FaithieP

The Rainbarreling!

2011-07-17T15:14:00.004-04:00

So you already know I am kind of a moron when doing handy-man type stuff. But that doesn't stop me. Today I strode confidently across the lawn again, in that way that makes my husband stop and take notice. Because that is exactly the stride I hit when I am about to poke my eye out with a power tool.

The stride was followed up by my brandishing a hacksaw with a brand new blade for this occasion. This occasion being, the rainbarreling!

Pinellas County extension sold me the rain barrel yesterday along with a class. These are big blue industrial-type barrels that used to hold foodstuffs, usually fruit juices. Mine smells like fruit punch. And now the car, my clothes and my hair all smell like juicyfruit gum. Here I thought hippies usually smell like patchouli.

I already have 3 barrels out back and I've seen the class before, but I wanted pointers. Because this rain barreling was going to be different. Challenging! It was going to involve cutting the downspout.

This is something I've managed to avoid so far. When we moved in, most of our downspouts were already in pieces held together with spit and rubber bands. I'm not sure why all those downspouts were mangled by the previous owners, but it makes me aware that I'm not the first handyman-impaired person to take up residence in this home.

So anyway, here I go, hacksaw in hand, striding gamely toward my next emergency room visit. Andy jogs after me, asking what's up and convincingly acting like he is interested in rain barrels and not just trying to save the ER co-pay. I beat him to the downspout, jump into the thick hibiscus and porter's weed and start lining up the saw.

"Have you taken measurements or anything?" he asks. I laugh at the thought and take a swipe with the saw. Paint flutters off the metal spout.

I was settled in, sizing up my saw angle when I hear it.

"Hold on" was all he had to say. Immediately I jumped out of the bushes. He pointed to something under the downspout, then knocked on the tin. Out jumps a Wolf spider the size of my fist. Big knobby knees, gray fur on a brown body, holy crap!

It's Nature Boy's job to scare the spider away. While he shoos it through the brush, I wonder at the moment. His words weren't loud, but they possessed a tone that made me jump out of the way. It was my first (only) act of self preservation today. It lasted two whole seconds.

Together we managed to remove the downspout and set up the rainbarrel without an ER visit, yippee! With any luck all the hibicus blooms will smell like juicyfruit this year!

Trellising III: Revenge of the Poo

2011-07-04T20:05:00.003-04:00

Scroll through the other posts recently and you'll find I am trellising wuss. Long story short, we lost some shade tree coverage that left some stuff with a sunburn, I can't be trusted with a circular saw and I almost lost an eye, blah blah blah.

It will surprise no one that my shade sail / frost cloth / staple-gun-adventure fell down almost immediately in our summer rains. After three hasty repairs in the rain, the idea was abandoned and the frost cloth took up it's usual position draped pathetically across the sunburned plants, stuck to their leaves like dejected wet t-shirt contest losers.

I researched, I hunted, I scoured the interwebs for an answer. And in the end, my research paid off:

I found a great price on a compost tea maker, I saw a bunch of LOLcats and I watched too many failblog crotch/skateboard accident videos. Have you ever tried to research anything on the web? There are too many other cool things to look up. Do you know the difference between a crack pipe and meth pipe? Huh? Well now I do. Very helpful when watching COPS.

So this weekend I got sick of looking at my Trellising Fail reminder and just transplanted the damn things. I could see from a mile away that it was a tangled mess of boston fernlettes and Monstera in mud.

What I could not see was the fact that it has been mistaken for a Possum Potty for some time now. Sick possums by the feel of it. Yes, tactile contact was made before visual contact had been established. Now I could have gotten gloves at this point, but why? It was already under my fingernails, what's the freaking point?

As you may have guessed, this is when the transplant turned ugly. I'm not known for being good at transplantation, and a slippery (oh God) hand trowel was not helping my mood. I was ready for this to be over ASAP.

And suddenly I realized that every DIY'er that I had seen do this on TV was full of it. FULL OF IT. Every time it's on TV, it's always some plant in the middle of a field moving to another place in the middle of a field. Never have I seen Paul Freakin' James squatting between a fence and a possum sewage pit in the middle of a sea of flies, mosquitoes and (new!) hornets.

Needless to say, my transplant involved a good deal more yanking and cursing than is usual. The monstera made it, though I ended up removing most of it's two big branches and doing a lot of apologizing. To make up for it, I plopped it in my best worm-y area in the center of some new mushroom compost. I was so tired after all that I didn't even run to the bathroom to cleanse myself of the experience. My husband found me slouched in the backyard, staring at the plant in disbelief. I looked pitiful enough that he bought me my favorite ice cream at the store.

So I guess it wasn't all that bad.

He also mentioned that - while he avoids the room when I watch my gardening shows - he would be more interested if Paul James involved more possum feces in his show. Just a suggestion for the Gardener Guy.

Area Woman Held Hostage by Rowdy Hibiscus

2011-07-02T17:27:00.004-04:00

I love hibiscus. I don't care the variety, colorations, single or double blossoms, I have them all. Why? Simple. They're on my side. But sometimes they turn.

When I started gardening, these were the only plants I could count on to make it through Florida's punishing summer. Sure, they always bit it in the winter, but they came back. Better. Stronger. Faster. The 100 million dollar hibiscus.

In fact, after the first or second season, they begin to get a little rowdy. They crowd others, they block sidewalks, their branches scrape the cars leaving the garage. The situation demands action. A trimming! Hedge clipping! Time to take them on, to do battle, to show them who wears the gardening gloves in this yard!

And that's when I blink.

It's not because I think they'll be damaged if I cut them back. Forever scarred, telling Dr. Phil about my misdeeds on a talk show in 10 years. I know they're tougher than that. I've seen them burned to the ground by frost only to come back, a little trim isn't something they'll get all bent out of shape about.

It's the blooms. The amazing six inch flowers, the colors, the vibrancy that makes them such a fixture in Florida gardens. These flowers only grow off new wood. The same wood I'm thinking of trimming off, thus reducing my flowers. Now you see my conundrum.

I think they know about my conundrum too. Last fall I knew the ones in the back were getting too leggy and needed a trim. BUT, there were these full flower buds at the end of the branches! So I'll trim next weekend. Well, they finally rewarded me with a show a good 2-3 months afterward. December. They know, I'm telling ya.

So I'm seeing Garage Hibiscus peeking around the corner of the house. He knows he is out of bounds. He's an old one, going on seven years, the "presidential" variety. Super tough and resilient with a trunk that's 3+ inches in diameter. He's seen it all. He's not afraid of the hedge trimmers.

Tomorrow, it's on. Yeah, yeah, tomorrow.

Grow, my pretties!

2011-06-30T19:36:00.002-04:00

The rain has me almost giddy. I've been dragging hoses and watering cans for months. My rainbarrels went dry from use. I stopped feeling guilty about leaving the eyesore of two 150 foot hoses in the front yard (draped across the driveway, just like Martha Stewart would do!). I was tired of sweating in my PJ's while tending to my drought after work.

And here we are. Seven days of rain! Not pounding and unending, just light and fortifying. It feeds and encourages my garden jungle like you wouldn't believe. Stuff has grown inches in a week.

It's gotten so that Bobby (see post before this) is actually psyching people up about the coming dry spell. What? Are you a moron? Does Bobby just want it to be different next week - in any given week of the year - just to make sure he's convinced us of his excellent weather skillz?

Shut up Bobby. Because I can still see 20% of my back fence which means the jungle hasn't completely swallowed the house. Just let me pretend it is Oregon for a few more days.

Can 3 days count as rainy season?

2011-06-26T09:23:00.006-04:00

Usually I don't bother watching the weather. What are they going to tell me? "Hot, no rain," has been the mantra for months.

But when May came and went without a drop of rain, I started watching. Hoping that 20% chance would mean a full rainbarrel tomorrow.

First there was the blond young skeleton on that morning show. Ug, too cheerful. Flip channel.

Then the older blond skeleton on the other channel. But she's trying to be young. Ug, too depressing. Flip.

The black sarcastic one is great, but she's only in when someone is sick.

So here I am. Watching Bobby. Hoping he gets sick. He is supposedly a grown man, but they still insist on splashing the name "Bobby" across the bottom of the screen.

Bobby calls this the start of rainy season. He says this with a hopeful glint in his eye. I don't think he's hopeful because he has a garden of Pentas getting dramatic in the 3pm sun. I think he's hopeful because everyone is probably looking at him at 3pm with an annoyed look, asking when the freaking rain is going to start. Like it's his fault. I know because I'm pretty sure I'd do it to him too if I saw him on the street.

So it is with almost giddiness that I announce that it has rained at my house - and more importantly at my garden - for three days in a row. Bobby is ready to call it rainy season. He's tired of all the glares 'round the newsroom, I suppose. I'll take it. Because I'm tired pf getting glares from the Pentas.

The Race is On!

2011-06-18T14:37:00.005-04:00

Every Saturday lately it seems I am racing them. It's difficult. Me and my filthy CRV against a legion of Professional Families.

These are not your average family members, setting up inflatable kiddie pools in the driveway, burning some stuff on a BBQ and calling it a weekend.

Professional Families are the kind that drive Professional Family Vehicles (SUV, probably too large, many ear phone jacks, DVD players and climate zones across the back two rows of seats). They take Saturday very seriously. There is little league to attend, hot dogs to sell at the fundraiser, turkeys to fry at the tailgate.

This is great, these are probably the high achiever kids that will go to Yale or whatever. Great, good for you. Someone has to keep the crappy economy going.

But.

We come into uncomfortable contact at the ball field.

"Why is that girl in her filthy clothes and filthy CRV here? Is she going to get filth on my recently waxed Surburban? Or young Ashton's bleach-clean baseball uniform?"

I'm sure it made sense on paper. They needed a place to put the composted mulch. It's the yard waste mulch that's available for free. While looking for a place to give it out, they saw they had a community ball complex in the middle of suburbia. Why not dump the mulch there? In the ball field's parking lot?

And so we come into uncomfortable contact. Filthy garden girl in her filthy garden clothes who shovels mulch into her CRV (which soon also becomes filthy) invades the tailgaters and coaches and children with iPhones and generally the Republic of Suburban Professional Families.

I try to get there first. If I don't then the sporting event spectators generally wedge their large vehicles all around my free mulch pile, making loading difficult and generating derisive looks over designer sunglasses. I think half of them are unaware of the free mulch program and think I am stealing it.

The park opens it's electronically timed fences at 8am. Right around when the first pitch is scheduled. But if you know nothing of Professional Families, you should know that they are on time. A punctual lot.

So if it's Saturday at 8am, the race is on!

A garden journal note: mulched more of the backyard path. One more load should complete it!

Drought & Mosquitoes? Really?

2011-06-13T19:46:00.004-04:00

"Look at that," I tell her. She stares wordlessly. "It shouldn't be possible. Maybe the Mayans were right, maybe it is endtimes." I continue, ignoring her sniff, her suddenly averted eyes.

Here we are, in what I have decided is a ridiculous drought. I don't watch enough local news to know if it an actual drought. Have you seen the weather reporters lately? They are a weird arrangement of skeletal skinny people who are just too hard to watch. And they are cheerful at 5am. Unforgivable.

But in any case I have announced out loud that we are in a drought. She is unimpressed. A sigh this time. A look around at a bird's call.

It is impossible. Not that it hasn't rained lately, I assume it does this every once in awhile. I have micro irrigation and soaker hoses. I will survive.

The impossible?

We have mosquitoes! How? How has this happened that a dry garden in the middle of two foreclosure properties who haven't seen sprinkler action in months, how am I being bitten by mosquitoes right now? Its not the rainbarrels, there are so many Mosquito Dunks out here I should own stock in the company.

"How?!"

She looks my way impassively. Licks her paw, scratches an ear. She's my neighbor's cat sitting on the fencepost and she seems irritated at me for being a mosquito wuss. "I have fleas bigger than that mosquito, missy," the swish of her tail says. I've been put in my place.

The Trellising!

2011-06-12T15:16:00.006-04:00

Here's the main problem: while I don't know what I am doing 98% of the time, I walk around like I know EXACTLY what I am doing 100% of the time. Even as I am falling over, forgetting something important or going in the wrong direction. And I default to the authoritative tone that sounds like I know what I'm saying, even when I clearly do not.

I don't mean to look like I know what I am doing all the time, I just assume everyone else is also in on the joke and knows I am an idiot. Sadly, they are not always on the same dumb-ass page as I am.

So when I announced loudly that I was going to build a trellis/arbor thing, everyone thought it was mildly interesting and nodded. When I announced my need for a drill and some lumber they all kept nodding. I started to buy into my own hype and kept concocting plans for what became known as "The Trellising!"

I was pretty sure my husband hadn't heard any of the planning, based on his overuse of "uh-huh" and his distinct lack of concern at my cleaning off the circular saw in the garage. But when I need an reality check, I call him. So it was with concern that he was standing with me in the backyard actually facing my plans.

"So the trellis will attach to the fence there, and then what?" he asks cautiously. I launch into plans for posts in the ground, cement holding them up, blah blah blah, whatever else I saw on DIY that morning. "Uh huh." It's not the supportive nod. He's starting to understand I am going to lose an eye or cut a finger off in the act of Trellising.

"Concrete?" The eyebrow is up. He knows he's got me there. I don't like that stuff. Every project using it has gone badly. He also knows I need him to get the bag into the car because it is heavy and I have spaghetti arms. He's going to cling to that.

"What's wrong with what you have there?" He's referring to the frost cover that I have over the delicate plants. It's laying on them like a bedsheet after a bad night's sleep, all twisted and wrinkled.

He starts to lay out a plan, a sane plan with a distinct lack of power tools involved. Cut the frost covering up a bit, hook it up to the fence, to the porch, to the ficus. You'll have a shady spot that will endure as much weather as the stupid trellis ever would have (which is to say, nothing more than a slight breeze).

It took the wind out of my sails, but it was clear and doable. It also meant I had a need to purchase a staple gun, an accessory I had been mulling for awhile after watching too many HGTV shows. He clearly didn't approve of a staple gun in my less than steady hands, but it was better than the circular saw.

(It was nice of him not to mention the time at work last week when I tried to use a regular stapler to open a pistachio nut and ended up stapling my index finger and my thumb together. During a conference call. In the cubefarm, no one can hear you scream.)

So now it's official! I am a trellising wuss who needs to stick to planting things. But also I have a neat little shade sail done on the cheap protecting my monstera and some boston ferns.

But I was at Lowes for the staple gun.
Which meant plants!

Installed an oleander next to the shade sail (but not under). The hope is that I will shape the Oleander into a tree as it gets older, taking care to avoid the toxic/acid sap that everyone whines about.

Another on the other side of the fence for the same purposes. The only reason I am hopeful that this will work is because they are only 3 feet tall right now and Project Oleander will be a long term thing. I can do anything if I have an entire year to take care of!

Filled out the rest of the sideyard bed with a Ruby Red Fringe Flower I found on the half price table and some varigated flax lily. Also added some ornamental peanut to an area that the grass isn't growing on (they were on the half price table too, $1.50!).

I also saw some calla lilies on the sale table, but they like water too much for my yard. I was pretty sure I'd just watch them die for half price, so I skipped.

Still no rain! Radar shows it hitting all around my area, but not actually making it down the street. Sigh.

Trellising, the Next Big Thing

2011-06-04T10:53:00.005-04:00

This weekend I'm taking a by-week in the garden as we're actually expected to have a social life and stuff. Stupid I know, but there it is.

But it means I have more time to plan out my Next Big Garden Project (NBGP). Usually I approach my NBGP's with excitement, but this one has the potential (at least more than others) for me to put out an eye.

Let me set the stage for you. Big frost kills half the 30-year old ficus shade tree in side yard. We trim it back (OK, we pay a guy to trim it back). The very next winter, same thing happens again. We are now the proud owners of a glorified 9 foot stump with little branches/leaves sticking out on the sides. If you listen close, you can hear it yelling "I'm not dead yet!"

In the meantime, all the ferns and monstera who depended on the shade are getting a sunburn. I thought about planting another Oleander, since they grow fast, but I don't think the delicates will make it till then. And given the age of all the plants we're talking about, moving everyone would be such a pain.

So I'm building a trellis/arbor/thing! Forget what you've seen on HGTV when they put one of these suckers up, this is strictly being done on the cheap by a person who, quite frankly, has no idea what she is doing. What could go wrong?! Also, we don't own a drill, so it will all be hammered together, which is not what they do on HGTV. So here we go.

Next weekend is the time. I'll have four pieces of wood, probably 2x4s, and some trellis. Maybe I'll even spring for concrete for footings! but probably not. It will at first be a disaster, then later it will either be a failure or a success. That is how my DIYing goes. Prepare yourselves.

Foreclosure Gardening

2011-05-30T08:49:00.003-04:00

My house is between two foreclosures. They have been in foreclosure forever and will never be sold. I am looking forward to the day, decades from now, that they fall in on themselves and turn to dust. But for now, we're stuck with them.

We aren't the type of neighbors who would just watch as the grass grows 5 feet tall. Cul de sac, remember? Even when people move out, we're still all up in their business.

Someone's been mowing the lawns, which is wonderful. And the one house has nice landscaping bones that are established. It's OK by the date palm that the sprinklers haven't run for awhile.

But house number two is closer to me. They are what I look at from my front window. They had already disassembled their landscaping for some reason when they moved. And now its just a bunch of weeds in the little beds. But the weeds are neat enough, no eyesores here.

The beds are calling to me none the less.

How involved should I get? Am I overreaching? Or am I just paying the yard back for the little purple plants I keep transplanting into my beds? How irritating will it be to the new hypothetical neighbors that the Flower Crazy Chick next door was digging in their garden?

And what if they pull the plants out? Will it make me sad? Will I hold it against them? Will I plant Vinca in the beds in the dead of night just to get them back? (Yes.)

Who am I fooling? I've already been strategizing about what grows best under oaks. It's going to be done. Hope the hypothetical neighbors like Coleus and spider plants.

Why isn't there a show on HGTV or DIY about this? "The Foreclosure Next Door." Guerrilla Gardening at it's finest.

Late breaking news

2011-05-29T21:20:00.003-04:00

I was watering today when I noticed something odd in the bushes. The elephant ear bloom has faded like they do (very subtle flower on a mature plant, nothing to see here, move along). But the little bulb under it had split open.

My God, it's filled with seeds! (que 2001 space odyssey music. Anyone get the reference? OK, never mind, moving on)

So the blooms sometimes become seed pods. I ended up spending the next half hour tucking the largest into different places I thought they might take root.

I am not good at growing stuff from seed, but it was a little "moment" for me. It made me feel what is possible as a gardener - no! - as an Earth Mother caring for the small yet vital (depending on who you are - I'm looking at you, Polychrotidae Anole...aka a lizard...) ecosystem known as FaithieP's garden.

Then I heard my husband belch from the living room (through the fancy doublepane windows) and figured that meant the Simpsons were on and rushed inside so I don't miss the couch scene. Hate to miss the couch scene at the beginning.

My moments can be fleeting at best. Fingers crossed for the seeds tho...

I see you seein' me

2011-05-29T07:07:00.002-04:00

Yeah, its a cul de sac. You would think we'd all be buddies like they are on Curb Appeal. But we're not. If someone were to die in their home, they better have some nosy employers, because we'd only bitch among ourselves about the stink and the overgrown lawn.

But at the same time, I am convinced that we are all in each other's business. We all know about the sex offender (a teacher who slept with a student!). We all know about someone's son being in town taking a vacation with his Dad. We know the one house has the two jack russels and the Very Grumpy Owners who don't do the wave when they drive by. (C'mon, I don't like you either, just wave, it's what separates us from the animals).

I used to put on mascara to just go get the Sunday paper. Now? I am not sure how my gardening fashion has devolved to this point. See yesterday's note about the now legendary rip in my pants. At least on that day I was wearing underwear.

Please note, I was not so embarrassed as to throw them out.

My watering attire is even worse. We don't have sprinklers, just soaker hoses. They're fantastic on water consumption and they aren't subject to our draconian water rules. But you can't make one hose snake around for more than 50 feet or they lose pressure. Which means I currently have 13 hoses in the front yard alone. I use a splitter so I can water 2 at a time. Which means I have to walk around outside and move hoses from one bed to another.

Not a big deal, except most days this is after work. After work, after some dinner, after perhaps a cocktail. I'm in my PJ's. My hair is ponytailed. My bra is off. I am comfy. And I am wearing crocks that are 1-2 sizes too large for me (internet ordering) and clomping around the yard. In the cul de sac.

I had convinced myself that no one noticed, especially as the homes on BOTH sides of me are bank owned and for sale (they'll never sell). But the kid up the street has just gotten to that age when all his friends come around with their BoomBoom cars and shout at each other trying to be rowdy and linger outside because his mom and grandma are inside. And they see me. And they stare openly.

Good to know the moment that you have gone from being the chick they go "wooo!" at from the passing car to being the crank they stare at and hope they don't become in a few decades.

For the record, I didn't know the hole was there.

2011-05-28T16:42:00.008-04:00

The annuals crapped out this week. Oh well. Now I remember why I don't buy annuals. I have too much guilt about having to put them in the composter. Many purple pentas went in the ground today to take the place of the annuals. If they go into the composter, I want it to be my fault. Wait...oh whatever...

And purple bougainvillea, I'm such a sucker. They always die. Or sputter along in a sad way. But there you go, 3 more just outside the window. Laughing at me and giving me the middle petal.

Also added a surinam cherry for Andy. He has fond memories of them growing up. BUT There were some kind of bug babies nesting in it, found them when I got home. Since it was the only surinam I've ever seen at the place, I didn't want to have to return it, which is stupid, but I am sentimental about his memories. And, as we've already learned today, I am a sucker. I doused it with insecticidal soap which killed the uninvited guests, then I sprayed the heck out of it with the hose. A difficult welcome for the cherry.

Oh and I looked like a total freak doing it. I'm in a cul de sac, we're always checking each other out. What do you think I looked like dancing around, spraying a helpless plant over and over, then sticking my nose in it (to examine any damage, look for escapees) for a half hour?

"Oh look, flower girl is freaking out again on the front lawn. At least she's wearing a bra today. Is that a rip in the butt of her jeans?" Yes it is...sorry...hope I haven't damaged your children in some way.

Moving on...

Can you believe Lowes can kill a hibiscus? They tried their best, but I plucked 3 braided trunk hibicus off the 50% off table for $4 each. Looking forward to them looking hoity-toity in my very casual tropical garden.

Crotens in the sideyard to replace the macho fern, which turned out to be not that macho. Macho by the way is doing very well in the new home.

Oleander in the backyard, I'm hoping it grows fast and acts as a block against too bright am sun. That's what they do, right?

Also added a gorgeous yellow and red hibiscus to the back hedge. Lovely presidential variety.

Added a bunch more free mulch to the back.

Garden issue: The ficus has died back again and exposed a hard to move bunch of plants to strong sun. They were holding on but June sun may prove too much. Need to find a better solution than placing an umbrella over them. Which admittedly is kind of cute.

They're sending a butterfly hitman

2011-05-22T08:34:00.002-04:00

So I've been leading the butterflies to my garden for awhile. "Luring them in," I think in retrospect.

Happy to see them fluttering, I decide to find a plant that they can leave their babies with too. Some quick web research leads me to a page on Christmas Senna. "Pretty," I think. And the interesting leaves look just familiar.

In fact, they look just like the leaves on this amazing plant I purchased awhile back, with a tag that said Popcorn Plant. The lady at the register assured me that it would smell just like hot buttered popcorn. Sounded good. Nothing wrong with some buttered popcorn. Except that it never smelled like that. No matter, it was a big box store, what do they know? But the plant attracts caterpillars every year. Who I squish and scold for attacking something as lovely as hot buttered popcorn.

So you can imagine my surprise when I searched google images for Senna and found my popcorn plant. Which isn't a popcorn plant at all. It's a Senna Alata.

In fact, this Senna is remarkable in its ability to attract Cloudless Sulpher butterflies. The exact butterflies I've had dancing in my garden. Also known as Phoebis Sennae, they love to lay eggs on the Senna.

Oh my.

So all this time I've been luring the butterflies to the garden, loading them up with nectar, setting up a kind of singles bar for Cloudless Sulphers, encouraging them to leave their babies with me, allowing them to hatch and grow up a little, then taking great pleasure in squishing their little guts out.

I am pretty sure they are sending butterfly hitmen right now. Maybe they're in league with the assassin bug I saw the other day. Plotting my demise.

I should stop watching the Osama coverage, it's affecting my gardening...

Ah weekend

2011-05-21T18:19:00.005-04:00

Wasn't going to buy anything. Just going to put together some pots for the back to act as an armadillo disuader.

Blew $100 in no time.

All the back plant pots full. Side alley is mostly done up with free mulch.

Moved banana trees out front to see if they'll do better in full sun. Kept one in back yard shade as the control. Getting' scientific on their banana asses.

compost pile is officially a thing of the past with most compost distributed. Of course the compost tumbler is in full operation!

Sprayed for thrips out back with soap. The population looks under control.

Moved macho fern, the wussie.

Saw actual gecko!

Stomped many cockroaches living in compost bin.

Spend whole day outside. gorgeous.

Now, wine.

Rain!

2011-05-15T19:11:00.002-04:00

Rained twice last night, the rainbarrels are full again! Hopefully that will start happening more often now.

Ginger has 2 blossom brackets, interesting seashell shaped flowers.

Forgot to mention last weekend was spent putting in a viburnum hedge in sideyard. Also put in some other plants, one macho fern to fill in the rest. I love how it turned out, but macho gets some intense direct sun for an hour or two each day and looks like he might be getting a sunburn. Will move him to a shadier spot it he doesn't man up.

Filled in the viburnum hedge in island bed with (guess!) a viburnum.

What?

2011-05-06T14:01:00.003-04:00

What could it be? It's falling from the sky?! It IS! IS!

Rain!

Finally, a good soaking. Enjoy it guys, 'cause it isn't happening again for a few weeks.

No rain yet

2011-05-04T06:07:00.003-04:00

This is the very dry time of year, but that doesn't mean I'll stop whining about it. Thank you micro-irrigation.

another weekend!

2011-04-24T12:46:00.005-04:00

Happy Easter!

Apr 24: finished planting purple hedge in island bed. Butterfly visited while everything was still in pots, I think he approves.

Found 3 mystery plants at Lows sale table for $1.79 each. They're in great shape and say perennial. Bought'em. Added to the other side of the island bed.

Found a big plumbago at the sale for $5. Planted in island near the hedge hole.

Compost: 2 bags
No new driplines, the existing work fine.

Tried to fill in the other hedge gap by moving plants from back yard to the front. But those plants in the back are older and looked comfy there, so I skipped it. Another weekend, another trip to lowes.

Stolen neighbor plants are totally happy in new home.

First trip to the free mulch pile in the park. That's all it is too, a pile of free mulch in the parking lot of the baseball field. Shoveled it into the back of the CRV, went to garden center to buy a wheelbarrow. Found a wheelbarrow alternative that is smaller and I like very much. I will miss a real wheelbarrow, but I have no space so this will do.

Mulch went in the back path, looks great. And hardly any glass shards. No really, it doesn't look like store bought stuff, but c'mon, it's free.

Sprayed soap stuff on the backyard. Orchard spiders are out, bleah.

Watered everything new, the heat is making them dramatic.

Bluebirds and mockingbirds fight for the birdbath!! Fun to watch from inside where they cannot peck me.

woohoo!

2011-04-16T15:53:00.004-04:00

It's saturday!!

Andy hates a corner of the yard where sidewalk meets driveway. It is now vanquished.
Cape Honeysuckle
3 confed. jasmine
3 vinca
mushroom compost
25' soaker hose

I was inspired by the skyflower to get more skyflower. Plus the little ones were only $5 at lowes. Like I need a grower to help me get those things bigger. They'll be 5' tall by July.
2 skyflower
extended island bed to accommodate
25' soaker hose
some vinca
2 mushroom comp

I have some extra vinca. Why not extend the walkway bed all the way down the walk??
vinca
neighbor's abandoned sad and lonely plants
Extended a soaker hose from the triangle bed.

Again with the lowes $5 plants. These will be the next level of the island bed's levels.
4 plants get it about 30% there.
Trim the verbena that is there (level 2)
Verbena need to fill out a bit more to really be level 2. Transplanted verbena from another bed to here. Still need one more plant. Another weekend perhaps.
There's a lot of soaker hose in this area. Planned another level you know!

Completely awesome.

Oh, and I ran out of Bonnie's leaves. I also used up the tiny pile I had in one place and the other tiny pile of leaves I had left in another place. Which means I will have to rake the backyard to eek out the last of the leaves. After that? Not sure. Compost crisis!! Or something. Nothin a little wine can't fix, yes?

AND...the philodendron bloomed for the first time in 10 years. Honestly I've never seen any philo's do that. Very cool, looks like there will be 3 of them. Andy said it looked like a banana. That wasn't what I was thinking at all, but hey.

water journal

2011-04-15T05:21:00.002-04:00

Apr 15 They kept saying it would rain so I kept not watering the established plants. Which meant today (when it didn't rain) I had to water the established plants...It'll probably rain tonight...
watered:
island bed
all new plantings
triangle bed
back beds

Installed new dripline by the porter weed/elephant ears in the back.

watered

2011-04-12T20:32:00.000-04:00

watered both sides of walk/birdbath bed
new jasmine
new plumbago
island

April 10 Garden Update

2011-04-11T05:58:00.003-04:00

Got a gift certificate from work!

Installed birdbath and extended front bed
mushroom compost
3 trailing jasmine
Some annuals, vinca and 2 lantana for butterflies
Stole a couple more purple rhizome plants from foreclosure neighbor yard. (They tried to rip them all out awhile ago anyway...these are the survivors)
Used the dripline from the bed along the path for irrigation. That thing puts out a lot of water, gotta watch it.

Continued the asian jasmine bushes from last week around the palm tree. Added 2 ferns (1/2 price!) to the bald spot between our yard and foreclosed neighbors. Asian jasmine bushes irrigation line was too much for the tiny bed, extended it over to reach the whole new bed. mushroom compost. Smells so nice! (the jasmine, not the compost)

Continued the bed the other way to include some plumbago and red fountain grass. Some annuals added. New dripline added (it was the one that had been in the sideyard but was too short). Encompasses the new plumbago plus the other new-ish plumbago from last week. Not sure the old driplines were working properly in that area. Could explain why a lot of things die there. Hm. Compost.

Almost done with Bonnie's leaves (for mulch). Crud, not sure what happens after those suckers are gone!

Andy cuts the grass and has to use a weedwacker (vs lawnmower)! He mentions the corner of the yard that won't grow. It is his nemesis. We'll figure that out soon, maybe next week. Irrigation will be a challenge there.

2011-04-07T19:24:00.003-04:00

April 5 rain, but not as much as I expected

April 7, had to water the plumbagos, the wussies. Island is watered. Will have to add some shroom-y compost there.

I worry about my own compost. Tumbler has gone anaerobic and leaf pile was sprayed with RAID after I found the roach family living in it. But that was 3 months ago. Think it's good?

At least I can hear the osprey from my back porch. The have a baby!

Journal Log

2011-04-03T15:50:00.004-04:00

3/18:
Pulled out the ixoria hedge that got fried in the 2009 freezes. Very pretty but just never came back right. Added purple bushes and yellow iris. Added drip line. Soil very compacted. Mushroom compost.

The foreclosure house neighbors had some overgrowth of a little purple rhizome plant. Dug that up. Added a new bed next to the walkway (also very compacted, no wonder the grass died there), cow poop compost, added purple plants and vinca. Dripline. Glad the perennial purple plants are shallow rooted, the compact soil there is like a basin, takes no time to water it. That will be a challenge. Come on earthworms!

Planted red leafed whats-it-called in the back yard along with extra vinca. Used last year's bag of soil to build out the raised bed by the fountain. No drip lines in the area, use rainbarrel water. You'll be back there watering by hand anyway since you stole the dripline for the corner beds for the new walkway bed dripline.

Sprayed neem oil trying to get rid of whatever is eating everything. It stinks and we have to close all the windows.

Rained like crazy 3/30

4/2:
to the front island, added 3 plumbagos, 1 jasmine
new island where grass died...2 shady jasmine, couple annuals, dripline and leaf mulch
watered all, didn't need much, the ground is still saturated.
Redid the side garden's dripline as the other wasn't didn't reach the new hedge

Neem oil didn't work, plants show new damage, especially the ginger and the monstera (they named it right, monstera delicioso) sprayed the plant soap stuff. Dunno if it will work, but I like spraying thrips. There were far too many of those suckers back there.

4/3:
Watered new plantings a bit, enjoyed my book Plant-Driven Design.

Back!

2010-03-21T15:59:00.003-04:00

So I've been away for awhile. OK, like 7 months. Well, what do you expect, I got a job (woohoo!) and got busy.

The garden got me back by completely dying. Not my fault, it was looking gorgeous until the freeze. Biggest freeze in 60 years, they're saying. So all those times I've complained before about the freezes? Well, I set records this year for complaining.

We covered them. Every night we brought out every linen, tablecloth, comforter, even towels. But it didn't really matter. It was COLD and the Hibiscus gave me the finger and died to the ground.

So it all died. BUT this time I have a job and long-suffering hubby has a job. So we will rebuild it. Stronger. Faster. Better than before. The five million dollar garden.

So stay tuned.

What's the mantra this year? Last year I wanted to grow veggies till I realized that I'm on city water and potatoes' water needs will suck your wallet dry. This year I am going to try to grow only plants that are:

-Water wise
-OK in a frost
-Look tropical

I think I need to check out plastic plants.

Oh, and I want to replace the lawn with a very large garden, so no more mowing in august. Gardening in August = fun. Mowing in August = Bleah.

Not too tall an order, right?

Quite a rainy season

2009-09-09T20:32:00.006-04:00

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been hiding inside from the heat this summer. While doing so, it's been raining a little more than usual, but after a dry spring, I was more that OK with that.

I had no idea how much the gardens were sprouting. Now that we're getting hints of cool air, I ventured outside to see how everyone faired.

They did fine. In fact, the Jungle Growth out there is making me afraid they are plotting to take over the world. Don't cry Miracle Grow on me, these suckers are all organic.

So here's the front bed last spring. It had been a hard "winter" and frost had bitten the garden badly.

Wow, I think it's recovered.

A wider look at the front yard this spring was kind of embarassing. We had bottles thrown into the yard a couple times a week by jerk neighbor kids.

Now I'm pretty sure the hibicus will kick the jerk neighbor kids butts if they throw anything.

I really wondered if these would all make it when I planted in the backyard last spring.

They took off, filled out, kicked butt.

The back fence this March. Dear little plants, specifically umbrella, phiolodendron and hibicus. All fast growers. They have been recruited to block the windows of the neighbors, who I imagine are nosey but who, in reality, couldn't care less as I run around the house half naked, looking for a pair of pants in the dryer that don't make my butt big.

Also the back fence in March.

The back fence today.

This is the poor little Chenille plant that almost kicked it this summer because the tag said full sun. It's not a full sun plant. In fact, given partial shade, this thing has gone from 18 inches tall to 5 feet in finve months. Also going to take over the world. Look at the cool red thingies.

I'm afraid I don't have anything more philospohical to say than, "Holy Crap."

Are you ready to gardahhhhhhn?

2009-09-05T06:02:00.002-04:00

OK, it's not "are you ready to rumble", but I still have the theme song stuck in my head.

Because I'm in Florida. Zone 9b to be exact. And it's freaking hot here in the summer. Hot enough that many plants go dormant. Impatients are toast. Even the Vinca are dying off. Forget growing any veggies beyond rosemary (does that count as a veggie?) and okra.

It is frustrating when you hear from gardeners in other places. My gardening podcasts and websites are all about harvests and the bounty of summer. While I sit inside and wait out the heat from the air conditioning.

But we've come to the end of all that. It's Labor Day weekend. It's going to be cooling off soon. And I can run outside and get my hands dirty. Can't wait.

Now my whining should not be taken to mean that everything has turned into desert. Just the opposite. We've gotten more of our summer rains than usual this year, meaning the tough plants - hibicus, umbrella plants, porters weed - have gone nuts. Lots of water and sunshine have meant lots of growth everywhere you look. You can practically watch the lawn grow. It's exciting to see that I planted all these plants and they're taking off while I'm not looking. My backyard is getting jungle-like. Which is just what I'm looking for.

Pictures coming soon! Next ==> Welcome to the Jungle!

News Break

2009-06-07T20:23:00.002-04:00

Gardener Guy Update

The Gardener Guy finally has his site up and running. Get the latest on Paul James at www.gardenerguy.com!

Job Update

I finally have a job. The good news: Funding. The bad news: I have dirt under my fingernails and can't figure out how to get them clean for Monday morning.

Unending Rain Update

Oh thank God, it relaxed and we're back to afternoon showers per rainy season parameters. We can delay construction of the ark.

Potato Update

When they say mound the dirt around the base of the plants, they mean it. I left the Yukons in the ground till they fell over and died. Then I pulled them up. Did you know the little potatoes are right at the surface (hence the mounding)? Did you know if you plant potatoes too late in the season, you only get the tiniest potatoes ever? It all went into the composter, the last vestiges of Veggie Patch 2009. Trying again in the fall. I hear you can plant tomatoes in September. Yum!

Garden Center Update

There's a new guy at the big box garden center down the street. He talks really loudly about plants with anyone who cares to listen. I imagine he is a huge help to the customers looking for gardening advice. But, like a nerd at a star trek convention, I only wanted to challenge him to a geek off, garden style. "Shade plant, you call that a shade plant? My umbrella plant is twice the shade plant of that bromeliad."

Look what I did!

2009-05-31T14:41:00.010-04:00

Yup, I'm a big dork. I know this but I still do it. I still go outside to look at it. Stare at it through the window. I told you, big dork.

I planted a bunch of plants last week. I am now overly proud of myself for it. Happens like that sometimes. Even if the planting is half-assed and could use further work. I still get overly proud. I go stare at it. Maybe spot a weed or two. Immediately rush out in my bathrobe to pull it.

Last week, in the midst of rains and thunder, I planted phase 3 and 4 of my backyard garden. This is the tiny backyard that is shaded and beautiful to work in. It was fun and I completely exhausted myself doing it.

I was surprised by the opportunity, but we had $200 worth of Home Depot stuff that needed to be returned after a bathroom renovation. Last year. Those people will take back anything, God bless them. And so, I ran out and got a bunch of store credit with the Depot. Which they had back in their coffers by that afternoon.

I planted several umbrellas trees along a path between my sun porch and the fence. The neighbors built an addition on the other side of the fence, way too close to our house, and their windows (not shown, but just above the fenceline) peek creepily into ours. Or at least that's the feeling you get (in reality, they've never given me a reason to think they're peeping; we put on a pretty boring show in any case). The umbrella plants should grow tall enough to cover the windows in the next year. Those little suckers are amazingly fast growing. The challenge will be to keep them in check when the time comes.

Walking down the path, this is what went in the corner. Of course I found a place for some hibiscus! I'm a little crazy for them. They're all over the front yard. This is their debut in the back. It's a little shady, but the creepy-windows neighbors have one and it's about 6' tall, so I figure these will be fine.

Recognize the plant in the corner? About a week after I noted on this blog that I'd like to find a Chenille Plant, this one popped up at Lowe's for half price. Yippee! The tag also said full sun, which I tried. This little sucker got very dramatic very quickly, all droopy leaves. I thought about letting it go (this was in the middle of the drought of May 09, after all) but as a last ditch effort I planted it in a pot and stuck it under the shade of the house. Where it flourished. A-Ha! It's a shade plant. I'm not sure why Lowe's lied to me but they did. This corner is chock full of shade and the Chenille Plant is loving it.

Turning right and continuing down the path you'll see these Vinca, which will soon be busting at the seams with foliage and flowers. I love those things. For a long time I didn't know what they were

called, so I called them the "hell-yeah plants" because they grew wherever I put them. While this is shade, they flourish in my full sun front yard, just like the tag says they don't. I don't get it, but I love them.

You can also spot two Porter Weed plants flanking some Indian Hawthorne and Red Coleus. Here's a closer picture of that vignette.

The porter week should get pretty tall. They like shady areas and are prone to throwing out seedlings after a year or so. I just planted a couple of volunteers from another Porter Weed in another section of the backyard the other day. Tag from the garden center says they are thirsty, but I disagree.

That leads me to the Dead End, aka Phase 5. It's only about 8' deep, but the trunk you see there is a ficus. Never plant a ficus in an area like this, it's done nothing but attract creepy things and the roots make it a pain to dig around. Also they say these are the first to go in a hurricane. And yes, it's right next to the stupid house.

This has always been a bit of a nightmare area for me, all snakes and spiders. But I recently had to man-up about it after some kittens were born back there. If the kittens don't mind the tiny, completely harmless racers back there, I shouldn't. They made me feel like a candy. Which, of course, I am.

So I've cleaned it out and have slowly been adding plants. There's a volunteer ivy back there, a Monstera on the right and several Philodendron and Ferns in the corner. Eventually I see this area being filled in with similar lush green plants, turning maintenance-free except for some occasional raking and neatening up. Then I can just leave it to the snakes and spiders again.

I'm going to go out and stare at it some more...

Where's the ark?

2009-05-28T08:53:00.005-04:00

OMG, it's raining again.

My gutters are stuffed with leaves. I've been waiting for them to dry out so I can unstuff them without getting all muddy. I had no idea that the last 24 hour period without rain was going to be the last day ever without dripping humidity.

All or Nothing

2009-05-26T07:36:00.002-04:00

So I've already whined to you about our very dry April and May. About needing to water/not being able to water/blah blah blah.

Well, someone upstairs was also very tired of my whining. So he made it rain.

A lot.

First day was lovely.

Second day was nice too.

Third day and I was pretty sure I could write off watering for the rest of the week.

Eighth day and it is getting old.

I went out yesterday to finish up part of the backyard garden. First few hours were great. Last few hours underwent quite a rain delay. I emptied some water out of a basin midway through the rain and it now has two or three inches in it. I stuck my finger in one of the puddles in the lawn and it was up to my second knuckle. I went out to plant the rest of the plants and found myself making mudpies around the roots, something I'm not sure they've gotten over yet.

But that's Florida rainy season, right? All or nothing!

Attention Please: There has been a change in quest

2009-05-21T07:56:00.003-04:00

So it's nice to have a quest. Previously my gardening quest was a veggie garden in the front yard. But it's dry and stinky here in Clearwater, so I've pushed the pause button on that one. Stay tuned for fall gardening veggies!

In the meantime, xeriscape is the buzzword, and I'm just as psyched about this quest as I was about potatoes in the front yard.

So psyched, in fact, that I've managed to bring my long-suffering Husband along for the ride.

Husband is the lawn guy. He hauls the stupid mower out every weekend in July and sweats over cutting our patchy grass/weeds mix, edging in a cloud of dust, etc. He's part of the old guard, a Man and his Lawn.

But our dry weeks have taken a toll on his Lawniness. He too was sad about no rain, only he was mourning his Lawn.

I've suggested it 100 times, but never got anywhere. Until recently when I caught him at the right time. And he snapped.

"We could just plant over the yard, put in a bunch of drought-type plants, use the leaves for mulch" the suggestion was careful, not too bold. It was made as he was laboring over a patch of particularly rugged weeds, deciding that pulling them out by hand was the only way to go and ignoring my suggestions that the weeds' flowers were pretty and maybe we should just come to terms with them.

The "no-lawn" trap was laid. And he stepped into it. He was weak from the heat, the sun, the unending collection of weeds. I knew it. And I went in for the kill.

"No mowing in August heat."

I had him. There was no escape. He crumbled like a Bermuda seedling in full sun.

So I have a new quest! I have no idea how to ditch the yard. It's long and narrow and used to seem very small till I started considering how many trips to the garden center it will take to fill it. I think Husband will have to mow for at least another season, but perhaps with every pass of the mower he'll think of a new way to plant out the front yard.

Wish me luck!

PS, it started raining and it's coming down like it will never stop. Perfect, cool drizzles, exactly what everything needed. WooHoo!

broke my little gardener spirit

2009-05-18T10:34:00.006-04:00

My God, there is something falling from the sky! What is it? Could it be...the mythical thing they call...rain??

We haven't gotten any rain in this bleached out yard for six weeks or so. It broke my little gardener spirit. I could hear it thundering around me. Going to the north of us, the south of us. I drove through a bunch of it the other day, only to have it stop as soon as I passed my neighborhood's stoplight.

Stupid nature and it's stupid drought.

I have to admit, the dryness really took a lot of the fun out of digging. I was constantly trying to find the balance between crazy water restrictions and the hope for a veggie patch. I had to choose between watering the lawn via home depot sprinkler once a week or watering the beds via drip irrigation hoses three times a week. The beds won, of course, but it meant the lawn - which was not vigorous in the first place - has turned to dust.

Then the water bill hit. Wow, three digits on that sucker. It's usually about $60. This is what I get to think about as I connect and disconnect seven seperate drip hoses. I have time to think about this because I still don't have a job.

And it's 95 degrees. In May.

So you can see where the fun was leeched out of gardening a bit this month.

The veggie patch may return some day, but I am finding a renewed appreciation for a totally xeriscaped front yard. Right now I'm kind of half-xeriscaped, which doesn't count. Seems like there's a lot of interest in that right now around the neighborhood. It's nice to not be alone for the next phase. More choices at home depot.

Thinking of joining me? Check out:

FloridaYards.com: Database of xeriscape plants is very helpful

Dave's Garden: Has a forum on xeriscaping, membership required (c'mon, it's $5 for two months)

Got any others you can share?

Where have all the gardeners gooooone?

2009-04-21T13:28:00.002-04:00

Sometimes I feel alone in my gardening hobby. I know that gardening clubs exist, but I also know I'll never follow-through on actually going to meetings or weeding together or whatever it is that they all do. My neighbors all take care of their landscape, but I get the feeling that they do so more out of a sense of duty than a love of green stuff. Like mowing the lawn; not a hobby, just another chore.

So where are the gardeners? I found them ALL at the garden center today. It was unexpected. I usually avoid strangers generally. And it is noon on a Tuesday. But suddenly I was getting marigold advice from a stranger and acting on it. Then I was selling Porter's Weed again (I love that stuff). Advice from someone on the ferns in my cart. A second, supporting opinion comes from the end of the line. And all of us were excited about Periwinkle making it's garden center debut recently. Suddenly all of us are chattering excitedly in line, helping each other juggle the plants in our hands and on our carts.

The cashiers just looked at all of us like we were freaks. And maybe we are, but quite honestly, I wanted to tell them, all you non-gardening folk are the real freaks. How can you not get excited about the feeling of warm soil in your hands? The sight of new growth on a plant? The wonder of a plant taking off in a direction you didn't expect? The birds are chirping, the weather is perfect and the flowers are budding. How is this not nirvana??

The gardener guy in the parking lot summed it up for me:

"Plants are great, aren't they?"

You bet.

Flowers!

2009-04-20T20:39:00.009-04:00

I cannot believe the progress the garden has made in the past few weeks. It seemed like nothing was moving for so long; everything was chopped back from the frost or everything was really small (or still a seed) because I am too unemployed to purchase anything in a 3 gallon container.

I was just lamenting that "all I have are shrubs" and therefore bloomless the other day. And then I went outside to check on the seeds. And I saw it.

The house is absolutely lit with flowers. Granted, they are mostly on shrubs. But when you look at the place, you don't say "my, she needs some annuals" like I was in March. Now you'd see the texas sage, the african iris, the hibiscus and the confederate jasmine showing off. Not to mention the popcorn plant, the porter's weed, the bottle brush...

---

Something else noticed today. It was drippy and overcast today (a welcome sight, believe me, we are in drought). I noticed the african iris - which is currently blooming like crazy - closes all its flowers till the sun comes out. Since the sun never made an appearance today, they all stayed in. Just something I saw that I thought was pretty cool, see below. How do they know? Does it have to do with the sun's heat? Or maybe how much the leaves are working? Or, or or...?

Update: Project Potato

2009-04-15T12:55:00.004-04:00

While I'm still all for Veggie Drawer Gardening, I am walking away with mixed results. An update:

1) The Yukons That Sprouted 2 Weeks Ago: They've been planted outside for a week and don't smell like they're rotten. I am taking this as a good sign.

2) The Sweet Potato Experiment: Fail. We walked into the kitchen asking "what's that smell?" Question quickly switched to "what's that fuzz?" And then the compost pile had a new addition. I didn't cut it up or anything so it will be rolling around the bin while for months. Who knows, maybe that's actually how they reproduce.

3) Revenge of the 5 Pound Bag: I figured we'd surely eat them. Now they're growing. They're just regular brown potatoes, and I'm running out of room in the veggie patch, and it is not technically time to plant these fellas, but they are being SO insistant. I found they not only had sprouted, they were growing little roots out of the sprouts. I stuck them in water as a lark, and 24 hours later they're getting green leaves. I don't have the heart to eat them now, so here we go. I'll leave them in the nursery (water) for a bit more before they debut in the 'patch.

Georgia has Florida on it's Mind

2009-04-15T12:05:00.017-04:00

Another vacation! Yes, it is exhausting being unemployed. You just need to take a break now and then. Pace yourself and all.

Easter weekend was spent in Georgia with relatives. We totally took up their spare bedroom and drank all their wine. Perhaps to get us out of their house, we all took a trip to Callaway Gardens, a huge piece of property in the Atlanta area.

While veterans of the Gardens have since come to the conclusion that April may not be the most flowery month to visit, the Florida contingent of the delegation thought the gardens were breathtaking.
Atlanta's had a lot of rain lately so everything was very lush. Everywhere you looked, the last bastions of the cool season plantings were showing off; pansies, cabbages, tulips and a daffodil or two. Hydrangeas were also strutting their stuff, with the first snowballs of spring popping open.

So it was a suprise when - during a stop at the butterfly hothouse garden - we saw our front yard. Florida plants abounded in a little glassed-in oasis of warmth and tropical humidity. Porters Weed, Pentas, Shrimp Plants were everywhere.

Check out this species of vine we found! Its thick leaves and foliage reached up about 20 feet and were densely covered in these elegant flowers. It's called Skyflower Vine (Left).

I also found out the name of this plant on the lower right, I've always liked the look of it, but never found it in a garden center. Maybe now I'll be able to get one online. It's a Chenille Plant.

The difference between how the GA gardeners fill their flower beds and how FL gardeners do the same was striking. GA feels safe filling them with huge amounts of delicate, flowering annuals. I'm not sure how many last through the summer. There aren't any watering restrictions there either, so perhaps that helps.

Shrubs are mostly boring, with little leaves and are usually pruned into some shape resembling a fat muffin. Gardens now have just been filled with warmer season annuals, colorful and very tidy. Too tidy, I spent a lot of time longing to throw a Monstera into the mix, but they'd probably just mulch around it nicely, set a tasteful birdbath next to it and call it a yard.

But the hothouse makes me think that those GA gardeners have a wild side!

AIG in the Garden

2009-04-06T13:00:00.006-04:00

I often go into the garden to forget about work. But lately, as you've been hearing, corporate America has recently been cramping my style. Namely in laying me and my husband off. This has resulted in my purchasing seeds.

I was a little alarmed when I found the prevailing gardening advice was to plant 2 seeds in one area, thinning them out as the plants popped out of the ground and start crowding each other.

All of which led to an interesting scene last week.

"Now guys, I know you're young and new to the garden. So I want to give it to you straight.

"We're in a tough market right now. Earnings are way down. Our government bailout - called unemployment insurance - is pretty skimpy compared to the banks.

"I'm planting all of you today, but not everyone can make it. There will be cutbacks. I'm counting on all of you to be strong and keep your eyes on the ball. That's not easy when the guy next to you gets pulled, but we all have to just keep moving forward."

They're so young. Not even green yet. But they're good, I think they'll pull through.

Gardeners Unite!

2009-04-03T12:11:00.003-04:00

What would a happy little gardener have to protest? Sure, global warming and the state of our water table might be of interest, but what really gets our panties in a wad is taking the Gardener Guy off the air. I know it galvanized me! Go here, now and help save Paul James and Gardening by the Yard!

http://hgtvprotestcampaign.blogspot.com/

Not So Bad: Layoff Gardening

2009-04-03T10:00:00.005-04:00

It was my first foray into layoff gardening.

For a month I've been tidying up the space. Sprucing. Trimming. Sweeping. Raking. All the free things you have the time to do when you suddenly find yourself unemployed.

But yesterday was the day. I gathered up my gift cards and sketched out a plan in my head. Two plants, some drip irrigation hoses and some seeds. It sounded thrifty, grown up.

My usual visits to a garden center resemble kids let go in a toy store. All wide-eyes and feeling flush with Friday's paycheck in the bank. Racing other patrons to the newest palate of annuals. Jostling with Saturday traffic. Sweating in the parking lot trying to shove too many 3-gallon container plants into a Miata. Because I was only there for a bag of potting soil.

And so I present, Layoff Gardening Tips:

1) Buy Small: This can burn you (literally) in July, when the heat is frying everything in full sun, but in April, you have time for the little 1-gallon types to grow big before that happens.

If you're choosing a perennial for a heat-intense area of the yard, fortify it with plenty of water and mulch. A fast grower isn't a bad idea either.

Consider hibiscus, plumeria or jasmine shrubs. Trading in your 3-gallon habit for a 1-gallon container can save you half.

2) Drip irrigation: You can find these hoses at any garden center and they'll save you plenty of money on your water bill. The hoses have tons of tiny holes that slowly leak water out to your plants. Bury them under the mulch, plant along the water lines and you'll have a eco-friendly landscape that avoids the headaches of sprinkler systems.

One caveat: this will not work on your lawn. You know I don't care about watering my lawn. If you've got a thick carpet of St. Augustine out front, I don't understand your ways.

3) Leaf Mulch: Some vocal gardening types have loudly eschewed traditional mulch. I love it and think it's the garden's finishing touch. Until, of course, I have to spend government dole money on it, and suddenly it's not that important.

Luckily, March is when all those awful tiny oak leaves fall thick in my backyard. So this April I've shoved them into trash bags and dragged them out front.

Ta-da! Free mulch! And the inside of the Jeep stays clean!

4) Seeds: Who knew they were so cheap? You can get a little crop of corn for $1.50. A bed of flowers for $2.

Yes, you have to grow them. No, I don't currently know how to do that. But I have time!

5) Veggies: They might save me some money. And did I mention, their seeds are cheap? So here we go. Which leads me to...

6) Veggie Drawer Gardening: My potatoes have spouted all over. So I planted them. We'll see what happens next.

Also, Tom MacCubbin, a garden guru out of Orlando, says I can put a sweet potato in some water and encourage it to root. After a few days with no movement, I am questioning this, but my new gardening motto seems to be "we'll see" so I have no problem using that here.

Also also, I hear leek roots from the supermarket will grow, even after you've eaten all the good parts off it. Can you hear my refrain?

One other item: I noticed the seeds under the birdfeeder were about an inch thick and sprouting. So I grabbed some handfuls and threw them around the bare patches in the backyard, which are impressive since the leaves were removed. I am pretty sure that one day a squirrel will sit on the fence and find religion among all the yummy plants that could spring from this moment.

Wish me luck!

Stupid Earth and its Stupid Axis

2009-04-01T10:44:00.003-04:00

The best way to describe my backyard is a very small prison yard. There are fences on two sides and buildings around the rest. Throw in a drainage issue and you've got Prison Break written all over it.

Now is where I have to admit that I like this space a lot. It has four trees and lots of shade so it is cool when the rest of Florida is hot. It also has great sandy soil that makes for easy digging and eventual drainage. And it's easy to stuff a bunch of plants in here and go for an all out Tarzan jungle look, which is my favorite kind of look.

But life in the jungle is not always easy. There are the obvious: mosquitos and slugs and the occasional deluge when the prison warden forgets about her sprinkler running for about 3 hours and causes the waters to rise way above flood stage.

Then there are the super-obvious, which is the most likely to be overlooked. Namely the earth spinning on its axis.

I spent yesterday replanting the already planted. I hate transplanting. I'm always impatient to get the digging over with and usually leave some portion of very necessary roots behind. Usually I like to dig, but an established plant is so different from a plant from the garden center.

The latter is all trimmed up and fit ad ready to go. The established plant has beautiful foliage that is draping right over the area where I need to stick the shovel. I don't want to trim it, but it's getting in the way, dammit... well, you can see how this goes.

Yesterday was no different, so it was really burning me that the reason for all work was the earth's axis. I kind of forgot last November that the sun's patterns occasionally change. A lot. Usually every year or so. It's not so obvious in the front yard, which is about 101 degrees and in full sun 9 months out of the year.

But the backyard is all walls and fences and trees. The light shifts. Suddenly a corner becomes full sun for 6 hours a day. And there I am, in the only shaft of light in the backyard, rescuing my ginger before it bursts into flames and cursing up a storm.

Stupid seasons. Stupid planet.

The nectar of Natural Light...

2009-04-01T10:13:00.005-04:00

I spent a week on vacation. Yes, even us unemployed slobs need to take a break now and then.

I was expecting to come home to the usual collection of empty beer cans in the yard, courtesy of the sex offender three doors down. He and his friends party under the dim street lights of his parent's (and mine) cul-de-sac and I haven't figured out why, but we are the continual recipients of his friends' discarded Natty Light cans.

But there was an extra surprise.

My pretty hibiscus, my popcorn plant, my sea grapes are all coming back with a vengeance. Fed on the nectar of cheap beer and partial negligence by their owners, my frost-bitten, chopped back plants are rearing to go. Even the dead one sprouted little bitty leaves in my absence.

I imagine them growing larger and larger till they take the neighborhood by force. They have plenty of backup, my front yard is predominantly drought-tested shrubs, including two hibiscus monsters on either side of the garage. I imagine they're the thugs, the muscle, while the recovering ones out front are the brains. Together they'll climb out of the ground and free their brethren from the clutches of the garden centers...

Who says gardening is boring?

No grassy knoll

2009-03-22T18:47:00.004-04:00

I don't pay much attention to my grass usually, but something caught my eye the other day.

We don't have any.

I'm not sure where it went or who took it, but man, do we not have a lawn out there. I know lawns die back in the winter, even if you live in Florida. And I know that we had some frosty mornings last month. But I wasn't expecting this.

Everything else out there is so green. The oaks are leafing out, showing off their amazing spring color. All my frost bitten plants that previously died back are sending out bright young shoots. It's all about new beginnings and optimism out there, bouncing back from the winter blahs. Yes we can, it calls out, reveling in the sweet sunshine.

Everything, that is, except for my lawn.

Now I have to say, I don't usually root for the lawn. I don't like how people blow so much fertilizer and water on their manicured turf. It's not natural. I am as happy to see weeds filling in yard space as I am to see fescue. I don't water the lawn. I don't usually even top-dress it with compost.

But still. We are getting close to tumbleweeds out there.

I like the whole "no lawn" movement. I just don't know how to do it. How do you take that leap? In my head, it would mean turning the entire front yard into a flower bed. I think that sounds incredible and fun, but also expensive. How do you do it without breaking the bank? And without your lawn looking like it belongs to the crazy old lady with not much to do.

Not sure. I will have to get back to you on that.

But in the meantime, I guess it's time to pull out the (organic) fertilizers and the sprinkler. Well, at least I'll do that if it doesn't perk up in the next week or two...

Cut Backs

2009-03-21T10:13:00.008-04:00

Husband and I were laid of early this month. Amazing how long I stretch out gardening chores now. I want to properly savor them. My first sampling? Chopping back the frost bite victims. Other people just call it pruning, but this was more dramatic. If I held back, I'd be stuck with leggy plants all year. I went out knowing what I had to do. Show no mercy.

Seeing the setbacks, the years of growth that had been lost in a week or two of cold weather, it gets you philosophical. So does seeing the cable guy coming by at your request to turn off the cable as a cost savings measure post-layoff.

The plants had had quite the boom year in 2008. Lots of growth. Too much, really, they had started to look a little wild.

Then the frost came. Whole branches were no longer viable. Plants that were 4 feet high had burns 3 feet down. Now they were being cut back. Getting back to fundamentals.

They'd be stronger plants for it. Their roots are still hardy. Compared to a young plant with their new smaller stature, my burn victims are way hardier, established. They'll grow fast and complain about water shortages less than newbies.

In a year, you won't know they ever had this setback. They'll be all bushy growth and glossy leaves. But we'll both be less fearful during the next tough February, because we'll know what to do and how to handle the crisis. We can pull though all that no sweat. "Been there, done that," we'll say.

Cutting back is never easy.

crimping my garden style!

2009-03-19T19:30:00.004-04:00

I think I've made it clear that my garden style is very trial and error.

You can draw from that, my garden style is very plant-intensive, involving many trips to the garden center.

I think I have also made it clear that I couldn't wait to get in the garden and start digging.

So it is with a heavy heart that I announce that my funding has been cut off.

Can you believe I was laid off two days after my husband was laid off? No one else can either. Insert your favorite expletive here.

Now is where creative gardening comes in. It's been two weeks exactly since the event. In that time I have managed to clean up everything that could be cleaned up, trim all that needed trimming (and after some nasty freezes in my tropical garden, there was plenty). Now what??

I know I want to go to the garden center and fill out my front bed. But spending our savings on pentas instead of the car payment is crimping my style. So I've been looking for alternative sources of plantings.

We'll start in the kitchen. Potatoes! I have some beautiful Yukon Golds that are sprouting. Bad for eating, but great for the unemployed. Project potato begins!

I also found some seeds in the garden. They were hanging off my African Irises, and while I love those hardy little plants, on any other day I would have simply tossed them into the shrubs and wished them luck. Today is a new day though, and I'm saving them for planting in a nursery type bed. Should be fun to see them pop up.

I'm also looking into some seed purchases. Much cheaper to grow cucumbers from seed than from seedling. Same for petunias.

Let's see where this goes. I always thought people who grew stuff from seed were Serious Gardeners. I could have been right. Or maybe they're just cheap. Either way, I'm taking the plunge!

Can't wait

2009-02-07T19:48:00.003-05:00

My garden, like most gardens, is a work in progress. That's a term that is heard so often in gardening. Because it sounds so much better than "I don't know what I'm doing". And let's face it, none of us has a clue. Even the gardening book I've been reading said some things that I'm not buying. And this gardening guy on my podcasts has some definite opinions about mulch that I am not completely buying either. My father and I have never really agreed on much in the garden either.

What I am saying is that the only one who knows if the petunia is going to grow is the petunia. I can give it tough love and water it every three months. I can baby it and water it sparingly every morning between 6am and 8am. Thing is, it seems very much out of our hands and completely up to the plant. There are plants that are dramatic (all weeping leaves during a hot afternoon) and there are plants who are sturdy, steadfastly holding their own in a drought. It all seems to come down to the right attitude. Of the plant. Your attitude doesn't have much to do with it at all, it seems.

But in any case, I am looking forward to what the plants will teach me this year, my fifth year of gardening. My progress seems to be duplicated by many homeowners:

First year it was all about flowers and annuals. And mistakes.

Second year I finally learned about proper watering and the difference between shade and sun plants. And learning from year one mistakes. And making other mistakes.

Third year I learned that perennials rock and have a lot better attitude than the annuals. And learned from year two mistakes. And made other mistakes.

Fourth year I learned that shady, non flowering plants can be pretty cool too. Ditto for the year three mistakes/making more mistakes.

Fifth year will be a re-embracing of the annual, I think. After so many frosts and freezes gone awry, it will be nice to bring in some non-committal plants, I think. And the beds - which are looking very brown as a result of the recent chilly activities - could certainly use some short term color till the hibiscus can regrow. Plus, I'd like to get started on some veggies interspersed in the garden and those are all annuals. Funny, after year three I thought they were mostly banned from the garden. I guess we all evolve and grow and learn and make mistakes.

Mostly I want to get digging. And start making (and learning from) this year's mistakes. Can't wait!

Ahhh!

2009-02-07T19:45:00.002-05:00

So I've neglected to mention the frost that bit me. Yes, I've mentioned the previous frosts, but this week there was a doozy. And I left the plants completely exposed. The weather said there was no warning! We were under no advisory! And everything is now toasted. Huh. Note to self: next time Manatee couny is under a freakin frost advisory, you get your butt out there and cover things.

Stupid February and its Stupid Frost

2009-02-03T18:42:00.003-05:00

We are having yet another stupid frost. He-llo? This is Florida? Even better, this is Pinellas county? We don't get such things here. Well, not more than once a year at least.

So when the January frost hit two nights in a row and bit off a ton of my hibiscus leaves, I thought "Well, that stunk, but at least it's over with." But nooooo, it wasn't.

And can I do you one better? This time it's also windy! Like gusts of 34 mph. Think the wind will help me out when frosting time comes? Nope, should stop by then. Stupid wind.

Stupid frost. Stupid wind.

So my last foray into frosts left me bitten after I used plastic painter tarps on everything and stuff died. But not enough for me to say "screw it" two weeks later. Enough for me to not feel confident that I've got it down. I am afraid I am being a bad mother.

So, today I went though the checklist.

Well watered plants: this is a gimme as we had a lot of rain recently

Cloth covers: Dang it. I never bought the floating row covers - fabric that can be used to protect plants from frost. I had plenty of plastic tarp, but we know how that story ends. Except...they say you can suspend them from sticks, that as long as the plastic doesn't touch the leaves, you might be OK. And have you seen the hedge of hibiscus recently? It's all sticks on top. Sold, they get plastic. now for everyone else, they get cloth. As in, my sheets and tablecloths. I hold my breath and drag it all outside.

Daylight: I am a good girl and put off my evening wine in order to get out there while there's still daylight. Doing so is supposed to keep more heat around the plants. Or something.

But as I put everything up, something's not right. A tumbleweed passes by. A tumbleweed made up of pretty patters. It's then that I realize it's not just a breeze blowing though, it's gusty out. Wind! I run into the garage and grab things to weigh the sheets down with. Stuff that isn't too valuable, stuff that can't be used for vandalism (perhaps the only home problem I've encountered that can't be best fixed with a hammer). This is good for the low bushes, less so for hedges. As evidenced by plastic sheeting dancing in the street. This leads me to:

4. Duct tape: Which is not available, so I use blue painter's tape instead. I use it to tape branches to plastic, sheets to branches, sheets to sheets, anything else you can think of.

What will happen? Place bets now...

Required Reading

2009-02-02T19:59:00.003-05:00

I got books!

I am much more excited than I ought to be. Because the Amazon people sent me more than just my Oprah book club selection today. They send me what I've been jonesin' for.

Since Oct 31 I've been sitting here, looking longingly outside, wondering when I could plant, trim and basically wander around outside in my PJs again. I was waiting for frosts to come and go, not wanting to plant something, trim something, do something that an evil, though rare, frost might undo in a few chilly hours overnight.

So here I've sat. Occasionally weeding. Devouring gardening podcasts and blogs. Itching to trim things. Willing myself not to go to the garden center. Not to purchase something else wonderful that could be injured by the cold when I'm not looking.

But now, I have a new outlet for my obsession. Tom McCubbin in Orlando is going to give me directions on what to do every month when gardening in central Florida. Another author will be showing me how to grow vegetables in central Florida.

I can't wait.

I'm a big dork.

I can't tell you how excited I am. Because these people have directions on how to garden during the chilly months. Did you hear me?? I will now be able to garden from November through February! I can continue my obsession for three extra months!

Told you I'm a big dork. I've got to get reading...

I need help

2009-02-01T07:26:00.003-05:00

Please help. I am having these thoughts. These terrible, terrible thoughts. I'm not sure if I should even write about them. They're almost too horrible to admit. The unspeakable. But I know these thoughts are in there, knocking around, infecting all my other good, wholesome gardening thoughts. If I keep them bottled up, well, that could be even worse, right?

Fine then. Deep breath.

I am seriously considering...crocs.

Ug, there it is. The terrible, horrible truth. The shoe-that-must-not-be-named. The nightmare shoe. The shoe my cute red flats would scorn. The shoe that..eh, you get the picture.

Darn those things are ugly. They're made of rubber/plastic/something man made for God's sake. They come in highly unnatural colors. They are sold in kiosks at the mall, tied together with little plastic tags. Payless would be a step up for these suckers. Heck, a shoebox would be a step up.

So why would a shoe snob like myself want crocks?

Why indeed.

It all started when I ruined yet another pair of sneakers in the garden. I was just going to go out for a moment to water. Watering turned into filling the birdfeeder. Birdfeeder duty turned into poking around the composter. Before I knew it I was on my knees digging rogue weeds out from under and behind something with complete abandon.

By the time I came in I was a muddy mess. No worries, right? I'll toss the jeans in the washer, and sneakers are just sneakers right?

Except for when they are that kind of dirty. The little cloth part that covers my toes was caked. I wiped it as best I could and forgot about it, positive that sneakers are just sneakers and these only go to the gym, right?

I was the only person at the gym who left a trail of mud behind her. Doesn't help that I was also wearing a stained t-shirt and jogging pants. I looked like a homeless person with a penchant for an elliptical machine.

These weren't the only shoes to die out there on those muddy killing fields. So many cute shoes. So many ugly deaths. And the ones I ruin are rarely suited for full time gardening work. My current ones are once-cute flip flops. Sounds great except my feet get wet. Do you want icky toes? Neither do I.

And, as long as we're being frank here, I have old sneakers currently in the garage. Do you know how worrisome it is to put on garage-kept sneakers? Roaches and spiders and slugs, oh my!

So when I was slopping around the wet backyard in my sandals last weekend (experiencing cold, wet, and something pointy under the sole of my left foot), I started trying to find an answer to my dilemma. Mules? Too cute for gardening. Store the sneakers in a bag? Imagine the stench. Platform sandals? Place bets now on how far I could go all-terrain in those suckers.

And then...it came to me...with a groan....

Yup, crocs. They'd be all-terrain. Could get wet. Can easily eyeball the insides for life before putting on. And really, I chided myself, is the look of your feet really that important when you're schlepping around outside in the garden? I mean, you don't even wear underwear in the backyard (fenced, don't worry) (and you know what, if you're peeking, you deserve a plumber's crack view, dammit).

I've heard plenty of gardeners talk about raking in their PJs and weeding sans makeup. I'm totally there. So these crocs should be a natural, just another gardening badge of honor, right?

Right???

This Could Be Dangerous

2009-01-25T08:32:00.006-05:00

I've been blowing money on this garden for four years. During that time I have made countless treks to countless garden centers. But those centers have always had one thing in common: they were part of a major chain. Home Depot, Lowes, even sometimes Walmart, I've always zipped over to a major home improvement chain for my plants.

So does everyone else. It means a certain sameness to our gardens. We all put out Begonias, Petunias, whatever at the same time. We all have basically the same hedges out front. After a year or two of this you're sure to recognize what's in everyone else's gardens.

In some ways it's great, for the same reasons I like suburbia. It is predictable. When driving in surburbia, I always know a Target is right around the corner. That makes me happy, comfortable. The garden center plants are the same way. I know which plants can live where, I know which plants will only be available for a short time before the next annual pushes it out of the supply chain.

But then I started reading.

A dangerous thing, reading. Especially on the internet with a credit card in hand. I have a few favorite gardening websites, and they all stress one thing. These hard core gardeners don't go to the garden center.

I wanna be hard core too.

They eschew the garden centers for the same reasons I love them. Predictablility, loss of that personal touch with someone who knows what they are doing (yes, I like that part of shopping at the Depot too. Did you know I'm happily antisocial? And the people at a chain store stay happily at arm's length, living in fear that you'll bother them with a question. Yup, that's the store for me.).

But my online gardening gurus have gotten to me. I've located several actual privately owned nurserys in the area. They're on my list for when the weather warms up. But in the meantime I stumbled upon several online plant sites.

And this is where it gets dangerous.

Me, my Visa and an orange Home Depot shopping cart is bad enough. When I'm plant shopping I become mysteriously rich. I can buy anything. Let's get crazy.

Online, I am even more rich. You can't fill that shopping cart to capacity, you can only keep going. Even worse, you can elect to put all sorts of things in the cart, with a promise to yourself that you'll cull your load before checkout.

But that never happens.

It started innocently enough. A rare plants site specializing in tropicals, these are my guys. I wander onto the site "just looking for ideas." I immediately spot a plant I'venever seen before. Gorgous waxy leaves shine at high gloss. They look just like my Elephant Ears, but with a shine that looks like they've been laquered. Turns out they're called the Giant Leopard Plant and they're completely gorgous. Just $16 and it can be mine. Just.

Since then I've fallen in love with countless shy Hostas, ornate orchids, and statuesque cannas. So far I have resisted the urge to buy because it is still cold here. But warmer days are coming. How long will I be able to resist?

Cul de Sac People

2009-01-25T01:27:00.003-05:00

We should have known when we were buying the house.

We drove by to take a look at the house we had put a bid on. We were checking out the neighborhood. It was a nice fall day. Everyone was outside, mowing lawns, kids playing street hockey.

And everyone stared.

I meant to pull around the cu-de-sac and stare at the house a bit. Just to take note of the shutters, or the brick that matched the ixoria hedge flowers exactly.

But they were all staring. Like this was Children of the Corn and we were the latest suckers to pull into town.

I pulled a hurried circle around the cul-de-sac and left the little street. But I had seen what I was to become. A cul-de-sac person.

We giggled and talked about the backward folk we had just witnessed. Kids stopped their games, grown people stopped what they were doing to check out the little black car puttering up their street. People had stared unabashedly at the unknown car. The car that was not known among them. And they all took the time to take a long hard obvious stare, like a bunch of amish people seeing their first Honda.

We knew we'd never be like them. We obviously got out a little more than these people. We were worldly apartment dwellers. Wed been flashed on the way to the laundry, ignored crying neighbors children on our doorstep, been stalked by the upstairs NRA neighbor. We knew when to stare and when to just move on. We wouldn't be like the cu-de-sac people.

I'm not sure when it happened.

But one day my I caught my husband at the window looking out at the cul-de-sac. There hadn't been any noises, no suspicious lights, it was nightfall and he was just looking out. I wanted to make fun of him. I wanted to mock him and call him a cul-de-sac person. I wanted to.

But I also wanted to know what he was seeing.

Because I too had become a cul-de-sac person. I guess we all feel a little but of ownership of the space out front. Whatever the reason for this disease, none escape it. We all want to know who the stranger's car belongs to. We all want to know who is putting in new windows. We all want to render an opinion on the new paint colors on the house down the street. I have a neighbor who, when we had the tree trimmer out, just had to come out on the front yard and evaluate the state of his gutters. And perhaps check out the tree guy's technique.

It's a disease. And we have it.

Thank God we don't have any other gardening freaks around here. I'm not sure my fragile landscaping ego could withstand a master gardener continually evaluating the front beds. Everyone has beds, but nothing extravagant. Th guy next store was a landscaper once, but he was also a bug guy and a racecar driver. Landscaping wasn't really his calling, seemed more like something to do to look busy. His landscape is nice, but nothing spectacular and it's usually cluttered with car parts and random trailers for hauling God Knows What.

So we're cul-de-sac people. Come by the house and at least a dozen people will note your car's make model and serial number. You'll think we have nothing better to do than sit out front and stare. You're probably right.

MY short-lived trend, not yours

2009-01-23T15:20:00.007-05:00

Is everyone starting a vegetable garden now?

In case you haven't been reading the garden press lately, veggie gardening is the new buzzword. Burpee.com is offering $10 worth of seeds to grow $650 worth of veggies, there are petitions out there to get the Obama white house to convert some of its acreage into veggie patches, it goes on and on. I suppose it is an interest in saving money while the economy sucks. I also suppose it is something to distract reporters from the fact that our economy is going down in flames on their watch.

But no matter, the reason I'm noticing the trend is because of one completely self-centered reason: I wanted to do it first.

I've been psyching myself up for the last year or so to turn a portion of the sunny sunny front yard into a veggie patch. I know, it will look odd, front yards aren't usually used for corn. But our backyard is shaded by 4 trees and not suitable. The sideyards are too shaded by closely-built houses. The front is the only way to go.

While it might look funny, it can't be the oddest thing I've done in that yard. I've planted trays and trays of completely ill-suited plants, watered the garden after drinking heavily and had very ugly allergic reactions all on that sunny patch of grass. Surely, the neighbors instinctively look away by now.

I should be thankful that a bunch of other novices and losers are going to be blundering their way into the fray at the seed catalog sites with me. There are bound to be a crop of new "how to" veggie garden articles, new resources available mid-season to address everywhere we probably screwed up. Better directions and dumbed down instructions on zone maps and times to plant.

And I need all that.

Thing is, this was MY idea, dammit. I don't want to be one of the rabble, one of those who are suddenly painting their thumbs green and killing trays of little tomato plants by the dozen. I don't want my neighbors thinking I'm getting on the veggie train to nowhere. This was my idea first!

I think a lot of my irritation is stemming from the fact that I have to do this in the front yard. Activities in backyards have an air of mystery to them. "Hmm, wonder what they have going back there?" Gardening out in the front yard is so exposed. You're open to comments and looks and the neighbor's cigarette butts. Everyone has an opinion, from the guy across the street, to the kid on a bike to the stranger walking her dog. And while you're out there toiling, they are inclined to give it to you. And then they might even want a conversation. Conversation? That's why I have a husband, let me refer you to him, he's our neighborhood ambassador. I am the reason they all feel badly for him. We're good with these roles, they are well-practiced.

Most of the reason I am concerned for my rep in installing a veggie patch out front is because I know I will have some spectacular failures. There are corn stalks to reach high and then conk out. There are squirrels to attack the tomatoes. There are moles aching to get a piece of my carrots. The last thing I want to do is have a very public disagreement with the wildlife over their rights to access my produce.

But I still plot. i am waiting for the frosts to pass by, probably in February, and I will get digging. They're going just behind my screen of sea grapes and hibiscus, installed for privacy. I hope they'll help keep my battles private. We shall see.

Not going according to plans

2009-01-23T14:41:00.004-05:00

I was sure I had it all figured out. I was a gardening star, the Home Depot Diva, the Garden Center Queen.

So when the frost warnings came out, I figured no problem, this was going to be easy. I've done this all before. A few painting tarps here, a few old bedsheets there, I'm gonna kick Jack Frost tookis.

Except I didn't.

Turns out that frost's bite was much worse than it's bark. And I'm also an idiot. And so I now present:

Lessons Learned While Pulling Tarps Off Plants at 39 Degrees:

Don't use plastic paint tarps. While they've worked the previous 4 years of frosts we've had, this year was something else, a little special delivery from that frozen arctic tundra called Georgia. And after a little soul searching on the Internet I've found that no one recommends you cover your plants with plastic sheeting, it offers 'little to no" protection and tends to encourage things' freezing. Apparently in past years, "little to no" was good enough. And we learn something new today.
Cover the whole plant, not just the top. While it is true, and quite obvious at 5am, that frosts drift down from the cold heavens and flows over your landscape - some getting snagged on rooftops and settling there, some moving on to the lower patches of the garden to zap my ferns - it does not do so very quickly. For this reason, you should cover your entire shrub, not just the very top. Doing that leaves the sides exposed to freezer burn. Not easy to do with a 5 foot tall hibiscus, but something that will be much easier next year, since the hibicus is now substantially shorter.
Bedsheets aren't all that. So the plastic sheeting is out? That leaves my old college beadsheets which have also doubled as paint tarps. And while I am sure the neighborhood appreciates being able to see the whole house's decor on my front bushes, I am losing my trust in these old reliables. Plants under these suckers didn't do fantastic, just OK. And given that I am covering tall plants, the coverage (see #2) wasn't stellar. Next year I'll review frost cloth, as I'll be stocking up on the stuff later this year. No rush now, you know?
Don't wait for Steve Jerve to announce the frost warning. As much as I love Steve, I don't see his forecast till 6pm. In January, that's at or just after sunset. Don't wait till after sunset to set up your Frost Defense Mechanism. Because part of what covering the plants does is contain the day's warmth in the soil. Even if it's a chilly day, the sun still warmed the soil a bit. And this warmth will help your plants. Waiting till dark, like I did, lets all that heat escape and blow away, just another strike against my fight against the frost.

So, instead of starting a blog about how awesome my garden is, I'm starting a blog about how I keep learning new stuff about gardening. Every time I think I've made every mistake I possibly could out there, something else pops up.

I can't wait to get back out there again.