Catch Up

My calendar tells me it is now the month of May. It's always been reliable before, so I have to believe what it says, but I'm a little alarmed by the fact that the month of April is gone. Here in My Florida Backyard, April was a blur of a month, filled with out-of-town guests, broken air conditioning, hectic times at work, and heavy-hitting cough-filled colds that are still dragging on long after it seems they should be. We've pretty much had to leave the gardens to fend for themselves, and for the most part they seemed to do fine without us.

Fortunately, we've been able to poke our heads out from time to time to see what's been going on, so we caught the first blooming of our new Salvia greggii 'Ultraviolet', which we ordered from Park Seed a few months ago.

The color really seems to live up to what was advertised in the catalog, though I'm not sure it really shows up properly in this picture. It's definitely not like any other salvia we have in the gardens (and we have plenty!). We haven't been giving it a whole lot of supplemental water throughout this dry season, so we look forward to seeing what size it will reach once the rains kick in.

We're hoping that with a return to normal schedules and somewhat normal health, we'll be able to get back out into the gardens again to give them the TLC they need to make it through May, which is a notoriously difficult month in Florida. Hot temps combined with low rainfall can wreak havoc on plants, but most of our natives should be well-equipped to handle whatever May throws their way. We hope we can do the same!