Choice Morsels

Today's Garden Pic's are more late day Autumn sunlight shots: Golden glow on this Cardinal Basil just coming into bloom on my patio! A Mexican Heather also highlighted by late date sun! What I love about Mexican Heather is it blooms until frost, so it's great food for all types of bees & butterflies late into fall!   

Florida winter isn't without it's color. The Cypress turns orange and oaks turn russet, dotting the evergreen landscape with autumn color.  Today's Pic:  The lavender Mexican Heather and purple Spiderwort blooming together in a front border! In afternoons, when it's warmest, I see honey bees enjoying the Mexican Heather, which is a small shrub. A hard freeze will kill it's the outer branches, which I'll then need to trim off, but until then, it's happily blooming! Spiderwort is an edible weed, which you can read about in a previous post here .  (I have yet to try using it's leaves or blossoms in anything.) That's it for today! Stop back to see what's up for Friday Finds!

Today was mowing and a light bit of edging in the front and north side yard, plus laying down weed & feed in the last front section. One of my biggest lawn weed issues is Doveweed, a flowering ground cover weed that blends into the grass, then smothers it. I didn't use to have it, but my next door neighbor quit using weed products several years ago and his lawn got it thick. Then, naturally it spread to mine. It's a vining weed. I generally pull up any I spot--that's the best weed control really. Today's Garden Pic is Mexican Heather! This is a small, low-maintenance flowering shrub needs no pruning that I love to use in my landscape! Here in the south, it's a perennial, but an annual in the north.  It runs roughly 12 inches tall by 20 inches wide. In my experience, since mine come back from the root every spring, as a perennial, Mexican Heather generally have a life span of approximately 3 to 7 years. (In contrast to my Gardenia, for example, whic...