Aches and Pains

I ache from gardening today. I am battling a specific flowering plant propagating via underground suckers AND volunteer seeds. It is called Mexican Petunia, a non-native perennial that was here when we bought the house. Mexican Petunia is choking out my canna lilies! This  formidable enemy will take me a long time to vanquish. I have fought this particular battle many times before with invasive plants. I am not worried. I will prevail. I know what to do. Although it is a frustrating struggle, it has to be done. Can be done. Will be done. I am sore, but that's why God invented ibuprofen, right? 

Time is the forgiving nature of gardening. One does not have to do all the maintenance at once. I take as much time as I need to get the perennial beds ready. I take longer now that I am older than when I was younger. I love getting my hands in the dirt. I love digging things up with large, impressive gardening tools and metal implements. I love cutting plants back with both large and small "cutting tools." Mmmm, "cutting tools!" I am a cold-hearted weeding machine. Bring it on!

Here's to spring, my friends. She is already here in Florida, and soon will arrive for you, too. I promise.

See - my yellow canna is being invaded by the beautiful, but greedy Mexican Petunia!

Bromeliads

Taking a few minute break from angst and activism...  

T and I went to Leu Gardens in Orlando yesterday.  There are so many "early spring" Florida style flowers in bloom right now, including any number of different kinds of bromeliads.  Here are a few for your viewing pleasure:

Bromeliads really are practically insane plants and flowers.  I guess that is why I love them.  I have a couple camellia photos that are pretty nice, too.  Maybe tomorrow. 

Am I Blue?

My grandson turned 6 earlier this month and I had the great privilege of making his birthday cake. He watches a goofy cartoon called Phineas and Ferb. They are two young boys who have a pet platypus named Perry. Perry is also a secret agent, so he has two cartoon personas.  

When Perry is a pet he looks like this:

When he’s a secret agent, he looks like this:

For his birthday, I made a Perry cake that looked like this:

Being able to do these "Grandma things" reminds me of why I moved to Florida from New York State. I made a hard choice that I sometimes bemoan, but never regret. Still, there are things I miss. I think that's fair.

Today I miss iris reticulata, an early spring "bulbous perennial" we grew in NYS. It would not be blooming right now, all things still being covered in heavy snow up there.

Reticulata are a harbingers of spring; a reminder that beauty and love endure through even the coldest, darkest months. 

Our reticulata were blue. Not teal like cartoon Perry, not neon blue like my Perry cake, but the color that passes as blue in the plant world. Aren't they pretty?
 



 

Still hanging on

I will eventually write about Charlottesville.  I will eventually allude to the hatred that is no longer festering in the hearts of so many American citizens, but has burst, sporelike, into the light of day. Hideous, disfiguring hatred is making zombies of the living. Hatred is born of fear and ignorance. And, of course, there is really no way to get around the fact that it is a sin.

Today, however, I am still trying to hang on to the goodness and beauty that is all around me. So I am going to continue with another post about the wildflowers found in the nearby nature preserve. 

Here is an interesting flowering vine. The identifying sign on the walkway referred to it as balsam pear. It is also known as bitter melon.  According to Wikipedia: "When ripe, the fruits burst apart, revealing numerous seeds covered with a brilliant scarlet, extremely sticky coating." It is not a native plant. However, it is still beautiful. Here it is in various states of being, and splitting open to spill its seed:

Back from the abyss

I can't remember the last time I had the flu, it has been that long. Today is the 12th day of sickness for me. Although I have been up and around since day 7, I am still not 100%. Even now, I would rather lie on the couch than sit up at the computer; but that just makes my back hurt. Too much of a good thing...

Liv wrote earlier this year about her own bout with Influenza B. I remember reading her blog post and thinking, "Damn, it just doesn't want to let her go!" Indeed, B is a greedy, gluttonous bitch. She enfolds you with cadaverous arms, sinks her raggedy-ass teeth in you and sucks all your vitality out while you alternate between fever and chills. After that all you want to do is sleep, apparently for weeks.

The good news is that we went to St. Augustine on day 7 of "B", once I had been fever free for 24 hours. We came home yesterday (day 11). Our daughter and her family rented a small house on Crescent Beach and we went to hang out with them. We have gone there many times in the past. It is one of my favorite places. There was no boogie board frolicking in the ocean or baking in the sun for me this time. However, I could gaze hypnotically at the ocean from the front porch, where there was also a cool ocean breeze and shade, glorious shade.

My husband, T, and son-in-law MV, both had bad head colds this week. My sweet little grandson, N, was seized by that withered bitch, Influenza B, on Monday. Our poor little man is spending his vacation on the couch in the cottage. It was the vacation house of sickness, I'm afraid. However, good times were had in spite of all that sick. What better place to be ill than at the beach, breathing the salt air?

The boardwalk from the cottage to the ocean, surrounded on either side by salt marsh plants

The moon rising over the ocean, behind a saw palmetto

A Gopher Tortoise.  There were also snakes and bunnies living in the salt marsh

I was amazed at how many different varieties of plant life could survive in the salty sand.

This sweet little cactus gets a yellow flower on top

Blanket flower (Gaillardia)?   There were also yellow beach flowers up towards the beach. I wish I had gotten a picture of those, they were lovely.

Accepting Reality?

The month of June ushers in the heat, the humidity, the rains, and hurricane season. It has been very dry for a long, long time, so in some ways I welcome the rainy season. I just hope the pool doesn't overflow...

Last year we lost quite a few new plantings to the summer rains. This spring we took care to plant hardy native plants in the wet areas of the lawn. By the end of the summer we shall see what survives the deluge and what doesn't. I am trying to make peace with Florida, which (when you get away from the housing developments) is a big, beautiful, wild, and altogether primordial place. I am also trying not to become too attached to plants and flowers, knowing that they may not be here for the long term.

As I get older I find myself fine-tuning my attachments to people, too. I dunno, they don't seem to last either.

An old fashioned yellow iris from my gardens up north

The things I saw

Here are some of the old friends I DID manage to see in Upstate New York a few weeks ago.

A proudly magnificent Solomon's Seal

Trillium, with some kind of little bug crawling around the center

Virginia Bluebells, pretty far from Virginia

Lilies of the Valley, you know the Valley I'm talkin' about, the one where you have to walk it by yourself?

Skunk Cabbage (top) and Marsh Marigold (bottom) in the swamp lands

Wild Geraniums, one of my favorite wild flowers

The amazing wild, red Columbine

A debonair Jack in the Pulpit

The Mighty May Apple, as Mother Earth News has referred to her

A pale yellow Primrose, not really all that prim

Peony shoots coming up, always a reassuring sight

The mysterious Hellebore

Freaking Fern Fronds, for cryin' out loud!

And last, but not least, the always hilarious Toad Shade (a variety of Trillium)

At last!

I did some serious gardening this morning.  Now my lower back is killing me.  I need to bounce back fairly quick, as there is still a lot of digging and planting I need to do.

Last August I wrote, rather pathetically, about the Louisiana irises I planted in a wet area. I have been desperate for color in our small back yard for almost two years. I know most Central Florida people plant hibiscus and crepe myrtle to satisfy their color needs. We have both, but apparently I am a bit of a glutton because they are not enough. I want flowers, dammit! 

The rainy season (aka summer) is really hard on flowers down here, so I have been trying to plant things in the wet areas of our small yard that will survive both the mercilessly hot summer deluge and the drought that torments all growing things for the remaining 8 or 9 months of the year. I am happy to report that the first of the irises started blooming this week. They are fabulous! I will try to name them for those of you who lust after flowers like I do.  I believe this one is called Spicy Cajun Louisiana Iris:

I have also inexplicably fallen in love with canna lilies. There were some red ones in front of the house when we moved in and I just didn't like them. I'm no spring chicken and moving to such a drastically different climate was hard for me.  And when I say hard, I mean mentally hard. I was a huge sulking brat about the whole gardening thing. I thought I needed something familiar. Now I realize I just need something colorful, some flowers for crying out loud. Is that too much to ask? 

I missed the many varieties of flowers that can only be grown up north and resented the cannas for not being day lilies. Does that make me a bad person? Probably not.

Well, all I needed was more time to adjust and a few victories, because now I am in love with these crazy cannas.  I planted a few varieties last summer and they are starting to take off and bloom this year. They are slightly deranged flowers, always a bit out of control. I have discovered that is part of their charm. Each variety seems to have a slightly different personality, yet they are all stark raving mad. In a good way.

The next two are Cleopatra dwarf canna lilies in various stages of bloom.  They are not really all that dwarf: 

 













 

The next one is my favorite.  It is a Louise Cotton dwarf canna, and the color just knocks me out.

And here is a repost of that red canna out front that I didn't used to like.  I don't know what kind it is.  Now I love it.  What a difference a year can make.

And here is a precious flower from the past, Etta James singing "At Last."

  

Another one bites the dust

The other day our once beautiful gardenia succumbed to disease. We have such a hard time growing things in Central Florida. It is kind of weird. Some things we planted last spring are growing in leaps and bounds. But many other plants have died for one reason or another.

Most of our new plants were lost in the moist heat of the summer; during the 3 summer months it rains nearly every afternoon. I blame the rainy season for many of our plant deaths, but wet soil is not what killed the gardenia. It was fine during the rainy season. 

One thing I am learning is you cannot "baby" plants down here. It is standing-water-wet and steaming hot in the summer, dry as a bone the rest of the year, and can generate the occasional frost overnight in the winter. Plants must be a certain kind of hardy to live in this climate and survive the extremes in moisture. I am on board with that concept in theory, I have always been a survival of the fittest kind of gardener.  I have lost plenty of plants to cold winters up north.  But in practice it is always hard when they die.

I loved the idea of having a gardenia. That is my problem, really - liking the "idea" of a plant rather than settling for a plant that will actually grow in our back yard. Still, I thought the gardenia was going to make it. There are lots of them thriving in Leu Gardens about 25 minutes from us in Orlando.

When it was still healthy our gardenia grew steadily, bloomed at the appropriate time, and was both beautiful and fragrant. Then it was attacked by scales and developed sooty mold.  It seems both are common pests with gardenias, camellias, and azaleas.  Had we noticed the scales earlier we probably could have caught it.  By the time we noticed, it was seriously infested.  We had been treating the gardenia for weeks but it did not get better, it got worse.  The scales spread to the Desert Rose Plant.  We started worrying about our camellia and azaleas.  T chopped it into pieces on Halloween and stuffed it into a garbage bag.  Big gardening sigh.

Florida can be so harsh and cruel! 

Is Central Florida someplace I would have chosen to move given free will and full choice?  Absolutely not.  I only moved here to be near my grandkids and help our daughter and son-in-law out with the occasional babysitting gig.

On the other hand, yesterday (November 3rd) we took a dip in the pool. We are having a hot spell that is prolonging the pool season this year, much to our delight.  The water was 81 degrees (cold by our standards), but the temperature was 89 degrees outside.

Nearly every day throughout the year we are able to ride our bikes and see wildlife and wildflowers, or bike downtown to mail a package or drink a latte. I never have to do any white-knuckle driving on snowy roads.  People are friendly and drivers are courteous.  I see my daughter and her family on a regular basis. The grandkids will know me and have stories to tell of their old grandma. 

I am finding it hard to stay mad at Florida for too long.  

The Rainy Season

It is the rainy season in Central Florida.  That means "summer" in the Land of Mouse.  It is hot, humid, and rains nearly every day, though usually only lasting about a half an hour to an hour in late afternoon.  With all the rain our yard is often waterlogged.  There are large areas with standing water for many hours after a heavy rain, and some days it is impossible to mow the grass because the ground is mushy and wet.  It has not rained for over 24 hours right now and I just walked out back where my heels sunk into the wet ground as I walked.

For most of the last 25 years I felt I was an accomplished perennial gardener.  I thought I knew a thing or two about gardening.  I knew how to work the earth, and I knew how to manage the seasons.  It has been so interesting moving to this strange place and finding much of what I thought I knew about gardening no longer computes.  Some days this depresses me, I am not going to lie.  However, just as often I am energized by the challenge.  I got this!  Eventually I am gonna kick some Central Florida gardening butt.  I am almost sure of it.

Collateral damage?  In the past 3 weeks I have lost my butterfly bush, a shasta daisy, two coneflowers, a shrimp plant, and a variety of annuals, all of which I planted this past spring.  A purple penta plant is pretty pathetic, too.  Why?  I am not sure.  They survived the blistering heat of spring and early summer.  Maybe they cannot survive the deluge?  Perhaps the rainy season killed them dead? I wish I knew the answer.

But that is not all.  I have a plumbago that simply will not grow underneath my screamin' pink Crepe Myrtle in the front of the house.  I have another plumbago I planted at the exact same time under a lavender Crepe Myrtle out back.  That plumbago is absolutely huge and glorious, flowering with wild abandon.  I do not know why the other one refuses to thrive.  I already lost one of my 3 Stella D'Ora daylilies to the heat before the rainy season began.  The other two are about the same size as they were when I put them in the ground last May.  WTF?

I am now in a bit of a quandary.  What the hell can I plant that will survive drought for 9 months of the year and then standing water for the remaining 3 months?  As you can imagine, there are not a lot of choices.  I now understand why I do not see a lot of flower gardens down here in people's yards.  Most flowers cannot take these extremes.   

Interestingly, Shrimp Plant is supposed to be a good choice for a wet area.  I wonder if there is something else that killed mine besides the excessive moisture?  I really liked that Shrimp Plant, the flowers actually are shaped like shrimp.  They are wonderfully crazy shaped with great color.  Maybe it will come back?


               That crazy Shrimp Plant

African, Louisiana, and Blue Flag irises are also on the list for wet areas.  I planted a variety in a wet area last spring and they are growing slowly but surely. I will feel victorious if they spread and flower by next year.  I NEED a victory, too!  Dammit.

The giant red Canna Lilies are doing well, as are their smaller yellow cousins in the back yard.  I like Canna Lilies, but I am ashamed to say I wish I liked them more.  What kind of ingrate does not like a flower that looks like this?

      Some gorgeous cannas, not really caring if I like them or not.

We are growing some beautiful flowers in large planters in the area around the pool.  Bird of Paradise, Desert Rose, Gardenia.  I have high hopes for that Gardenia.  If it lives until next summer I will buy more. 

 



















The spectacular Gardenia

Hey, I successfully underwent an open MRI today.  It was still a little freaky, but the open sides made all the difference.  And (Maria) I took your tip and kept my eyes closed.  It worked.  Next time I do something like that I want to choose my own music, though.  Bad late 1970's pop music.  Ick.  In the late 1970's I was listening to the Clash, Blondie, Richard Hell and the Voidoids and Talking Heads.  They had me listening to simpering wimp music as if I was an old lady or something.  I think being pissed off helped take my mind off what was happening.