Plants as sculpture

On my walks and drives through the neighborhood, I have been fascinated with a giant palm that stands in the middle of a front yard lawn (left).  With its current size, it looks like a giant sculpture.

The tree is a Bismarck palm, native to Madagascar where it can grow to 70 feet.  In U.S. gardens in the South, it will grow to 40 or 50 feet.  It is nearly insect-proof and disease- proof. 

Another striking plant I admire on my walks is a neighbor's bird of paradise.  The nearly 8-foot tall bush anchors a corner of the house and is striking when morning sun hits it.  I had no luck trying to grow the bird of paradise when we first moved to Florida, so I really admire others' efforts.

I thought I was finished planting for the fall, but my granddaughter has requested we plant some flowers when she comes to stay with us next week.  That will be fun!

Until then.....

The promise of winter color

What wonderful cool weather we are having!  It makes garden work so much nicer.  I spent Saturday morning planting pansies all around the rose garden for additional punches of color during the winter months, a new rose bush on one end of the garden to replace a dead one, and red geraniums to fill the spot where I had to dig out a dead boxwood. 

The rose bush is a Chrysler Imperial (below) -- red roses with a strong, beautiful scent. It is rivaled only by the Mr. Lincoln that anchors the other end of the oval garden.

I'm hoping the rose garden will balance the yard in color as the front island is exploding with red from the ixora and the bougainvilleas, seen below.

 

The final planting for the morning was an arborvitae that I put in the large urn in the SE corner of the garden in the back yard.  It sits behind the magnolia.  I have a few others, on the side and in front of the house.  I love their spreading "arms" that give such distinctive shape to each plant.  I  hope the new one will do as well in the urn.

That's all for this week.  I'll be spending the next 5 days preparing for and enjoying my daughter and grandsons who will be here for 4 days.

Fall blooms in the gardens

With the high temperatures sliding downward, my plants are showing renewed vigor.  The flowering plants, especially, are rejoicing with new blooms.  Here are some of the ones I photographed this morning.

The honeysuckle has joined the clematis with new blooms.


The climbing rose is really showing off!

I couldn't resist this closeup.

And my dwarf powder puffs are appearing again but I'll wait until the bushes are full for another photo.

Enjoy!

Birds of a feather in the gardens

One of the pleasures of living in Florida is the bird watching, which is so different from that in the North.  Not that we don't have our share of blue jays, cardinals and mockingbirds here, but the landscape on any given day is also dotted with ibis, storks, cranes, herons and ospreys. 

When we moved into our house 30 years ago, we were routinely visited by coveys of quail.  Unfortunately, they disappeared with the growth of the community and loss of habitat.  But I still find amazing the flocks like those below (white ibis) that roam the yards in our community.

Once in a while a majestic great blue heron will leave its watery environment and stride through our yard. Recently, a large owl showed up, perched on utility wires near the house.  I wish I'd had my camera for both. 

I've set myself a new gardening task, which is to take over the fertilizing of my shrubs and trees.  Until now I had been using a service, largely because of my previous work schedule.  I think I can do a better job to specialize the fertilizing for the variety of plants that range from tropical to northern.  To help with the task, I am putting together a notebook calendar that borrows from Web sites.  A very helpful site I found is The Garden Calendar based on University of Florida research and expertise.  It gives Florida gardeners a monthly guide for what to plant and do in their gardens based on Florida’s climate zones--North, Central, and South . It also includes links to other useful gardening Web sites.

That's all for today.