Choice Morsels

  Today's Garden Pics: Beautiful Red Amaryllis: This is in a front container. Behind it is left over Cheers Daffodil greenery. Beside it in front, also red, is some Salvia. I have a bunch of red saliva in a container that self-seeds every year giving me lots of seed-babies to move around. You can see more in the garden background. Plus one of my garden art ceramic cats sits in the container. The bed inn the background is starting to look good--you can see all that bright yellow Gold Creeping Jenny! Nice Shot of a Purple Bachelor Button: I've never seen one before, but I know Bachelor Buttons come in a variety of colors including white, pink & the traditional blue. I believe blue is it's natural original color, which I like best, since I try to collect blue flowers in my garden. I was afraid my Plumbago, which is a blue flowering shrub, died in the Dec freeze--but, lo and behold, I it's putting up fresh growth!

Garden Pics today: My orange & white Amaryllis: Backlit by late day sun! Gorgeous! And: A spaghetti squash blossom this morning with a honeybee visitor!

Good news is the tree cutter I hired to remove those 2 pines, came today! They removed a few trees a house over, then started on mine about lunchtime. It's a company comprised of military Veterans. One tree down, run to go. Two things of note: I haven't really heard any swearing by the work crew of guys. That's impressive, since I recall the climber of a different tree service a several years ago clearing shouting obscenity at his phone. Neither did they take a lunch break, pulling out lawn chairs and popping beers like another tree company I had experience with. So this company, called Brothers-At-Arms, has been more impressive then most.  Today's Garden Pic is one of my Amaryllis:  The have two in containers; this red one and an orange and white one. The picture came out pretty good this time. I waited till later in day when sunlight was less intense. Surprisingly, red is a hard color to photograph. Seems easy for it to appear too orange or too black--but this time, l...

My Amaryllis was beautiful this year! These bulbs are in a container. Two stems this year. Each head produces 4 blooms.  It's just finishing up. I have a plain red one in another container that is just opening. Sunset Reds: In the evenings, I like to see with my cup of coffee and last rays of sunlight on my patio flowers. The red looks especially splendid. The birds are very active at the feeding during this time and I enjoy watching them, too.

Today's outside task was spraying down the exterior vinyl siding with bleach/soap. Years ago I saved a Green Sweep bottle, which is a type of liquid weed & feed, because the empty bottle has a long, strong spray that's fantastic for this job. It's not quite power-spraying. I rely on the bleach and strong Florida sun to do most of the work.   Yesterday, I worked on mowing and edging beds. I edged the bed along the retaining wall, then moved to the back rear bed where I pulled up the black vinyl edging. A friend helped us put that in and did so, arranging it into a tight "S" curve, which sounds like a good idea until you try to mow . The curves are just too short for the mower to fit and finally, after years of putting up with it, I've decided to pulling up all that black edging. It's much easier to just keep the beds well mulched and edged periodically with a spade. There's Canna's in that bed that are supposed to be along the neighbors ...