Choice Morsels

As the sun edges downward on the horizon, it's last rays strike the garden flowers beautifully! Native Daylilies   Red Salvia

  Today's cheerful winter picture is Red Salvia! It's very Christmasy looking through December, if there aren't any hard freezes. A freeze is coming. I have three Salvia blooming in 3 pots and plan on covering them. I grow them from year to year from their own self-seeded starts they leave behind. Nowadays, I really only enjoy blogging about the garden. I don't cook enough to do recipes anymore. This week I decided to look into a new car insurance carrier, one that would fit my budget better. I belong to the neighborhood app "Next Door" and saw people recommending this and that local insurance company. I decided make an appointment with a independent insurance agency recommended. They were so nice.  Long story short, I'm now set up with car insurance does fit my budget much better and includes benefits my previous insurance didn't offer, like car rental coverage and road assistance. Only funny part of the conversation was I asked how was I going to te...

Two pictures for today: one is my container garden and the other is our progress on the raised garden beds: Pretty In Red : I added a red Million Bells, a Red Saliva and a curly parsley to shade my stone hippo in this container. Red flowers attract Hummingbirds, so I always like to have Red Salvia in all my containers!  There are two other containers, each with a curly parsley. One has a pink Million Bells and a Red Salvia; the other has a curly parsley, a Red Saliva, a Lemon Thyme that's a permanent resident I think plus a Petunia that wintered over. Raised Garden Bed Progress: They're finally ready to be filled with soil! We plan on working on filling one first and hope to buy bags of garden soil this weekend! You can see the block work between the beds we worked on last weekend and you can see the gray landscape fabric layered in the boxes. There's actually 3 layers there: two layers of landscape fabric and between them a fine quarter-in steel mesh c...

I've been getting over a cold for the past week. New Year's present. It's a cough/head cold thing I guess is going around.  I'm just thankful it didn't include a stuffy nose--I had when I have to mouth breathe. Wednesday is the day I usually reserve for outside work and it's actually really sunny and pleasant today for Florida winter, so I got out and did some raking. Also finished up on Pampas Grass I was working on a few weeks ago. For photos today, I have 2 shots of new growth in two of my containers, just taken last week, that hold promises of spring being just around the corner! Red Salvia Seedings: The large one in the middle sprang up from seed, too. It was up first a couple months ago and the other little babies came up more recently. They'll eventually be moved to other containers and garden spots.  You wonder how? Once a Red Salvia stalk has finished blooming and all the blooms are brown, I just snap the stalk off and drop it in th...

This is the time of year my Red Saliva recover from the heat of summer and put on a show until it freezes! I have lots of orange Marigolds and pink & yellow 4 O'Clocks adding brightness to autumn, too! Today, I planted that Dwarf Butterfly Bush that came in the mail recently. I also moved a Bridal Veil shrub to a new spot, since it wasn't doing well where it was. Hopefully it will take off and really look good there!  Bridal Veils bushes have long arching branches that get covered with small, white flower clusters in spring, thus giving them the name. I also moved planted a pink Lantana I hadn't gotten around to planting until now and moved several small volunteer Mexican Heathers.  Both the Lantana and the Mexican Heathers are along the new edge of the back bed I enlarged slightly.

I finally finished planting all those Dutch Iris Bulbs!  A couple weeks ago, I'd dug up the 5 year old bulbs in two containers only to find they'd been fruitful and multiplied--creating about a 100 bulb-lets ranging in size from 3/8 to 1 inch in size! I'd already planted half, while the rest have been waiting in a bucket of dirt in the garage! As I planted them, I discovered a few were showing growth-tips proving it was certainly time to get them in the ground! Here in Florida, this time of year is when Dutch Iris puts up it's greenery to drink in sun for spring bloom! Today's photo is one I shot just this past Sunday as the setting sun rays fell upon this Red Salvia that's in a container just outside my patio door!  As soon as I saw it, I ran for my camera!  It's enjoying a period of prosperous growth & bloom right now, as it is does every fall--until the first hard frost. Though, the roots generally survive and the plants come back in spring. ...

The week 2 in the next round of bloggers age 50 or more in the "Between the Lines Series," is up! To read about the how and why all these older featured bloggers got into blogging, visit their  Interviews @ Katherine's Corner . Here's A Few of My Favorites: Turn Around @ 50 Feathering Nest Facing 50 With Humour Living By Choice You'll want to stay tuned---I'm going to be featured on May 10th! ***** For today's Garden Pics, I have a beautiful shot of my front bed Blooming Blue & my patio container Blooming Red & Purple! Blooming Blue : This is as pretty as my front bed as has ever looked!   This is Purple Salvia & Siberian Iris! Blooming Red & Violet! This container sits on my back patio. It's one of three. This is Red Salvia & Violet Petunias. The Salvia wintered over & the petunias were I found at Walmart for 50% off. I put them in all my patio containers. I find Petunias do better i...

Today, I actually went out and mowed half the back yard. Leaves & pine needles mostly.  I have a window right next to me. I can see my potted blueberries and I noticed this morning they're preparing to bloom.   Uh-oh. It's a little early. We're not done with freezing temps yet. I'll have to watch the extended weather, so I can cover them as needed. Today's Garden Pic is some of my Red Salvia on the back patio. This shot is from December before Christmas sometime. It recently took a slight hit from Jack Frost, turning some leaves dark, but he didn't kill it. I carefully left old buds on this one and below this plant in the pot dirt are numerous happy baby Red Salvia I'll be able to plant places come spring! I've also already seen scads of Zinnia & Marigold seedlings popping up all sorts of places. I wonder if they know something I don't? Stop back tomorrow for Mama Kat Thursday!

Today I was doing more fall clean-up like trimming off expired Hosta stems and picking up pine cones. I picked up around 40.  I also dug up a couple of giant Hosta's that were not thriving where they were to a new location. Also moved some Ajuga to the same location. Today's Garden Pics are Red & Purple Salvia! Salvia is a member of the Sage family. I didn't know that. Easy to grow and drought tolerant. Bees and Hummingbirds love Salvia; Hummer particularly like the red. These photos are both of my own Salvia's taken several about a month ago: Red Salvia: This pretty shot captures the Salvia in my large container garden in the front yard. The red is showier then the purple and makes a nice splash of red in the garden or container. Here in the South it can be perennial and will bloom well into winter as long as it doesn't freeze. I've seen stems sprout again in spring and sometimes they re-seed themselves. But I haven't been lucky enough ...

How's your Christmas decorating going? Lot's of people in our neighborhood have the icicle lights up and other decor in their yards! Our local Boy Scout troop will be selling fresh Frazier firs this weekend, so we're planning on picking ours up probably Friday evening. (They only sell them this one weekend and we prefer our tree money to go to a good use.) We both have a dental appointments Friday morning for a routine cleaning. (same dentist.) Then Saturday afternoon we're driving over to Destin to a Ballroom there to watch our friend, Megan, participate in a dance competition. It's sort of like a Dancing with the Stars type thing put on by all the local Fred Astaire Dance Studios, which she has been a member of for several years now. I'm looking forward to seeing her dance! Tonight a recently married couple, who used to participate in the ministry here while they were single, are in town for a couple days and have invited those of us who remember th...

For photos, I have two today : First, a nice shot of some of my miniature roses that are in the front corner bed near that large pot with the ceramic cat in it. You can see a couple of my Hoosier rocks. I have a small ring of them around  a pair of miniture roses: one light pink, one dark pink. And by "Hooiser rocks" I mean I toted them here from Indiana. The property we grew on had a valley with a rocky stream as the bottom that Mother and us 3 girls were haul stones up from for Mother's rock garden. Then later, my younger sister, Pat, carted a bunch of those to her home in Terre Haute. Eventually, Mother moved to Terre Haute also and when Pat sold that house, the pile of pretty, garden-sized stones moved to Mother's house. Finally, on a visit home, I decided to haul about 10 here to Florida for my flower bed. So, you see, they are traveling rocks. Second is a photo of Blue Salvia. It's cousin to the showier Red Salvia and you can buy either at an...