Choice Morsels

I've spent the past two days clearing out a spot for my new Night Blooming Jasmine topiary. I wanted the use the area behind the rain garden, which has been a jungle of leaf build-up, native daylilies, flag iris, spider plants (houseplant type), glad greenery and Chocolate elephants ears. The elephant years weren't thriving, so I dug all those up to move. I mowed and clipped everything else to the ground, giving me space to plant the new topiary.  It's the only sunny location I had left to plant it.  I replanted 4 of the Chocolate Elephant ears around it's base, then transplanted a bunch of Ajuga ground cover in the area as well. Everything else will grow back by fall, probably. (The Chocolate Elephant ears turn a rich burgundy color.) We'll see how it does. This is Florida. Soggy is pretty much our middle name. Here's my supply of Ajuga: It's on the north corner of my house among ferns with a Hybr...

I continue to work on adding things to my various rain gardens. Yesterday I was moving some young native orange lilies into place down the length of the outside of flag stones edging the back yard rain garden.  I'm excited to see the grassy shoots of the rain lilies I planted in there starting to popped up and look forward to taking pictures of them in bloom.  I've decided to move some of my Chocolate Elephant Ears into the gravel portion of that rain garden to pick up the color of the Giant Red Leaf Tropical Lily.  Today's feature Garden Pic is the first blooms of my Blue Stokes Aster: I bought it at Lowe's last fall, splitting it into 3 sections when I planted it. It's a full sun perennial that spreads , so I was deliberate on where I planted it. Though classed as 'blue' you can tell this blue leans to the lavender, but that is ver y common in flower color classifcation. After all, purple has an element of blue in it! That's why you...

Happy Wednesday! Today, I'm doing inside stuff because it rained this morning. I usually re-dye all my black summer capri's  yearly to freshen their color again and, since I have some brown, I did a round of brown dye as well. The only down side is having to clean out the washer barrel afterwards. The light carrot cake with the cream cheese & muscarpone icing was delicious without being too sweet. It definitely will be Monday's Good Eat recipe! Today I have "before" & "after" pics of my back yard rain garden: You can immediately see why I might want one here. This is where rain water gathers, though it does slowly drain out as well as soak in.  A Giant Red Leaf Tropical Lilly in the center here is the star feature for this rain garden. It's just a baby. When mature and filled out, this leafy giant will easily be 4-5 feet tall and wide. It's burgundy-tinted color will help break up the wall of green and it wi...