Right Where I Belong

Last Tuesday, I teased you with some mystery flowers in my Home Depot shopping cart. I certainly didn't intend for it to take a week for me to get back to you with the answer, but isn't it funny how life just gets away from you? Work, errands, holiday planning, more work... well, anyway, I finally found time to plant my precious flowers and now I proudly present to you my very favorite Florida native wildflower: Tampa Mock Vervain (Glandularia tampensis)!

Not every town has a flower named after it, but Tampa does, and it's a lovely one at that. Endemic to just a handful of counties along the western coast of Florida, Tampa Mock Vervain is endangered mostly due to habitat loss. Fortunately, it's generally available at Bay area Home Depot stores this time of year, as well as at just about any local native plant nursery. It will bloom happily until the hot summer hits around June, so now is the time to plant it. (Learn more about Tampa Mock Vervain in this post from last year.)

It's been extraordinarily dry here for the last six weeks or so, with virtually no rain and none in the forecast either.  Although Tampa Vervain is drought-tolerant, it will flower best with regular water, so I decided to plant mine in containers this year. That way, I have more control over the watering and can effectively use what's left in our rain barrel before resorting to the hose. I found these little rock planters on clearance at the end of the summer and have been looking for a good chance to use them, so this is perfect timing!

So why do I love Tampa Vervain so much? Aside from the glorious purple flower clusters (I can never capture the color just right with my camera) and the fact that planting it helps support an endangered species named for the city where I live? Well, the answer to that is easy...

Butterflies love it! Really, there's no downside to this plant. It deserves a place in every cool-season butterfly garden in Central Florida... and My Florida Backyard is happy to have it once again!

Tuesday Trivia: What's In My Cart?

I took a break from a marathon Christmas shopping trip this afternoon to see what was new at my local Home Depot nursery. I wasn't going to buy anything (I swear!), until I spotted a sea of light purple from afar and went running over to see if it could possibly be what I thought it was. And it was! I quickly loaded the cart:

Know what it is? It's my favorite Florida native wildflower, and this is the time of year when you can find it for sale. If you can't ID it, come back this weekend when I'll be posting about planting it and a few other things! Happy guessing!

Ides of March

The 15th of the month is Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day! If you haven't already seen my post over at BirdsandBlooms.com, here's what's blooming in My Florida Backyard right now. Highlights include our African Iris, snapdragons, and a new red-centered yellow hibiscus we planted last fall. What's in your garden today?

Hometown Pride

This last week was was a great one for Florida gardeners. We had several days of rain, with lots of warm sunshine in between, making it the perfect time for planting new flowers to brighten up the winter landscape. As we scoured nearby nurseries for the best and brightest bargains, we made a wonderful discovery - the Tampa Mock Vervain (Glandularia tampensis) is in at Home Depot!

It’s certainly not every city that can boast a wildflower named for it, but Tampa has one. The Tampa Mock Vervain is an endangered native wildflower, endemic to just a few coastal counties in central Florida. Like so many native species in Florida, Tampa Mock Vervain is threatened by development. It prefers open woodlands near the coast – just like developers do. Once development began to destroy its limited natural habitat, it didn’t have much of a chance, and there are now only 24 known populations in the wild.

Butterfly gardeners treasure Tampa Mock Vervain as a fantastic nectar source. Plant it now to enjoy it throughout winter and spring, but expect it to die back once the harsh heat of summer hits. Some gardeners have luck with this plant re-seeding itself, but we never have. Fortunately for us, Riverview Flower Farm supplies our local Home Depot with this plant each winter, and we stock up when we find them. Many Florida native plant nurseries carry this plant as well, so keep your eyes open. One caveat - don't collect this plant if you happen across it in the wild; that's illegal due to its endangered status.

Florida’s ecosystem has been changed forever by development, but you can restore some of the native health and beauty by taking simple steps. Add Tampa Mock Vervain to your gardens to help bring “Old Florida” back to life - and bring in butterflies by the barrelful!

In the Bleak Midwinter

At 3:30 this afternoon, the high temperature in My Florida Backyard was 36 degrees. Here's documentation from the Weather Channel, corroborated by the thermometer on our back porch.

According to some news reports, there were some scattered snow showers throughout the area early this morning, but we were nestled all snug in our bed and didn't experience that, which is fine with us.

I'm On Fire

Beginning today, I'll be writing a weekly Garden for Florida feature on one of Tampa's most popular blogs, Sticks of Fire. Articles will generally be published on Saturdays, and will cover gardening in Central Florida in a slightly broader manner than I do here on My Florida Backyard, where I focus only on the things I'm able to implement in my tiny suburban lot.

My first article is called Who Needs a Lawn? I've added a section to the left column to provide links to these articles as they're published.

I hope readers of My Florida Backyard will check out Sticks of Fire, and I welcome Sticks of Fire readers to My Florida Backyard!

Whistling in the Dark

In about 15 minutes, Earth Hour 2009 will reach the Bay Area, and we'll be turning out our lights to participate. I doubt many others in the neighborhood will participate - the word about this event in Tampa has been pretty minimal. Still, we'll be joining in, just to make a statement.

I've read a lot of skepticism on the web about Earth Hour. Most people don't see how it can make any real difference (and some deny the human effects on global warming altogether). And while it's true that turning out our lights (mostly CFLs in our house anyway) for one hour won't really effect our electric bill, I think a lot of people are missing the point.

We all use lights everyday that we don't really need, along with a lot of other electronics. A neighbor across the lake has a "security" motion-activated light that seems to illuminate nothing in particular, and constantly goes on and off all night long as neighborhood cats and ducks prowl their backyard. Office buildings are lit up on the outside everywhere, creating interesting city skylines but obliterating the night sky. I myself turn on a light in the bedroom every night when it gets dark, even though we seldom go in there until bedtime.

Whether folks want to believe it or not, using electricity has a big effect on the earth. Most of the power in the US comes from coal plants, and these are unbelievably dirty. Don't believe the hype about clean coal, either (this means you, President Obama!) - it really doesn't exist. Earth Hour is an event designed to help us all think about what we really need from electricity, and what we can make adjustments to do without, or at least use less frequently.

We here in My Florida Backyard will spend our Earth Hour out on the porch, enjoying the evening breeze and talking about possible change we might make in our lifestyle to make the Earth a better place.

So, even though Bay News 9's "non-scientific poll" showed that 63% of those in the Bay Area don't plan to participate in Earth Hour, and the city of Tampa itself is only making the small symbolic gesture of darkening the St. Pete Times Forum, we're going to spend the next hour in the dark, enjoying My Florida Backyard in the dusk with no lights on to distract us.

(I'm sorry, but I have to use this opportunity to tell one of my favorite childhood jokes. "Mother, I'm awfully glad Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb." "Why is that, dear?" "Because, otherwise we'd all be watching TV in the dark!")