Tit for Tat

I couldn't resist!

     I visited a friend's home this morning to feed their critters while they are out of town and saw this ant bait tin.  Some of us resist dousing our homes in pesticides but it is an uneasy balance.  Florida wants in, in all it's creepy, multi-legged forms!

     How fun, though, to visit another very interesting yard in central Florida.  Like myself, they are averse to a traditional lawn and their large yard affords them room to grow wide sweeping plants like this beauty berry.

     They have fabulous pineapples interspersed in a large bromeliad bed.

     These little touch-me-nots are so pretty and even at my age, I enjoy watching the leaves fold shut after brushing them with my fingers.

     I've heard this bromeliad referred to as "burglar bush" which is understandable:  if you plant it around your fence, no one will pass through it.  Tough to get pups, though!

It was hard for me to resist plucking a head of lettuce from the big galvanized tub they use as a planter...

 ...but the real meat and potatoes of my visit was filling cat bowls with food and water and distributing leafy greens and hibiscus blossoms to a variety of tortoises.

     I know this will sound silly, especially to any tortoise owners, but I'm scared of these guys!

   Look at that face!  This tortoise wants lettuce, NOW!

Those dang reward points

     Yes, that might be me, dipping into your recycling bin to retrieve Coke reward points.

     Whether or not I pick up a bottle cap depends on how much embarrassment I am willing to shoulder on any given day.  My stepsons HATE it when they are with me and I pick up a bottle cap.  That just spurs me on because I'm sure it's teaching them some important life lesson; of course I'll be damned if I know what it is.

     One time, when I stopped my bike to retrieve a cap out of someone's recycling bin, an older lady glared at me from her porch and almost before I could ride away, came down and dragged her bin out of reach of the street mongrels.  Had I been tossing cans and bottles over my shoulders in a frantic search through her trash, I might have understood, but I was being very tidy and conscientious; I, too, have had my recycling ransacked for aluminum cans, although the scrappers are usually fairly careful.

     Speaking of aluminum cans, I used to applaud the people who collected them from the bins to turn in for cash, thinking that it helped them earn a little pocket change without hurting anyone, until someone told me that the aluminum cans help pay for the cost of the recycling pick-up and the scrappers are stealing.

     Oh well...you just can't win.  But if anyone wants to hassle with entering reward points into the Coke web site, best keep you lids with you coz once they're on the street, they're fair game!

     

Mental thermals

     I was watching a spiral of birds in the sky yesterday and thought, "I am always trying to catch a mental thermal."  That was on my way back from congested Tampa and I caught my thermal the minute I stepped into my yard.

     The first cassia bloom has popped and by next week the shrub will be cloaked in bright yellow flowers.  Cassia is a leggy, willful plant that I struggle to tame.  When it's not blooming, it needs weekly pruning to keep it in check, and whenever I think I can give it a nice upright shape, its teaches me a lesson by toppling over in the slightest breeze, and just when I'm ready to dig it out of my yard forever...it sets buds.  Not fighting fair!

     I regularly post pics of this same massive angel trumpet but I can't help myself.  It blooms over and over again, scenting the night with perfume, and this time, it's so laden with blossoms that only the dachshunds can walk under it.  A few more days and I'll raise the canopy but for now...ahhhh!

     I cautiously repotted my stanhopea, afraid of damaging an orchid that is a sure thing but this little shoot poking out of the side of the new fiber basket is exactly what I want to see.  Stanhopea is taking over its new home.

     Alas, citrus greening (http://www.crec.ifas.ufl.edu/extension/greening/index.shtml) is claiming my little trees.  I already cut down the sweet orange (no longer sweet) and the underperforming tangelo was next on the list.  I only planted this grapefruit for Mike but I still hate to see it go, but more than anything, I will miss my lemon trees.  A friend suggested this would be a good time to add Mexican avocado to my yard and eventually buy resistant citrus as it becomes more widely available.  Sigh...

     I've never had such a tame group of chickens so I was surprised the first time the babies walked into the house.  The older hens act like this threshold is a force field but not the young'uns.  I always gently shoo them back outside because sweet as they are, they can't be potty trained.

A shift in the pattern

The dog days of summer have ended.

     Overnight we went from monsoons to days without rain and that requires a major shift in my daily pattern.  

     I have to start paying attention to all the orchids and potted plants again.

     Fingers crossed that at least a couple of those papayas I've been babying all summer will ripen.  Note my natural pest control patrol partner prowling the fruit in the above photo.

     It was a big summer for frogs, toads, and lizards in my yard so when I began the big end-of-the-summer cleanup, I couldn't prune anything without disturbing someone's lair.

     This frog had to say goodbye to its plumeria roost because I give up on the plumerias.  They outgrew their patio pots too quickly and when I transplanted them to my yard, they fared poorly without regular watering.  A plant expert friend suggested moving my sun-bleached agapanthus into their spots as they would enjoy a bit of shade.

     I have a big pot on either side of my front door and in the beginning I was diligent about keeping them planted with colorful annuals, anchored by a knockout rose, but a thriving tabebuia tree (free back when my city was on an improvement kick) has thrown one pot into shade and tougher economic times have prevented me from buying more flowers.

Wait a minute!!!

     I have a yard full of possibilities!  

     I cleared the sedum out of the shade pot disturbing this beautiful skink.  Sorry!

     The sedum was happy but always looked weedy.  I replaced it with some of my abundant bromeliads disturbing this unhappy toad in the process...

     Again, sorry everyone!  But now the pots are shaping up.  Bromeliads for the shade pot...

 ...and 2 types of aloe for the sun pot.  They are both strong growers so the pot should fill in shortly.

     And finally, I took the time to wrest the patio back under my control.  I had company on the way and that's always the best excuse to reconstruct my facade of an orderly life.  It looks so nice again and the temp has dipped JUST enough to start a fire in the chiminea.

   And, omg, if I could bottle the patina on these terra cotta rabbits and sell it, well...I'd make a few bucks selling patina.

     A few years ago, some cold winters cleared the vandas out of my tough-love yard but I promised to change my callous ways and bought a new one.  Finally, a bloom; always a harbinger of cooler, dryer weather.

     I'm definitely well-suited for Florida but I'll be enjoying a brief reprieve from the rampant plant growth to catch up with other projects and hobbies.

Cage Corral

  Anyone who's grown tomatoes has probably dealt with a tomato cage.  These flimsy rounds of wire are a gardener's best friend when they're doing their job but in the off season they are the delinquents of the garden shed, defying most storage attempts and finding every possible way to get wound up in the garden tools so that they almost have to be cut out of the shed when it's time to plant again.  Added to these trials is the rampant growth of creeping grasses and vines in Florida that ensnare anything left on the ground within a few days.

(yes, there's a fence under there)

     Completing the shed has enabled me to get all the tools, sporting goods, fishing gear, bicycles, etc. out of my house but I also have several garden panels and tomato cages that needed to be stored away from the grassy clutches of my yard.  I took a second look at my stack of reclaimed 4x4 fenceposts and decided to build a cage corral at the back of the shed, utilizing a rail that Mike started months ago before we changed the eventually location of the shed.

     I puzzled it out in my mind and decided the format pictured above was the easiest and most attractive plan.  The corral is 4' wide so I used the posts I had already cut for sections of my walkways; that's an ongoing project that I will return to some other time.

     

     It only took me a few hours to put it together and it was an enormous help to have all my tools handy in the shed instead of dragging everything out of the house and running back and forth for more screws, etc., as I've always had to do in the past.  

     The above photo is the "magazine shot", like the photos of models who don't seem to have a single dimple of cellulite.

     Here's the truth:

     Yes, it's a bit crooked and it's not quite level, but it's solid and was the last project I needed to complete before turning my sites fully back inside for awhile.  I've got a yearning to switch on the utility light over my work desk and fashion some more fossil jewelry, collages, and wood trinket boxes.

The holidays are coming!