I'm Livin' in Shame

So I have to admit something, and it's something that's pretty embarrassing. So embarrassing that it's kept me from writing a new post in well over a month. But I think it's time to get this off my chest, get it out in the open and start figuring out a way to deal with it. So, are you ready? Here it is:

We seem to have lost My Florida Backyard.

Summer invaded, and this year, we let it win. The invaders, led by the Spanish (Needle) have completely taken over, and we just haven't had the energy or enthusiasm to do anything about it.

It started out slowly, but quickly picked up speed once August hit. See, the problem is, I actually work as a gardener. Once you're forced to spend hours a day out in the hot sun pulling weeds for a paycheck, it's suddenly just not as much fun to maintain your own garden, especially during the horrible hot days of a Florida summer.

It makes me incredibly sad, so sad that I have only been in the backyard about three times over the last month. I just can't stand to see it this way, but I can't seem to find the energy to go out and get sweaty and dirty on my precious days off. So, the garden has disappeared into a horrid mess of weeds and overgrowth.

But while we're feeling pretty overwhelmed right now, we haven't given up hope. We definitely plan to rescue My Florida Backyard, just as soon as some pleasant fall days arrive. In a lot of ways, it will be fun. There are certain places where we pretty much have to start from the ground up, and we can choose new plants and create new garden themes and all kinds of fun stuff. We just want to do it when the sun isn't quite so hot, and the humidity isn't quite so high, and the mosquitoes aren't quite so savage. But My Florida Backyard will certainly rise again.

Because the wildlife is still there, and we still love it. So we'll be back in action again when Florida's great fall and winter weather starts to kick in. That's a promise. Until then, you won't hear much from us, most likely. But be sure to hang around and come back once things get going... because someday soon My Florida Backyard will be better than ever!

Contain It

March has come in with absolutely no sign of a lion in My Florida Backyard - the last few weeks have been day after day of sunshine and warm temperatures, and today is no exception. Spring is here in Central Florida, no matter what the calendar says, and the two newly-planted containers flanking our garden bench are bursting with spring colors and blooms.

How amazing is this white and peach trailing verbena? We can't wait for it to grow a bit more and begin spilling over the sides. This kind of verbena is a little hit-or-miss in Florida's hot summer heat, but these pots get morning sun and dappled shade in the afternoon, so maybe we'll be able to keep these around for awhile.

The purple angelonia (Angelonia angustifolia), on the other hand, will do just fine in the summer heat. It should flower all summer long, if we keep the dead stalks cut back to encourage new blooms.

Our backyard bench is the perfect spot for sitting in the afternoon sun and watching ducks on the water or wading birds on the shore, and having a few cheerful blooms on either side makes it an even more pleasant place for welcoming spring to My Florida Backyard.

Thankful Heart

Today, like Ralph Waldo Emerson, we give thanks

For flowers that bloom about our feet;
For tender grass, so fresh, so sweet;
For song of bird, and hum of bee;
For all things fair we hear or see.

Happy Thanksgiving from our backyard to yours!

Right Here, Right Now

The first glorious days of fall have arrived in My Florida Backyard. The morning and evening temperatures have begun dropping into the low 70s and upper 60s, and sitting outside is once again a pleasure. This evening is a delightful one to be spending on the back porch, and we thought we'd try to share a little of it with you.

The picture really doesn't express the peacefulness of the scene, or the amount of nature and wildlife that's present. Every few minutes, a splash on the lake indicates a duck or two coming in for a landing. Two tri-colored herons are fishing along the shore, and occasionally the hoarse cry of one informs the other one that he's getting a little too close for comfort. A mother Muscovy duck herded ten ducklings down the lake a few minutes ago, and overhead a flock of ibis flew south, no doubt headed for their rookery for the night.

The breeze is soft and cool at last, and the air smells fresh. The sky is cloudless, slowly deepening from cream to the color of ashes-of-rose, and the sound of cicadas in the distance has just begun. Moths are beginning to nectar on the white pentas and lantana in the garden, which seem to take on a glow along with the sky. Soon the evening star will appear, and the great blue heron standing still as a statue on the far end of the lake will take to the sky, off to bed along with the sun.

There's nothing particularly exciting, nothing new, nothing unexpected. It's just the peace of one of the first cool evenings after a long hot summer, and the promise of many more evenings like this one to come. Every moment is different, and every moment is the same. Right here, right now, there is no other place we'd rather be than My Florida Backyard.

P.S. The cat agrees.

Don't Fence Me In

My Florida Backyard occasionally experiences pest problems - specifically pests with two legs and no concept of property line boundaries. I'm speaking of course of some of the neighborhood children, who sometimes like to use the gardens in our yard as their own personal short cuts. While we're definitely not the old, cranky "keep off my lawn" kind of people (we really don't care if kids run on the little bit of grass left in the front yard), we definitely don't like it when careless kids trample our precious plants.

So, we've decided to try a bit of a physical barrier in the part of the yard that receives the most unwelcome traffic. We wanted a fairly low-cost solution, and we didn't want something that would block our own view of the lake, so we went with this resin "snap-together" fencing from Home Depot. It's just  high enough that you can't step over it easily, but unobtrusive enough that we don't notice it much.

It also has the advantage of serving as support for one of our new additions, purchased at the USF Spring Plant Sale this past weekend.

This new resident is a Dutchman's Pipevine, specifically Aristolochia trilobata. We've been wanting some pipevine in My Florida Backyard for quite some time now, as they serve as a host plant for both Pipevine Swallowtails and Polydamas Swallowtails. With any luck, we'll have some caterpillars on this vine this summer.

A. trilobata is a neat vine, with its shiny tri-lobed leaves and crazy interesting flowers (see below) that explain the "pipe" part of the name. It will die back to the ground in a freeze, but recovers well once the weather warms up. We were pleased to find such a healthy, full plant for sale, because it won't take a few caterpillars long to chomp the leaves up pretty well.

We've only had the new fence up a few days, so it's hard to say if this will completely stop the unwanted kid traffic. But if nothing else, it provides a great low trellis for a vine that should add a lot of wildlife value to My Florida Backyard, and that's something we can feel good about.

The Way We Were

I was looking back through some old pictures, and couldn't help missing My Florida Backyard's gardens in their prime. This winter is really dragging on forever, so for now, we just have to enjoy the...

Memories...

Like the corners of my mind.

Misty water-colored memories

 

Of the way we were.

 

Color My World

The last week or so has given us plenty of warm sunshine and soaking rain, and the world around My Florida Backyard is starting to come back to life. The grass is showing a haze of green and wildflowers like Spanish Needle are already back in force. It's inspired us to continue the "rehabilitation" of the yard by planting plenty of colorful nectar plants in the butterfly garden.

First up: some cheerful pink verbena.

I've never seen white lantana before, but I think I like it.

A photo just can't do justice to the delicate purple of this trailing bacopa.The wide variety of petunia colors and patterns never fails to amaze me.

I bought two calibrachoas last week, one in deep purple, the other in this dusky rose:
This yellow viola isn't really a nectar flower, but it seems just like sunshine in flower form,
and I couldn't pass it up.

Added to the yellow snapdragons I planted last week, these plants have perked up My Florida Backyard and our hearts as well. Lady Bird Johnson said, "Where flowers bloom, so does hope." Couldn't have said it better myself.

Brand New Day

With the temperature forecast to reach nearly 70 today, I knew it was time to begin the clean-up and renewal of My Florida Backyard. I decided to focus on the back gardens, since these are the ones we see the most. I had dreaded the job, feeling it would be a lot like going to a funeral - it just seemed like everything was dead.

But, I had some pleasant surprises. As I cleared away dead brush in the butterfly garden, I discovered that nearly every milkweed plant had a stalk or two with new growth on it, growth that had been protected from the cold somehow. And on one particularly lucky plant, I discovered not one but two little Monarch caterpillars!

The purple lantana survived as well, and the blanket flower seedlings made it through just fine. They were scattered pretty haphazardly through the garden, so I transplanted them into a slightly more orderly pattern. Within a few weeks I should have a lot of bright blooms from this wonderfully hardy wildflower.

The true surprise of this whole ordeal has been that the flowers on the south side of the house haven't been affected at all. The pentas and angelonias, both of which would have been wiped out anywhere else, were protected (I assume) by the radiant heat from the side of the house. Looking at that area, you'd never know we just suffered the most severe cold snap the state has seen in 50 years.

Still, there can be no doubt the rest of the garden needs some help. I've never planted many annuals in My Florida Backyard, because native perennials can generally be used to provide year-round blooms. This year, obviously, is the exception, so I headed out yesterday to several nurseries, determined to find something to add a little color back to the gardens. The nurseries, as you might expect, had pretty slim pickings - after all, the cold snap affected them too.

I did manage to find two trays of very healthy and cheerful yellow snapdragons - a great choice because they will tolerate frost, which is still very possible over the next month or two. I also found a Tampa Verbain (a great endangered Florida native that butterflies just love) and a plant I'd never encountered before called Calibrachoa (see below). This South American native is very similar to petunia, with the great advantage of being willing to tolerate light frost. I bought two of these beauties, one in purple and one in dusky pink, and before I even had them in the ground, a bright yellow sulphur butterfly stopped by for some lunch (but left before I could grab the camera).

The newly planted Tampa Verbain was popular too - this Gulf Fritillary barely moved as I planted snapdragons all around it. As butterflies "wake up" after this cold snap, they may have trouble finding food - many of the nectar plants were killed. I'm glad I can provide some for them in My Florida Backyard.

This time of year, the east-facing butterfly garden doesn't get as much sun, so I decided to focus the planting in the sunny south-facing garden nearby. With all the plants fairly close together, I can cover them if another severe cold snap threatens, and for the next few months we should have bright blossoms right where we can enjoy them.

So, the rejuvenation of My Florida Backyard is underway. We hope now for warm sun and gentle rains to continue the work our hands have begun.

Cabin Fever

One of the worst things about this extended cold snap is that I've got a serious case of Cabin Fever setting in. I had planned to spend the first week of the new year cleaning up the gardens and getting ready to plant some winter annuals. Instead, I've spent it huddled around the space heater wrapped in blankets and multiple pairs of socks.

We've had at least one hard freeze in the last week here in My Florida Backyard. Geographically speaking, we're only about 6 miles from the bay, so that helps to keep our nighttime temps up just a little bit. Still, it only takes one night with a record-breaking low of 27 (27!) to do some nasty damage. Most of the grass in the area is now brown, and weeds like Spanish Needle are especially burned. (Gee, what a shame.)

Most of our plants are native and cold-hardy, so the only real damage I've noticed is to the Blue Daze in the front gardens. It was due to be cut back anyway, so there's no real loss there. The hibiscus, which lives on the southwest corner of the house, is showing damage only on the tips of branches, also easily trimmed. Surprisingly, even the pentas and angelonia on the south side of the house have survived without being covered, most likely because they are close to our house and sheltered by the fence of the house next door.

Still, I'm eager to get out and do some work. My winter Indian Blanket Flower seedlings are starting to thrive, and I need to thin them out and transplant them a little more evenly. This native (and Florida State Wildflower) is one of the most economic purchases I've ever made. I started them from a packet of seed that cost about $2, and they flourish each winter in the butterfly garden, adding some much needed color in a difficult time of year. In the late spring, I cut them back, but not before the heads have gone to seed. By early winter, I seem to have twice as many plants as I had the year before, all from one little seed packet.

Anyway, if we can just make it through the weekend ahead, next week promises to get a little warmer each day until we reach our normal 65 - 70 degree highs. Can't come soon enough for us!

P.S. Did you know butterflies shiver to get warm just like we do? Check out this video I shot at the MOSI Bioworks Butterfly Garden this week.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

After a couple of chilly days, today was a glorious sunny one in My Florida Backyard. We spent the last few days more or less lying around in a Thanksgiving food coma, so it was good to get outside, do some yard work, and start rigging up those Christmas lights.

People up north ask if we don't miss the snow around the holidays. The answer is always a resounding "No"! We like hanging Christmas lights while long-tailed skippers and dainty sulphurs visit the plumbago bushes nearby*. We'd much rather sweat than fight frostbite as we figure out where the extension cords need to go. ("Is this how we did it last year?" "How should I know!?") We'll take sunburn over windburn any day - including the holidays.

At any rate, here's a shot of some of today's progress:

We'll post some more once we find the rest of the $@&#% extension cords!

*OK, one of us was hanging lights, while one of us was running around with the camera trying to snap pictures of those butterflies. Needless to say, the one hanging lights was more successful, or there'd be pictures of those butterflies in this post.

Plenty To Be Thankful For

As the country pauses today to count its blessings, we here in My Florida Backyard are doing the same. It's a lovely day, with warm sun and cool breezes, and soon we'll be eating turkey and mashed potatoes out on our back porch - the part of our home we're most thankful for.

While we eat, no doubt birds will wander by, feasting themselves on the bounty of nature that can be found in My Florida Backyard and the areas nearby - something else to be thankful for.

The sun is drying up the last puddles left by the rain of the last few days - and the rain is yet another thing to be thankful for. November is generally the driest month of the year here, but this month we've had several inches of rain. Both the aquifers and our rain barrel are thankful for that!

It's a little breezy for butterflies today, but caterpillars are still feeding on the passionvine and milkweed, and I'm sure they're thankful we've taken the time to provide them yummy pesticide-free meals!

Perhaps what we're most thankful for, though, is that we live in a land of November flowers. In other places, leaves have fallen off the trees and most flowers are brown and frost-bitten. But in My Florida Backyard, flowers bloom like summer is still here, and we definitely give thanks for that!

Happy Thanksgiving!

One Fine Day

I awoke this morning with a feeling of anticipation. The weather forecast had promised that temperatures and humidity would drop overnight, providing us with our first truly pleasant day since early June. Promise kept! When I opened the back door, I was greeted with a cool breeze and soft warmth from the sun.

I'd planned ahead - I set aside the whole day for cleaning up the jungle that my yard had become, and for setting in some new plants to welcome the fall weather. The very air felt energizing, and within a few hours, I had restored the side and back yards to a place worthy of My Florida Backyard.

On the south-facing side of the house, I had some liriope grass that refused to thrive after two full growing seasons. I figured I'd been patient enough, so I pulled it out. I found some end-of-season Angelonia (right) on sale at the nursery, and planted them along with some pink pentas along the side of the house.

Angelonia is a very heat-tolerant plant that is a perennial here in Zone 9. It can take the heat, but should be able to withstand a light frost or two when January's chill drops down from the north. The plants are about 6 inches tall now, and may double in size if they get enough rain this fall.

I also pulled out some overgrown lantana along the front of the house and planted these lovely little dianthus (some people call them "pinks" because of the pattern of the petal edge).
When the work was done, I just sat on the bench in the backyard and enjoyed the sun - and the native swamp sunflower that has finally decided to bloom (left). The butterfly garden had many visitors, including a Zebra Longwing who refused to hold still long enough to have his picture taken. The belted kingfisher has returned to our pond, and I listened to his raucous call and watched his swooping flight.

As afternoon turned to evening, the day became even more pleasant. The sky was shaded with pink and purple, the water birds flew over the lake in flocks headed for their roosts, and finally the moon shone softly in the sky. From start to finish, it was a day to take joy in here in My Florida Backyard - and so I did.

The best way to pay for a lovely
moment is to enjoy it.
- Richard Bach

Twilight Time

I came outside in the twilight a few moments ago to water some newly planted lantana and pull a few weeds. For a few brief moments, there were no sounds save those of the quietly murmuring ducks feeding nearby and the tree frogs and cicadas awakening for the night in the trees. On the soft April breeze, the smell of the blooming Confederate Jasmine wafted by, and I simply stood for a moment to drink in my favorite time of day.

And then some kids whizzed past on a motorbike, a plane flew overhead, the dog next door started yipping and the neighbor kids raised their voices to join in. So much for solitude.

Still, I snapped a few pictures of the Confederate Jasmine blooming on the latticework on the north side of the house, and was reminded of what a great idea it was to install that to give us a bit more privacy when we sit out on the porch. Our neighbors to the south have a fence, but we are literally 10 feet away from the neighbors to the north, with nothing but a thin screen to separate us. And the kids next door, bless their irritating little hearts, are very nosy. They liked to peek into the porch, and announce, "Mommy, these people are eating dinner!" Clearly, we needed to do something, but we didn't want to lose the view or the breezes.


So, we installed dark green latticework and planted Confederate Jasmine. After a year's worth of growth, it has climbed its way to the top, although it's not as thick as I hope it will be some day. And now, in early April, it's in bloom, and the sweet but not overpowering scent adds the perfect cherry on the top of my evening.



And now the purple dusk of twilight time/Steals across the meadows of my heart...* It's nighttime here in My Florida Backyard now. Near silence returns, although a pair of cardinals still chirp in a nearby tree, stopping by our feeder for an evening snack. A curious wood stork lands amongst the ducks, peering into the gloom of the back porch to see the crazy humans who peer back out at him. There are many wonderful times in My Florida Backyard, but I know I'll always love evenings best.

*From Stardust by Hoagy Carmichael

Free Bird

Our backyard is frequented by the ducks of the neighborhood, both mallards and muscovy ducks. There are often as many as six or eight of them sleeping in the shade, picking through the grass for bugs, or waiting eagerly for the cracked corn I throw out once or twice a day.

The pond itself has many avian visitors, especially around the edges where wading birds search through the shallows for food. Some mornings, I have seen as many as 15 great egrets combing the waters at a time, along with several other species of birds.

This afternoon, though, one curious fellow wandered up into My Florida Backyard to see if my butterfly garden could offer him anything interesting. As a matter of a fact, he peered right through the screen into the back porch where I sat, pondering my next blog post.

Clearly, he was volunteering for his close-up. Of course, he didn't really have the patience to wait while I ran for the camera. I managed to snap these pics* before he flew away to continue his exploring across the lake. (Notice that the muscovy ducks really couldn't have been less interested in this visitor!)



*Sorry for the poor picture quality - I took all these pictures through the screen so as not to startle the bird away.

Sunshine on My Shoulders

I sat on the stone bench in the backyard today, enjoying the warm sun, the view, and the backyard visitors.


During the time I sat there, we were visited by wood storks, limpkins, muscovy ducks and mallards, lesser scaups, and a male cardinal, among others. A northern mockingbird was singing his heart out in the tree nearby, a queen butterfly flew overhead, and at one point an osprey scared the heck out of me by diving straight into the lake and retrieving a fish with a splash before flying away with it in his feet.

With the sun warm on my back, I admired the view and reflected that just a year ago, this patch of yard was just dirt and scrubby weeds. So, how did we get from there to here?

Again, here's what we started with:


My plan was to carve out another arc of garden, this one essentially going from the neighbors' fence to the corner of my house. We were about to install the walkway from the front of the house around to the back, which would lead up to the cement pad outside the screen door. This would give me a small garden by the house and a large one from the pathway to the edge of the yard, more or less.

So, we waved our magic wands and presto-chango, it was done!

Yeah, well, so maybe we had to do a little more actual work than that. But more on that another time.

The plants in the backyard have actually worked out pretty well. We have a couple of oleanders, lots of muhly grass, and some blue-eyed grass that still continues to struggle along (see my previous post Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes for more info on these plants). We also have Walter's Viburnum, Simpson Stopper, and Firebush (all Florida natives), a couple of straggly Bougainvillea bushes, and the date palm tree that has been here for many years.

In mid-summer, after seeing the success of it in my butterfly garden, I planted lantana camara and added some stepping stones near the porch. By this time, we had also put in the stone bench and removed a struggling viburnum.


By early fall after the rainy season had passed, nearly everything was thriving and the muhly grass was showing its amazing autumn colors.


We had a lot of successes and only a few failures in our backyard planting. Here's what didn't make it:

• Blueberry Bush (native) - I think just didn't get enough water while it was trying to get established. I'd love to try this again sometime, maybe by planting it during the rainy season so it has a good chance to get started.
• Wild Petunia (native) - Not really sure what happened here; this just didn't thrive. It may not have gotten enough sun in its place behind the bench. At any rate, I was forced to pull it out by the end of the summer. We transplanted the saw palmetto there from the front yard.

As I mentioned previously, we had to replace one of our viburnum bushes, but the new one looks okay. They are both getting some flower buds now as spring approaches, so we'll see what happens.

I can't help but feel pleased with my backyard now. I've created a pleasant garden to sit and watch the visitors to the lake, which are many. Here's the wood stork who came to see me today:



They have awfully ugly heads, don't they? This is a bird that's considered endangered in the U.S., but we see them frequently here in My Florida Backyard. How cool is that?