Tag Archives: summer

In a Vase on Monday – A Plonk & The Photo Shoot

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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.

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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!

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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!

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Staging the cupcakes in the kitchen:

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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.

I will share whatever appears and hopefully love it. Until then, visit Cathy at http://ramblinginthegarden.wordpress.com to see more vases.

In a Vase on Monday – Beauty and Some Beasts

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I was in the mood for a cottagey vase this week and set out to find some less tropically mad flowers. Spell check seems to think cottagey is not a word. While roses are out of the question (I choose not to torment myself) I like cottage garden flowers and always have some zinnias going. The heat dome frying my garden finally dissipated and it actually rained!! Hopes were high for some new flowers. I found some beauties and some beasts.

The beauties in the vase are the Zinnias and Beautyberry. I selected seeds last year hoping to get orange and pink Zinnias and here they are! The Beautyberry (Calliocarpa americana) intrigues me. I had this shrub in my garden 600 miles north of here and it refused to grow in the sun and did not produce berries until November. In Florida, I have berries in August, it thrives in full sun and happily lives in sugar sand. It is a head scratcher. Oh, Copper Fennel is also a beauty. This one lives through July (a major accomplishment) and is flowering in August!

The beasts are the ferns and the daisies. The ferns are the invasive Asian Sword Ferns (Nephrolepis brownii) I’ll admit to liking these, pulling them out by the bag and enjoying a few swords in vases from time to time. They aren’t too beastly in the sugar sand, but I can imagine with unlimited water things could get ugly. The other beast is Bidens alba, ironically a valued native pollinator flower – it produces so many seeds it is difficult to keep in one place. The butterflies do love it.

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The Zinnias with a bit of purple Beautyberry and chartruese Fennel flowers.

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The beastly Asian Sword Ferns and white Bidens alba.

I am dreaming of cooler weather and some more rain.

Visit Cathy at Ramblinginthegarden by following the link where more vases full of weekly garden treasures can be found.

Six on Saturday – Summer Delights

My garden walk-around this morning produced photos of a few garden delights that followed me to the kitchen. I picked the last of the Thai dessert mangoes and am down to eight ripening on the counter. I have also been making desserts, plotting desserts, making salsa and chopping and freezing bags of fruit. The Zin Master Zinnias have been beautiful producing flowers and really attractive plants. I have had a vase of these by the kitchen sink for a couple of weeks. For an international garden walk-around experience visit Jim’s blog, Garden Ruminations and follow the links in the comments section.

This weeks mango dessert. Mango-Blackberry Coffeecake. Nice and not too sweet.

The bitter end of the mango harvest. These are all Thai dessert mangoes, Nam Doc Mai. I think the reason these are not found in grocery stores very often is they go from not ripe to emergency chop and freeze in a matter of hours. The one on top is hitting the emergency point.

We are still in the kitchen. Admiring the Zin Master Zinnias. Thanks to SOS, I now know how long it takes from seed to flower. About two months.

Foliage on Zin Master Zinnias. I have cut all the flowers!

Back to the Bromeliad garden for some July fireworks. These are very reliable July bloomers. Aechmea miniata Bromeliads.

Another hot summer flower, Firebush (Hamelia patens var patens) I have grown to love orange in the garden since moving to Florida.

More fruit, Rangpur limes coming along. These are orange when ripe and the juiciest limes I have ever encountered. There are at least 50 on the tree and these are very perishable, so I could be having another freezer festival late this year.

Happy Summer Gardening!!