then went out into a gentle rain to move some Beach Sunflower around. It has been so dry lately the sandy soil has tightened its grip on roots to the point it is difficult to pry things out of the ground. Soil is an overstatement in my garden – I should face the facts, it is Sugar Sand, white, infertile and oddly capable of growing many things. I pried some intractable Johnsonsgrass out (and threw it away) then went looking for more beautiful things.

Here is what I found:

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This is a Bromeliad, Billbergia pyramidalis, I think, bought as a cutting in February. I was told it would grow up the trunk of a tree. As a planted it, I was scoffing. Well, whoever told me that was absolutely correct – it is growing up the tree and much to my surprise, flowering at the same time.

This made my time in the rain worthwhile and hopefully the skies will open again soon.

 

 

In a Vase on Monday -Natives Tea Party

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The copper tea kettle is one of my favorite things. I bought at a flea market on a weekend trip to the Appalachian Mountains many years ago. I am relatively certain it won’t hold water as it was repaired on the bottom and you can see through the repair. What is lovely about this kettle is the patina of many years of use with dents and hand crafted solder joints adding to its beauty. I can only speculate how many souls have been warmed by the contents of this vessel. The Blue Willow teacups are English and belonged to my grandmother, the saucers are too cracked to use and are kept for their patina as well.

As neither the cups or the kettle can be used for tea, this is a party for the natives. The native flowers in the kettle, of course. The arrangement is primarily native plants of South Florida, the yellow flowers are Beach Sunflower (Helianthus debilis), the orange tubular flowers are Firebush (Hamelia patens), Boston Fern, the purple foliage is Purple Hearts (Setcresea pallida), native to North America says the Florida plant database, and joining the party some Painted Fingernail Bromeliad foliage with the cerise tips, from somewhere south of the border.

As I was arranging the flowers in a pickle jar to place inside the kettle, it occurred to me I should go antiquing to see if I could find some copper friends to join the kettle.

In A Vase on Monday – Spring Renovations

 

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Here is the Spring part. I put this vase together and thought ‘wow, that really looks like a fresh spring arrangement’. The bright pink flowers with baby Boston fern fronds and some bits of cream Begonias and foliage spoke to me of new beginnings in the garden.

The pink flowers are a new beginning. They are from a Coral Vine (Antigon leptopus) on a nearby fence. This vine is native to Mexico and considered invasive in South Florida, the owners of the fence are snowbirds, winter visitors from the frozen north, and come to Florida for the winter. This vine is unapologetically immolated annually and I have never seen another one around. To the owner’s delight, I cut it back for the flowers. It started to flower just about the time the owners went back north, to my delight.

The rest of the arrangement is comprised of – in white and chartreuse, the flowers and seeds of the Sweet Begonia (Begonia odorata ‘Alba’). The foliage is my ever present Boston Fern, the new spring growth, some culinary Fennel and the variegated is from Hawaiian Snow Bush (Breynia nivosa)

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And now the renovations part. Last week I had Orchid Tree branches in this vase and they lasted precisely 50 hours. The flowers wilted despite my best efforts. The buds looked promising so I plucked the offending flowers and left the budded branches to hopefully reflower. After a couple of days I figured out this was not happening. The foliage was in such good shape I cut some Heliconias with long stems and added them to the vase, here is the result.

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I like this arrangement as well, it seems like the tropical version. Below is last week’s arrangement. Hopefully this one lasts longer.

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Springtime in Tropic Florida

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This is a Tabebuia in the parking lot of my grocery store. To me, Tabebuias are the Forsythias of spring in South Florida. Bright, cheerful yellow flowers on a semi gnarly trunked tree with corky bark. This tree will soon be covered in yellow trumpets.

Tropic Florida, to the best of my knowledge is a term coined by Frederic Stresau to describe South Florida, he is a fellow Landscape Architect who wrote the book on Florida. The book is unfortunately titled Florida, My Eden, making it sound more like romance than shrubbery. Mr. Stresau has been gone for many years and I think his book could use a little updating and really a new title.

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Onward, I do like the sound of Tropic Florida vs. South Florida. Whereas it never gets really cold here winter has its cold fronts and they are finally passing into warmer cold fronts. It is late March and here are the actual signs of spring from the garden:

The fruit trees are blooming and the bees are out in full force:

On the left, we have a Rose Apple, Syzgium jambos, a rather weird fruit common in the Caribbean, it has a rose scent with a slightly sweet taste and the texture of a water chestnut. We keep meaning to make a pie from the fruit.

On the right is a Mango in bloom, I think this is a Haden Mango, nice fruit for eating or baking a Mango Rum Cake. I have had fruit from this particular tree and it is highly recommended.

Other harbingers of Spring from Tropic Florida

 

On the left, Shell Ginger, Alpinia zerumbet, a true sign of Spring peeking out from its foliage and to the right flowers from the Hong Kong Orchid tree. I have cut these for flower arrangements these past couple of weeks.

I am trying to get everything in place for the hot summer weather and feel time slipping away for working outside. My tomatoes have set fruit and I think the Armadillos ate it! Tomato season really ends about Memorial Day here, although it can be pushed to July 4th. I have seen people use umbrellas over tomato plants to extend the season.

Time for me to get back to the garden.