In the garden

Gardening

Plumeria

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Another one of my favorite flowers (aren’t they all?) is the Plumeria, also know as the Frangipani.  It looks so delicate and lovely.  They are actually easy to grow.  Just cut off a branch of an existing plant and stick it in a pot.  It likes to be fertilized with a color-blooming fertilizer every week plus one dose of Epsom salts in the spring.  Cold sensitive, I put the plants that are in pots into a sheltered area when it gets cold–they don’t even need watered in the winter.

In the garden
This was my first plumeria. A friend gave me a branch when I lived in Texas. It’s so large now I have it planted in the ground.

 

In the garden
This plumeria is another huge one and has been blooming since early May.

 

In the garden
First year for this plant to bloom and it’s a new color for me. My Homosassa neighbors gave me this plant a few years ago. They grew it from a seed that they ordered from Hawaii.

If anyone local would like to try growing a plumeria from seed, I have some that I harvested from one of the large plumerias. I’d be happy to give you a few seeds so you can grow your own plumeria orchard!

 

 

Butterfly Garden

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Butterfly Garden
Purple Coneflower. I’ve tried to grow coneflowers in other colors but they only last for the one season and don’t reseed. The purple coneflowers come back every year and spread.
In the garden
Black Eyed Susan. This is another flower that reseeds itself and returns year after year.
In the garden
Palamedes Swallowtail
In the garden
Purple Coneflowers and Black Eyed Susan
Butterfly Garden
Gult Fritillary on a Blue Indigo Spire. This is a salvia and another very hardy butterfly attractor. I accidentally broke a stem off of another spire so stuck it in the ground and here it is!
Butterfly Garden
Cosmos. The orange and yellow varieties reseed and take over. I’ve tried other colors with no success.
Butterfly Garden
Hamelia Patens or Firebush. Both hummingbirds and butterflies love this plant. It is not very cold hardy. I planted this one last spring and we had a mild winter so it did come back. I usually treat them as annuals.
Butterfly Garden
Chinese Pagoda Plant. Vera gave me this about 3 years ago and it finally bloomed this year.

Adventures with Michelle in the Garden

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It’s Wednesday and Michelle is posting about an experience in the garden this week…

A Rose Bush with a Past

In the garden

Some years ago we lived in Brooksville and we had a lovely garden. I say ‘had’ because it’s just not the same since we moved.

But I digress, many years ago we had a neighbor whom we dubbed The English Redneck. Even though his wife was from New Jersey, and he was an ex-telecom guy, Mr. Foster was from Cornwall and was in love with the American ‘country’ style. We knew he was leaving by the sound of the rumbling tail pipes on his mudder tire clad Ford. He’d taken a job as a land clearer and one day he came home and stopped by our house with a huge stump in a bucket. In his best BBC accent stated, “I just couldn’t kill it,…can you save it?” Apparently, he’d been hired to demolish an old house on the edge of Brooksville – when we say old, we mean like 100 years +. Growing up the side was this enormous rose bush. He took a chainsaw to it and used the Bobcat to pull out the stump. Yes, the stump that was now at my door. I thanked him for it and knew we’d be in for a huge hole digging dilemma, because digging in my yard was an epic adventure in new and innovative ways to ruin even the best yard tools and your back warring with the Live Oak roots! I didn’t care – I have to plant it. I found a somewhat sunny spot and we dug. It was barely adequate, and the plant struggled for years. Long and gangly with sparse tiny flowers. Jon was always “Get rid of that thing”. Then we moved and it nearly died…I think it missed us. When finances drove me to the point of tears and decided to really empty the unsellable home, I went around and dug up anything and everything I liked. Secretly, I hoped one of the bankers would show up and trip in a hole….

At our new home, I’d wanted to remove some formosa azaleas the previous owners planted in the blazing sun. They’d be pretty for a week or two in Feb. then a hedging nightmare the rest of the year, as they were shaped into big green balls (I really don’t like hedges). At the time they didn’t look that big, and I had a place to move them to…wow, I think the neighbors could’ve sold tickets to that circus! We dug and heaved, until our only tool left to use was the truck. Yup, we took those seatbelt material straps and bound them like a straightjacket – hooked them to the Sequioia’s hitch and out they came. At least the digging was easy for The Stump. But those azaleas were pissed at me and dropped dead, even with the better placement under the live oaks and lots of attention.

In the garden

Fast forward, today I was dead-heading the blossoms and noticed just how big this thing has become! It’s taller than I am, and consumes the flower bed. You can smell the sweet blooms from the driveway and have to argue with the bees that don’t understand what you’re up to with those scissors. This is a rose with no season, I trim it, it takes a break and blooms again – all year.

In the garden

Yes, Jeremy was right, he told me that “If you cut it, it’ll just get bigger!” It isn’t a Knock-Out Rose, it’s too old for that. I call it my Cemetery Rose. An old friend once told me about people planting roses at graves so their loved ones would have fresh flowers, a lovely thought. Those are old roses. I think that this plant has a will of its own. Even though its house and owners have moved on, it’s found a place in the sun to keep smiling. And it makes me smile too.

In the garden