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!