Choice Morsels

Today I've got a great shot of a Gulf Fritillary Butterfly on one of my red Zinnia's! You know it's fall when you see them flitting about the flowers in their seasonal orange & black colors!   Also worked on planting my winter Garden in one 4 x 8 raised bed yesterday:  12 broccoli plants, 1 tomato plant, 1 row of purple bush beans, 1 row of Spinach & 1 row of miniature red romaine. I also plan on planting radishes, garlic and another row of spinach in that bed. I looked up what various garden plants like to grow together with on Pinterest, which is called "Companion Planting." I found out tomato plants hate being next to broccoli plants, but love beans and broccoli plants hate being near tomatoes, but love growing with spinach. Lettuce and radishes are neutral; they can grow next to anything.  So I'm putting rows of spinach seed between rows of broccoli and I put the row of beans next to the tomato. Hopefully, everyone will be happy!

Two photos today of some of the Vinca flowers in my garden! Vinca are a common annual flower that comes in white and a range of pink from very dark to very like. They also self-seed readily, so once you have them, you generally can just transplant the seedlings wherever you want flowers when the come up in late spring. Here in the Deep South, Vinca can winter over, though it depends on location whether they are in shelter, sunny area or not. They are susceptible to freezing otherwise.  I have come from random seedlings that popped up in various places in my flower beds and I just transplant them here and there.   Most of my Vinca blooms have a style like this photo below: they usually have a "pink eye" at their center. Though, occasionally, I'll see all white without a pink center, but the pink center is the most common. However, one of the seedlings I transplanted to my front bed this year looks like this: Dark pink with a extended white center!   I've never seen o...

I have two Garden pics today: my white & pink Pampas Grass just blooming!  August is they're bloom season! Also, the set of 5 fancy hybrid Daylilies I ordered in June from Springhill Nursery came in the mail yesterday, so I've spent time both yesterday & today planting the fresh roots. It was a special offer buy now, pay after delivery; 5 different daylilies for $30, which is good since usually buying a single hybrid daylily thru Spring

Today's photos & garden task was tying up the Blackberries. I have 2 rows of thornless blackberry plants, which have more or less an "upright habit," though by sheer weight they tend to flop over and get in the way of mowing. So, I tie them up with torn strips of old sheet to keep them generally upright and out of the way. Tying them also helps protect them from being broken by wind or by me bumping into them. They reproduce by root, popping up new shoots out to one side or another, generally more or less in line with the parent plants. Here's a "Before" Shot of Some Blackberry Canes Near the Rain Garden: It is actually 2 plants.  This is the "After" Shot of That Same Pair of Blackberries Now Tied Up There are actually two tall metal pole-stakes in amongst all that tall greenery.  The canes on the ground sprouted lots of new upright growth, which appears now to be sticking out every which way since I tied up the central canes, but, trust me, on...

Well, even after replacing the Lawn Emitter Tops with a flap release, this one, was still not doing the job right. A daytime thunder shower let me see the gutter down piping was still backing up out of it's seams rather then flowing out and I decided the hole pipe leading to the emitter must not be right.  Later that day, I pulled the Emitter cap off to see standing water.  It's not supposed to have standing water. The other emitter line doesn't. (Not anymore since I adjusted it a couple weeks ago.) Not only did it have standing water---it had lots mosquito nymphs in that water.  I decided the whole pipe had to be redone to get rid of the standing water, because clearly the standing water meant it was not functioning correctly. So, the next day, I removed the grass and dirt covering it just to the white edging you see in the background of the photo. Originally, the gutter guys who installed it simply dug a ditch and threw the pipe in without using a level to check the flo...

When the bad tree-cutter cut down pine trees and let them fall on every adjacent fence, many branches on my Maple tree were torn down as well---but the upside is that loss of those branches on that side is allowing so much more sunlight in! Plus the neighbors pines are all gone, which makes things less shady and more light as well! My Plumbago shrub, which is planted in the vicinity of that Maple, is blooming more now then it ever has--because it is getting more sun! Plumbago flowers are naturally baby blue in color. It's a popular landscape shrub here in Florida. I got this one from a favorite local nursery that is now out of business, so I'm fond of it for that reason. Between the Plumbago and the Maple tree is this Raspberry colored Hydrangea.   It's been there for years, but this year it is blooming a bit more then it has up to now, because it is enjoying more light! This area is a few feet in front of the Maple, still fairly shady, but I view it from m y sliding glass ...

First photo today is one of my lawn emitters.  I have 2 in the backyard and rain water runs off the roof, down the gutters and out to these emitters, which open enough to let watch trickle out into grass. This version, with the pea gravel, is my improved version. The gutter guys really didn't put the two in very carefully. They just dug a trench, laid them in and, I guess, hoped they were right.  They didn't use a level to make sure they were angled properly and the emitters were both below grass level, so the water couldn't escape effectively. And t hey did NOT use any gravel as a You Tube video on installing these emitter kits I watched demonstrated, as tube below the emitter has a drainage hole for excess water left behind. Besides that emitter center only pops up 1/2 inch---not enough to let out water fast enough in a sudden, hard down-pour causing the water to back up, resulting in gutter down pipe seams squirting water and other blocked flow problems. So my project th...