Choice Morsels

Two Garden Pics today: First, my one Gardenia bush is blooming again! It seems to be a variety that blooms heavily in spring, then again less heavily during fall and winter. It's flowers are not as large as the other I have that strictly blooms just once a year, but I have  to give it kudos for enthusiasm! Next, New Garden Art: I kept back a few mugs from my purge in July for charity give-away that I thought would be nice additions to my garden. This one is a very large Cracker Barrel mug that I put in the front bed by the mailbox. I planted Chinese Stonecrop in it and planted sprigs of Golden Creeping Jenny nearby. Both are ground covers that like sun and both winter over. I like the red lava rocks and add them here and there as accents. In the shady spots, being porous, they become homes for moss.

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...

This week's Garden Pic is a nice close-up shot of a Dusty Miller flower head: Dusty Miller is a common landscape plant around here in Northwest Florida. It's got a nice blue green color and winters over. I had a friend who expressed astonishment seeing this Dusty Miller bloom. She didn't realize they flowered!  

Today's Garden Pic is a shot of one of my Hardy Hibiscus blossoms: This was from the first bloom season in June; it's coming on with a fresh set of blooms right now for fall. I did save a couple of seed pods for next year.  

Garden Pic of the Day is a large female Tiger Swallowtail on my yellow Lantana! You can recognize it's female by the blue spots; males don't have the blue. Females can also be "black form" with all black wings with blue markings, but there body remains striped. I've seen both. The yellow and black female like this is far more spectacular looking! And a nice picture of a Mockingbird Nest This nest is old; the brood long gone. It's in a Gardenia at about shoulder level, so easy to see. I wanted to get a picture of it before removing. Mockingbirds do an elaborate weaving of sticks for their nest; the center is of soft grasses.  And finally, a strange visitor found it's way into my back yard.... Yes, it's a parakeet. He showed up on Sunday, 1 August. It seems odd to me that right after the house across from me is abandoned by it's renters and the owners show up to clean things out---I have bird that can't hardly fly in my back yard? I fed him Sunda...

Garden Pic for today is a evening shot of these brightly colored 4 O'clocks in one of my front beds.  It was around 6 pm, still light after a rainy day. They stay open all night, feeding moths and so on.   Other news: I got all Dave's clothing boxed up, plus a box of odds and ends to give away, such as mugs and other household type things. Plus, a few pieces of furniture are ear-marked to go. It was harder then I expected, though, to find a charity to swing by for a pick-up. Goodwill isn't doing home pick-ups. Salvation Army had one guy and a small truck and couldn't pick-up the desk I wanted taken away as well. I wasn't sure who else to call, then found a website that pairs people to charities that do pick-up in your zip code. (free) They connected me to the Waterfront Rescue Mission and they set up a pick-up date later this month to do the pick-up. However, the form had me fill out exactly what I wanted picked-up and that's all they will pick-up as that's ...

The Garden Pic for today is my purple Butterfly Bush! This one is a "dwarf," so it remains a compact mound   Other Garden Work: I've been working my way around the house, cleaning up various beds. This view is what I walk past out the front door. It has mounds of Asparagus Fern & is home for my house plants during summer. Before I took this picture, it was thick with pine-needles, Bay tree leaves & overgrown with wild blackberry's, which was interfering with the Asparagus Fern. It was a mess. So I cut off all the Asparagus Fern in order to rake it out, pull up blackberry stems and so on, put down newspaper over exposed soil, mulched the rakings with the mower and put that mulch down on the newspaper around the Asparagus Ferns.  So now the Fern can get a fresh start and it looks neater. The job took 2 or 3 hours one afternoon.