New Soul

We usually focus on what's growing outside in My Florida Backyard, but we've had a recent new addition inside we wanted to share. We've added a new kitten to our family, and he loves watching what's going on in the gardens just as much as our other two cats.

"What's going on out there? I wanna see!" 

"You're an odd-looking fellow. Do you come here often?"

By the way, we're getting ready to do some planting in the gardens this weekend. Check back soon to see what's going on!

Back Porch

Our screened-in back porch is probably our favorite part of the house here in My Florida Backyard. It gives us a place to sit and watch the wildlife world go by without being eaten alive by mosquitoes or drowned in the rain. In turn, the outside of the screen gives wildlife a place to hang out - lizards spend time there warming up in the sun, squirrels race across it on their way from one feeder to another, and insects rest there before heading back out into the world, like this furry brown moth we found the other day:

The world is full of PBMs - "plain brown moths", most of which are extremely difficult to identify, but the fun furry legs on this one led us to try anyway. We started at DiscoverLife.org's Moth ID guide, which allows lets you check boxes and narrow down your options, but we still got too many possibilities. We tried some Google searches for things like "furry brown moth", but again - no luck. In the end, we found it by dumb luck while browsing brown moth images. It's a Florida Fern Moth (Callopistria floridensis), whose caterpillars feed on many kinds of ferns, and its native to Florida and the tropics.

Small discoveries like this aren't exciting to everyone, but they make days in My Florida Backyard a little more fun for us. Time spent on our back porch is never time wasted!

O Tannenbaum

We've had an artificial Christmas tree for a number of years. We lived in a third floor apartment for a long time, and carrying a live tree up the stairs, and then carrying an almost dead tree dripping needles back down the stairs a month later, and then having to go vacuum up all the needles from the stairs so the neighbors didn't complain... well, it all just got to be a bit too much. So, we made the investment in a pre-lit fake tree, and it serves our purposes just fine.

I do miss the smell of a real tree though, and today I gave in and bought a cute little one from Lowe's. It came with its own little temporary tree stand, and smells just like Christmas. I didn't want to spend a whole lot to decorate it, since it's going on the back porch, so I went simple - just lights, bows, and some gold stars. I have to say that I'm extremely pleased with how it turned out.

Rather than a star on top, I used a couple of wooden ornaments from Pier One (also where I got the gold stars) that indicate exactly the emotions the Great Outdoors generally evokes for me. It looks nice at night, but I think I actually like it even better during the day. It's really nice when something you envision turns out exactly like you planned!

How often has the Christmas tree
Afforded me the greatest glee?
O Christmas Tree! O Christmas Tree!
Much pleasure thou can'st give me.

Let's Start at the Very Beginning...

Once upon a time, a man and a woman moved from Ohio to Florida to escape the long dreary winters. Unlike many people who do this, this man and woman were in their late 20's, not their late 60's. After living in an apartment for a few years, they decided to buy a house.

When they began looking for a house, they had one major feature in mind: it had to be situated on a lake or pond. Although they would have loved to live on the beach, that's not practical or wise in hurricane country, so they contented themselves with being a dozen miles inland and living on freshwater. Soon, they found a house that seemed just perfect.

Well, OK, not perfect. It needed a new roof, the bathrooms were sadly outdated, the paint scheme was dreadful, the dishwasher was broken, the windows were missing screens and refused to stay propped open, it was directly in the airport flight path... the list goes on. Yet, for this young couple, the house had a redeeming quality that seemed to overshadow all others - a huge screened-in porch overlooking a lake:



And so they bought the house. And the adventure began...