The Yuletide season arrives differently here on the Treasure Coast. In my neighborhood Santa arrives for a pre Christmas Eve visit driving a convertible strung with Christmas lights blaring  carols while he passes out candy. If you believe what you are seeing in the front yard light displays on Indian River Drive – The poem ‘Twas the night before Christmas would go more like this: after your stockings are hung by the chimney with care; Santa arrives in a sleigh driven by eight tiny Flamingoes!

I enjoy making things from natural materials for decorations during the holidays. While you can’t make garlands of fir in South Florida, there are many other wonderful materials that grow here and wash up on our shores for use in holiday arrangements and crafts.

As far as decking the hall with boughs of holly I have been using Florida Holly, the fruits of our much maligned invasive Brazilian Pepper. It should be noted that some people are allergic to this plant, it is a relative of Poison Ivy and causes the same rash – Mango trees are in this group of plants as well. So be careful.

The Crystal Bowl above has Sea Grape leaves, Sea Grapes, Brazilian Pepperberries, Bridal Veil Plumeria and some Boston Fern, all from my garden.

The wreath is mostly from my yard (Muscadine vines are overrunning the back of backyard and I repurposed some into a wreath form) The green globes are native Passionfruits (not edible and some refer to them as May Pops), some Brazilian Pepperberries and a few sprigs from our Christmas tree which I am relatively sure hails from the mountains of North Carolina.

A fun project for kids of all ages is to make seashell Christmas ornaments. Simply go to the beach, a fun project in itself, pick up some shells, rinse well with water and let them dry. Then find some glue that sticks everything together and get creative. Here are some of my creations:

Most of all, have fun and Happy Holidays.

Yes, it is actually a bus – it’s not just the crazy American blogger. This is a good sized biscuit tin repurposed as a vase. The tin was a gift to my husband from an English friend, I am not so sure about Scottish Biscuits but I love the container. The arrangement is a bit of a contraption as I wanted to save the tin-I like tins. I cut down four bottled water containers and arranged the flowers in them (inside the tin) Here is another view:

As for the plant material, the burgundy foliage is Copperleaf, Acalypha wilkesiana, the big green foliage with white flowers is Sweet Begonia, Begonia odorata ‘Alba’ ( I can occasionally catch the scent of these, but it is very subtle) the berries are Brazilian Pepper, grey spikes are flowers of the Flapjack Plant, a variety of Kalanchoe, and as always a bit of Boston Fern.

Happy Holidays to all and Thank You to Cathy for hosting.

Here is my front door with a wreath made from materials from my garden and a bit of our Christmas tree. It is composed of grapevine from Muscadines, Brazilian Pepperberries and Maypops (the fruit of the Passionflower – native to most of Eastern American) There are bits of Frazier Fir from our Christmas tree.

I think Santa will be able to find us now.

Merry Christmas from Amy, Alan and Charles the Greyhounds.

Charles

The Monday Vase

This crystal vase was given to me by my late brother many years ago for Christmas. I know he would like it that I am using it for arranging flowers, especially during the holidays.

This is simply an arrangement of Heliconia psitticorum with its foliage and a couple of Boston Fern fronds for texture. Parrot Flowers they are called in many places. They actually do remind me of Parrots, kind of.

I attended design school about thirty years ago, Ouch! And one of my teachers favorite saying was “use the KISS concept”. This did not involve the Rock n Roll band or any crazy makeup.

It was Keep It Simple Stupid. I can relate on some levels but simple has limitations in gardening. Deep thoughts, I need to work on my Christmas tree:

Here is my retired racing Greyhound Alan helping and wishing everyone Happy Holidays!

This vase was inspired by Cathy’s Advent Wreath (from Words and Herbs in Bavaria). I started working on it thinking I could use Podocarpus (Japanese Yew) as a base for a wreath. Unfortunately, most of my Podocarpus was weed whacked. Accidently and by my husband. I decided it would be best for the plant if I left it to grow. Oh, well. Plan B.

I  determined that the wreath wasn’t possible without the Podocarpus and decided to use some other plants in the holiday concept and ended up with this bowl, which looks more Hawaiian than Advent to me. Hence the Mele Kalikimaka – Merry Christmas in Hawaiian and difficult to spell.

The base is Sea Grape leaves (Coccoloba uvaria). The green berries are Sea Grape as well, red berries are, I am afraid, the scourge of South Florida, Brazilian Pepper, and invasive plant that has well, nice berries. People are allergic to these plants, so be careful. The other plants in the composition are White Frangipani (Plumeria) and Boston Fern.

One of the pleasures of gardening in South Florida is the surprises that pop up in your garden. Most of the plants in this arrangement are volunteer plants that I had no hand in selecting.

The vase is an inherited piece of well patinaed silverplate from my mother’s vast collection of ‘junk store finds’. I am not entirely sure this is a vase at all, but today it is!

As far as the assemblage of plants – the white spikes are flowers of the Snake Plant or Mother In Laws tongues (Sansiveria); the burgundy leaves are the only intentionally planted item from my garden and are Aechmea”Burgundy” Bromeliads; Boston Ferns for foliage and Transcandentia zebrina is the purple and silver foliage plant – many  people call this Wandering Jew and it is a popular hanging basket houseplant, it grows here and there in my garden. The ferny green foliage overhanging the edge of the vase is the Common Asparagus Fern, Asparagus setaceus; also a here and there plant in my garden. I am suspicious this came from my neighbor, who likes to use it in arrangements as well.

Good tidings to all and Happy Holidays wishes at the beginning of this festive season. I shall look for some more typical tropical holiday plants to arrange next week.

Container with Hawaiian Snowbush, Atomic Fireball Bromeliads, and Varigated Asiatic Jasmine

Temperatures are moderating on the Treasure Coast so I have put my gardening gloves back on. A container garden enthusiast from the get go, I usually change the plantings in my containers twice a year. In this part of the world, now is the time to plant what would be summer herbs and vegetables in most of the rest of the Northern Hemisphere.

Not being a diligent vegetable gardener, the produce here is so great and inexpensive it is difficult for me to spend time dealing with vegetable gardening.  While there is nothing like the burst of sunshine in your mouth when you bite into a homegrown tomato, picking the massive tomato hornworm off the tomato vines kind of cancels out the tasting experience in my opinion. As a devoted foodie and home cook, I concentrate on growing herbs. I finally found some Bay Leaf plants online and they arrived this week for their debut in my container garden.

Herbs

Rosemary is a favorite of mine, so I have three plants, one creeping variety and two upright types. I think the creeping one has a stronger piney flavor and it lasted through the summer in a partial shade location, which is a good recommendation for a plant to grow in this area. The variety of Thyme I prefer for cooking is Lemon so I have two, I think the German varieties last longer here, but for flavor, I plant Lemon Thyme every winter and do with dried when the weather is too hot. Rounding out the herb container garden is Italian Parsley, Sweet Basil, Fernleaf Dill and Bay Leaf. Parsley and Dill are cool season only and will last until May or so. I consider fresh Sweet Basil a necessity of life and buy a new plant to replace a not so fresh one when needed (two or three times annually) For some reason Bay Leaf plants (sometimes called Sweet Bay Laurel) is difficult to buy around here, I had to resort to mail order to find it. I had a Bay Leaf plant for several years, but the tree surgeon smashed it; hopefully the new ones will last in a container garden.

Bromeliad Bowl

Not all is edible in my container gardens; a little bit of the tropics celebrates our climate – so I use some Bromeliads in my other containers. I enjoy collecting Bromeliads and tend to move them around from the landscape beds to the containers. These are primarily Fireball Neoreglias that I have picked up as cuttings at garage sales – nearly indestructible and they reproduce like mad.

I am just happy to be back in the garden.