Choice Morsels

Today's Garden Pic: Pink Pampas! It's the prettiest of the Pampas, I think.   

The Garden Pic for today is my Pink Pampas Grass, which is just coming into bloom! On Answered Prayers this Past Week: #1)  If you recall in a previous post I told the tale of hiring a gutter company to redo my guttering and the sign I prayed for to choose the right one. The one I chose was busy, as they all are and wouldn't get to my project until at least July.  However July came and went. It was August---getting close to a more active period for tropical systems. My prayer about the gutters was, "that they'd be installed and finished before any heavy tropical rain started." I reached out to them about a week ago on when I might be getting on their work calendar? Eric, who I learned is the owner of AGS, called back that they'd come Thurs last week. By this point I knew Tropical Storm Fred was headed our general direction, though far away. They got the gutters completely done by Friday and by the following Monday Tropical Storm Fred arrived on the Panhandle---12...

Today I got out and got my tray of Broccoli planted. (9 plants) It did rain on my lightly while I was working on this. I also bought a tray of Red Romaine and planted it, but I don't think lettuce likes to be transplanted. I think maybe it prefers to be direct-sown.  I just planted the Broccoli on one side of the garden, opposite the melon. Also planted Curly Parsley 2 container gardens and Red Petunias in 4. Today's Garden Pic is my lovely Pink Pampas Grass that's out front.  "Pink Floosie," is my pet name for this Pampas Grass that blooms all these extravagantly fluffy plumes every September! I haven't counted this year, but 25 or more is the norm. Of course, a fter days in the Florida sun, the plumes turn a light tan color, but they are a pretty baby pink when they first open. From base to tip-top of the tallest bloom is about 8 to 9 feet tall. That's it for today! Stop back for Mama Kat tomorrow!

I feel a change in the air already--the feel of autumn! I mowed the back yard today and it was so nice outside. Warm, but with a dry feel. Finally--not sweltering! For Garden pictures today, I have 3 things: First: A Balloon Flower blooming in front of my blue ceramic cat: This Balloon Flower is one of about a dozen I raised from seed I saved last fall and planted various places. I put one in each pot that sits in front of the Pampas grass out front. This one looked so sweet blooming in front of the ceramic cat! That ceramic cat looks beat up because the deep freeze of the 2014 Arctic Vortex it sort of blow apart, but since it's yard art, it's okay if it looks a little rugged. Balloon Flowers are a terrific, compact perennial that bloom all season. I prefer the blue, because I collect blue garden flowers, but it also comes in white. Next: My fully bloomed out Pink Pampas: A couple weeks ago I had a bloom of the first couple plumes, but here she is in all he...

Last night at Bible Study the warm-up question was, "If you could have a theme song play every time you walked in a room, what would it be?" I knew that was going to be the question, so I had time to think about it, since I'm not all that savvy on music. I can never remember what artist played what song and I'm relatively ignorant of anything current.  I'm more familiar with classics of the 60's & early 70's. After pursuing a number of considerations via Youtube, I finally settled on the 1970 hit "Green-Eyed Lady," by Sugarloaf as my perfect theme song, since I do have green eyes.   It's more instrumental, heavy on the bass beat with a few stanza's of totally flower-child words. If it doesn't ring a bell, you can hear the original album cut  here via Youtube. Enjoy! My project today was trimming down another Pampas Grass; the 2nd one of a pair I have in beds in front on my property border.  Because of this location,...

  Greetings! We had some brief excitement this morning---a loud "BANG" at 8:30. The sound of a transformer blowing. I said, "It's probably a squirrel." It was the transformer on the electric pole right across from our house. Twenty minutes later, the power company truck arrived before my husband left. He pointed out to my husband the dead squirrel on top of it---yup, the squirrel did it.    I didn't get to this right away as decided today was a good day to get around to caulking the inside edges of our bedroom windows. They're bay windows. It was, of course, a major cleaning job with the bleach and the non-ammonia glass cleaner. Then messing with the bay window hardware getting the curtains down, washed and back up---an arduous task I don't enjoy. The caulk was in a container like hair mousse comes in, designed for easy re-use. It was nice.     I  have 2 garden pics for today: First one is from last summer. It's my ...

  My pink pampas is actually just beginning to put up it's gorgeous pink plumes---this picture below is how it looked last year! I've nicknamed it "Pink Floozy." It's far more prosperous then it's sister opposite it and a stronger pink. It must have put up over 20 heads! And she's loving all the rain we're getting right now, considering pampas is actually a desert plant . However beautiful it looked, I learned the hard way last year that letting it have that many heads is a bad idea. It made it top-heavy and the first gusty thunderstorm in early Sept blew it right over! So to prevent this little problem, I've decided to limit it to around seven fronds----enough to look pretty, but no so many to make it  top-heavy. I snipped the excess out this past Monday. Because this one and the other are so close to the property line, I take extra care to keep them neat. This means getting down under the cascading fountain of blades to trim a...