Blowin' In The Wind

My Florida Backyard has two palm trees. One is a date palm, and is within our property lines, so we're responsible for the maintenance. The other, a royal palm, is technically on land owned by the HOA, so they take care of trimming it a few times a year.

It's been awhile since the royal palm has been pruned, and the dead fronds have started to accumulate. Dead fronds are a normal part of the growth of a palm tree - as the tree grows taller, the lower fronds die and fall off in their own time. Of course, in hurricane country, it's a good idea to prune these dead fronds yourself, before the wind can do it for you, because the wind is not very particular about where it deposits the trimmings.

Case in point: it's been very windy today, with gusts up to 35 miles an hour. Hurricane Ida is kicking around out in the Gulf of Mexico, and the atmosphere in the region is pretty unstable. So while it was a beautiful sunny afternoon with a high of 86, the winds made everything feel just a little - unsettled. By mid-afternoon, when the wind gusts were particularly strong, the dead palm fronds were falling off at a pretty regular rate. In a short amount of time, we had 5 fronds on the ground and 1 on the roof.

When we first became the proud owners of a palm tree, we were surprised to find just how tough the palm fronds really are. You can't just break or fold them down into smaller pieces - they don't bend very easily. You can see why early settlers used them in building shelters; they're very hardy. In fact, we're quite lucky none of them hit the screens at the wrong angle - they would easily tear large jagged holes given the opportunity.

The lesson here is that if you do own a palm tree, it's best to keep the dead parts pruned pretty regularly. If you're not familiar with palm trees, you may want to pay someone to do the job properly - it's pretty easy to do damage to them. The number one rule: don't trim any fronds that are still green. Living fronds are helping to build up the strong flexible trunk of the tree, and shouldn't be removed until they're ready to come off. Click here for more information on properly pruning your palms.

Overall, though, palms are a pretty low-maintenance tree, and they fit perfectly in My Florida Backyard!

P.S. We're keeping an eye on Hurricane Ida, of course, although we're not terribly worried. She's about to move over the colder water of the Gulf, and will encounter some high wind shear. She'll most likely hit the coast between Mississippi and Pensacola, but could turn back toward us depending on the frontal system she merges with. Late season storms are particularly tricky to predict, so the only safe thing to do is stay alert and be prepared... done and done!

Far Away Places

Each fall, we leave My Florida Backyard to fend for itself for a few days and set out to explore a new part of the state. This year, our travels took us "long ago and far away" to St. Augustine, the oldest city in the nation. Along the way, we stopped at Washington Oaks Gardens State Park, about 20 miles south of the city.

Here, we explored the expansive gardens that were once the Florida Backyard of Louise Powis Clark and her husband, Owen D. Young. Amongst huge old live oaks that have towered over Native American settlements and a Minorcan-owned plantation, Louise established formal gardens.

The grounds include a lovely rose garden, which undoubtedly takes hours of work each week to grow and maintain.

The many ponds throughout the garden are fed by an artesian well, originally bored to aid in irrigation of the citrus plantation that once stood here.
The land is bordered on the west by the Matanzas River, with wonderful views up and down the shoreline.

Nature trails throughout the park lead you among lots of native vegetation of the sort we have in My Florida Backyard, like beautyberry and muhly grass, but the eye is definitely drawn to the unusual, like these powder puff bushes.

The park is bordered by the Atlantic shore on the east, where the beach has an extensive stand of coquina rock. This sedimentary rock was one of the most important building materials in the early days of this part of Florida. Rocky beach is one thing we definitely don't have in My Florida Backyard!

Although the formal and exotic gardens at Washington Oaks are lovely, we must admit to preferring our more natural and native vegetation here at home. After all, the park has a staff to maintain the grounds, but we don't have a single paid gardener to help us out. Also, the plants and animals we have here represent what we love best about Florida. So, trite as it may be, we can honestly say:

"'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble there's no place like home."

Grim Grinning Ghosts

I suppose there are those who would find many of the creatures in My Florida Backyard creepy or spooky. After all, we've created an environment that welcomes spiders, bugs of all kinds, lizards, frogs and toads, and even bats. Throw in a witch and a mummy and My Florida Backyard is ready for Halloween year-round.

We even have ghosts - of a sort. At least, that's what Zebra Longwing butterfly caterpillars remind me of. Their bodies are stark white, cluttered with little black spots and studded with black spikes. They even have delightfully spooky little faces, with eyes and what seems to be a grinning little mouth.


And when they transform into chrysalides - well, then they're just downright freaky looking, even with their beautiful gold accents. I mean, they look like they have ears - how weird is that?


And they move! They're not the only chrysalides that move, but no one seems to get quite as feisty in sleep mode as these guys do. They flip around like crazy if you disturb them, undoubtedly in an attempt to scare off predators. Truly, they seem to be the superfreaks of the caterpillar world.

Their butterflies are beautiful, but even they have some kind of scary behavior. Males are so eager to mate with females that they won't even wait for them to emerge from the chrysalis. According to Kristen Gilpin, curator of the MOSI BioWorks Butterfly Garden, "Male Zebras will even break into the pupal case to mate with a female... before she even emerges. If you set several zebra longwing chrysalis into the flight cage you can always tell which ones contain females... the males swarm around them pushing each other out of the way. Kinda creepy actually."

We concur, Kristen, but we love our state butterfly anyway. There's room for all sorts of ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night in My Florida Backyard - Halloween or not!

One Piece at a Time

It's been unseasonably warm here in My Florida Backyard, and we haven't been getting as much outside time as we might like. We're getting all the moist heat of the summer with very little of the beneficial afternoon rain. Temps are running 5-7 degrees among normal, with days approaching record highs of near or at 90. Still, it beats snow, sleet, and nasty north winds, so we're trying not to complain - much.

Still, I try to get out each day for at least a little stroll around the yard, to check on everyone and plan maintenance and improvements for when the weather finally cools off. Today, I was pleased to notice that the new Mexican Petunia plants I started a few weeks ago are doing well.

I've written my thoughts about Mexican Petunia before - the only way it belongs in a Florida-Friendly yard is if you use a sterile cultivar. That is, of course, what we have, so the plants don't spread unless we want them to. You might think that means that when I want new plants, I have to buy them, since these plants produce no seeds. Fortunately, Mexican Petunia has to be one of the absolute easiest plants to start from cuttings.

In fact, "start from cuttings" makes the process sound more complicated than it is. All I did to start this new set of plants was to break off a piece of an existing plant at a joint, where it forms a sort of square. Then, I used a stake to make a narrow deep hole and shoved the "cutting" down into the soil. I watered them in well, and watered them once a week or so - when I remembered.

They looked a little wilty for the first day or two, but now they're beginning to establish roots and starting to thrive. By this time next year, my new plants should be reaching the heights of the older ones, creating a nice border between our property and the neighbors - all at no additional cost to me.

Mexican Petunias (Ruellia brittoniana) are both a blessing and a curse to Florida gardeners. They're easy to grow, produce flowers during much of the year, and are readily available at any local nursery - that's good. But the non-sterile cultivars produce seeds and spread at a prodigious rate; they can easily choke out other plantings and become impossible to eradicate - that's bad. So once again, I have to say - if you want them, look for those marked "sterile cultivar". It's the only responsible thing to do.

P.S. There is a similar native plant out there, by the way. Just this weekend, I was able to buy a very healthy looking Wild Petunia (Ruellia caroliniensis) at my favorite native plant nursery. It only grows to about 12 inches, as opposed to the 5-6 foot range of the Mexican Petunia, and the purple flowers are a bit smaller. They are just as attractive to butterflies, if not more so, and serve as a host plant for Buckeye butterfly caterpillars. If you have the chance to buy Wild Petunia instead of Mexican Petunia, you should certainly do so.

Sweet Pea

I recently discovered a patch of Hairy-Pod Cowpea growing near My Florida Backyard. The cowpea is technically just outside our boundary, growing under a stand of pine trees along the lake, but you can certainly see it from My Florida Backyard, so I think it counts.

Anyway, I was pleased to find this native Florida wildflower here for a variety of reasons. First, it has a delightfully descriptive name. The pods are indeed hairy, as you can see below, and the seeds that grow inside the pods are a type of pea. This plant is in fact a member of the pea family, which includes the more familiar soybeans and chickpeas, among many others.

Hairy-Pod Cowpea is a vine, and will climb up trees and other objects in the wild, or be trained over a trellis in cultivation. The yellow flowers are intriguingly lovely, another reason to enjoy this Florida native.
But perhaps the best reason of all, the reason that certainly excited me the most, is that the hairy-pod cowpea serves as a host plant for several species of butterfly, including the Long-Tailed Skipper, a frequent visitor to My Florida Backyard. These caterpillars are leaf-rollers, like the canna skipper, so finding one is a little like opening a very strange birthday gift.
When they're very small, the caterpillars cut portions of the leaves to roll over themselves. As they grow larger, they "stitch" the leaves of the cowpea together to make a shelter big enough to hold them safely. This caterpillar was cozied up inside two cowpea leaves held together with strands of silk.

Because this patch of cowpea is outside the boundaries of My Florida Backyard, in an area technically owned by the HOA, there's always the chance that the maintenance crew could mow or spray the area. Fortunately, our neighborhood is participating in the Hillsborough County Adopt-A-Pond program, so I'm going to post some "Restoration Project: Do Not Mow" signs in the area and hope for the best!

Purple Haze

The last few days have been a case of "Be careful what you wish for..." here in My Florida Backyard. Last week, the temperatures were far above normal, with highs in the 90s every day. This weekend, the first real cold front of the season pushed through - and I mean cold! (Florida cold, anyway.) The stiff north wind made it feel more like January than October, with the high on Sunday reaching only 66 - a new record. The low last night was 48, breaking a record that has been around since 1927.

While we were shivering, we found time to enjoy one of the best displays nature has to offer in October in Florida - the "purpling" of the Muhly Grass.

Muhly Grass is one of our favorite Florida native plants. Similar to more-readily-available fountain grasses, it's an ornamental grass that grows to about 3 feet by 3 feet. Most of the year, the fronds are deep green, but in October the purple plumes rise above the body of the grass. By late in the year, the feathery purple fronds fade to a soft light brown as the seeds ripen and are released. Until then, the bright color is a lovely addition to the gardens.

Perhaps Alice Walker says it best:

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.”

Don't worry, Ms. Walker - we certainly notice it here in My Florida Backyard!

P.S. A cool fact - in areas like Charleston, SC, Muhly Grass is called sweetgrass, and has been used for centuries to weave baskets. When we visited a few years ago, we saw women sitting outside the famous St. Michael's Church selling these baskets to passers-by.

You Gotta Make Your Own Sunshine

It's been a rare gloomy day here in My Florida Backyard. The first strong cold front of the season (which brought our unfortunate northern neighbors their first taste of the "s" word*!) is preparing to push through, and we awoke this morning to heavy showers. Though the rain was spotty, it lingered throughout the day, along with fairly heavy cloud cover. I saw the sun here only once, for a couple of minutes - a rare occurrence indeed in Florida.

Fortunately, the native swamp sunflower was putting on a glorious show, creating sunshine where there otherwise was none.
I bought this plant just for fun at Wilcox Nursery (my favorite place for native plants) last spring. It was about 12 inches tall then, and I planted it just to see what it would do. What it did, of course, was grow like crazy all summer, and then begin to bloom just about the time the calendar said autumn had begun. This is another one of those great native plants that you can basically just stick in the ground and let alone to do its own thing.

Gloomy days are an uncommon happening in Florida, but when they do occur, it's nice to know My Florida Backyard can provide us color and cheer until the sun returns!

*The "S" word is snow, of course - the dirtiest word I know!