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.

Jack O Lantern

Here is my Jack O Lantern. I carve one every Halloween in honor of my father, a devoted pumpkin artist, who has been gone for thirteen years.

One of my favorite childhood memories is going with my father to pick the Halloween Pumpkin . I would rush home after school and wait for him to get home from work, then we would go to Matthews Market and pick the biggest one we could find. One year our pumpkin weighed 40 pounds. We would scoop out the insides, my mother would roast the seeds in butter and salt and he would carve the face on the Jack O Lantern with my input. My father had a bit of a peculiar sense of humor and always insisted on frowning pumpkins with ears that stuck out. He continued to carve pumpkins every Halloween until I was past forty years old.

I have kept up the tradition, but my pumpkins usually turn out looking sort like a demented Polynesian version The one this year is happy because he is in Florida for the winter – but he still has some ears that stick out.

Demented Polynesian Pumpkin