Still Home (Mostly) and Growing

It's hard to believe that I've been at home almost non-stop since mid-March.

Time seems to move more slowly now that I'm not occupied with the customary busy-ness, and yet here we are, smack up against June. The year is almost half over and the June-December part of the year always seems to accelerate. We'll see if it seems that way this year, too.

Usually March and April are filled with garden and wildflower festivals, during the sunny-but-not-hot-yet days that constitute spring in Florida. They were canceled this year, but my friend who grows native plants had a sale from her backyard. That was big news for me, combining two indulgences: more interesting plants for the garden and the chance to get out of the house!

My friend sent a plant list to her usual customers, we replied with our preferences, and then on the chosen day and time, we did a drive-through at her home. Masks were worn and distancing was observed. But there was time for a little socializing and plant talk -- both very welcome! Anyone who arrived earlier than the appointed time stayed in the car and waited until the previous customer packed up and drove away.

It was lovely, and I got quite a haul on two different weekends. I was especially happy to bring home two very nice beautyberry bushes. They are blooming now, very delicately along the stem. Eventually these pale pink blossoms will become brilliant purple berries that the birds like to eat.    

Now to get them in the ground before it gets really hot. And to take a better picture of those tiny blossoms. 

Humble Favorites

One of the plusses of being at home 99% of the time since March 17 has been the opportunity to observe my semi-wild yard at all hours of the day. I keep the front yard quite conventional -- fitting in with the Joneses, so to speak -- but the back yard is landscaped mostly by Mother Nature. The more I see, the more I appreciate.

I have a fresh crop of dandelions every morning, turning their fresh yellow faces to the sky. Soon they're gone to puffballs and the cycle begins again.

The cardinals come first to the feeder, when it's barely light, and are the last to visit at night, as well. Sometimes they stay so late that I wonder how they can see to fly. At more traditional hours I see mourning doves, a couple of grackles, a Carolina wren, chickadees, a red-bellied woodpecker, and a mockingbird or two. Occasionally a tiny gnatcatcher zips through, and sometimes the catbird stops by. I can hear others in the bushes but haven't identified them yet.

The passionvine is still blooming enthusiastically. My friends tell me that its fruits are edible and delicious. I'm hoping I get some!

The mesclun lettuce is still hanging on in the garden, although it's getting a bit warm. I pick it in the morning, wash it, and use it in salad for lunch or dinner. It's incredibly satisfying to eat something I've grown. I definitely will do more of that.

I've already planted crowder peas and started some collards. Both of them like Florida summers, which will be here any day now.

There's nothing particularly noteworthy about any of this. But it's my back yard, a little spot of wild Florida, and I love it. 

Almost

Eleven days later.

Merry Christmas to all! 

She Knows

I received this pretty little lady as a gift last Christmas. Generally I'm wary of plants in pots because I'm not good at watering consistently. Despite my lack of enthusiasm, my intrepid little friend as has survived life in a tiny pot, an unfortunate episode of clumsiness that shattered that pot, and a long stay in a temporary home, otherwise known as a plastic cup. 

Now she has a fresh, new, larger pot, where she can continue to give refuge to the numerous small lizards who come onto the porch. They hang out for a while and once I notice them, I put them back outside.

The length of the nights tells her to get ready to put on a show -- right on time.    

This Bit of Summer

I could have styled this photo better (just a slight turn would have covered the sink drain with a leaf, right?) but I just slapped and snapped. Obviously.

And so you get a microcosm of early summer: a surprise hydrangea, backed up with some organic tomatoes in a blue bowl, and a sweet potato and an onion in one of my favorites, a blue-and-white polka dot bowl.

The hydrangea isn't native and so I am inclined to look askance at it, except when it fluffs up these pretty pale blue or creamy white flowers, as if to woo me into having more positive feelings about it. When it's not flowering, the only reason I tolerate it is that Kayak Guy's dad probably planted it, an unknown number of years ago.

The tomatoes come from the nearby CSA and the downtown farmers market, and are so much more deliciously local than what the grocery store offers. The CSA is almost done for the year -- once this run of summer squash ends -- because the Florida growing season is essentially backwards from traditional garden timing.

The farmers market will soldier on through the hot months, but will switch over to okra and collards, two things that I like even less than hydrangeas and store-bought tomatoes. It may be a long summer.

I remember buying the polka dot bowl on a "junking" trip with a dear friend, about 25 years ago when I collected blue-and-white pottery and displayed it in an antique cupboard. Now all I really collect is books, being more inclined to shed most other possessions whenever I can. But I've kept a few of my very favorite pieces from the decorating days, and I've kept the friend, too.

Such small things, and so much pleasure from each of them. There's a lesson there somewhere.

Catch-Up Weekend

After traveling last week for work, I spent the weekend trying to put things in order again. A lot of laundry, a much-needed paperwork purge (really, do I still need to be saving my tax return from 1995?), a little bookshelf refresh, a few hours in the kitchen, a home-cooked meal, and I'm ready to face the week!

The first order of business today is a trip to the bank. This is not a good thing. Someone filched my debit card info and had a fine old time on my dime. By the time I noticed, there was quite a bit of impact to my account. The fraud hotline at the bank assures me I'll get the money back, but it's still pretty upsetting. Even more creepy: the card never left my possession, except of course for occasional restaurant use. If I hadn't been checking my account online, I'd never have known anything was wrong. You can bet I'll be rethinking my financial strategy after this.

Doing some gardening is a nice antidote for this kind of news. I visited a new nursery, where they had lots of native plants, and did some planting.

I'm slowly transforming my yard from a fairly typical piecemeal older home landscape (mostly grass, with a few awesome mature trees and shrubs, plus assorted odds and ends that look like they came from someone's leftover terrarium) into what I envision as a diverse and welcoming haven for birds, lizards, butterflies, and assorted other small creatures.

That means flowers and berries and natives in particular (mostly). One of the nice things about using natives is that any "volunteers" fit right in, instead of being considered weeds. I try to keep things orderly, but I don't take it too seriously.

(The red sage is a native, and it will spread like crazy. The other one is last year's poinsettia, which seems to like its new home very much. It has doubled in size, although I think it gets too much night-time light to ever turn red again.)  

I must be doing something right, because just today I saw three different kinds of butterflies. I hope they are staying around long enough to lay eggs, because I have intentionally included lots of host plants for caterpillars to munch on. One tiny paradise, coming up. 

The Urge to Steal

I've been yearning for a lawn ornament lately, and I think this one would be perfect.

It doesn't make a lot of sense for me, because I'm not particularly attached to trains. But there's something about this old signal that sits in front of the railroad museum in Palatka.

Maybe it's the clear indication of straightforward choices. Stop. Go.

At least now I have an idea what I'm looking for. Surely there are other ways to say, "Sit in the garden for a while. Okay now, back to work."

Notes From All Over

I woke up in Jacksonville this morning and went for a walk along the river, just as the sun was coming up. It was just me and some joggers, and two people sleeping in the park. Oh, and some dolphins. That was great!

It sure was different seeing the bridges from the Riverwalk. Last time I saw them, I was kayaking under them. Such happy memories of the crazy currents there. 

I am about 80% of the way toward introducing the kitten to the cat. It is taking me forever. I know it's my own anxiety that's making it such a slow process. I probably worry way more about the What Ifs than both of them put together. But I just can't quite get it done -- yet.

The fleas are terrible this year and I am losing the battle. Today I got flea collars from the vet for both kitties. They are expensive but will be worth it if they work, and I only need to buy them every 8 months, so the per month number is not too bad (balanced against the time and expense of everything I've been doing that hasn't been working).

It has been raining almost every day: huge pouring thunderstorms with lots of lightning and dramatic skies. That's just great, because we really need the rain. And the late afternoon thunderstorm pattern is so typically Florida, it makes me feel like a kid again.

On the other hand, a few days ago a huge thunderstorm at 3 a.m. made it impossible to fall asleep again, after the thunder and lightning woke me up.  I finally just got up and started my day, because it was clearly a waste of time to stay in bed and worry about not getting enough sleep.  

I've been trying to transition my yard to native flowers and plants, slowly but surely moving away from a grassy lawn and clearly defined borders to a more natural layout with less grass and more diversity. Now come to find out this kind of getting-around-to-it gardening is called Slow Gardening (analogous to Slow Food).  I'm trendy and didn't even know it. I thought I was just lazy . . . or easily distracted.

One happy consequence of spending time outside this past weekend was a very cool wicker rocking chair I picked out of the alley, courtesy of my neighbor. It needs a coat of paint and a new cushion.  It's really true: someone's trash is someone else's treasure. I wonder what she will think when she someday sees it happily doing its rocking thing on my back porch? 

Hibernation Weekend

Even though it's spring shading into summer, my weekend included some hibernation.

Work has been extremely busy in recent months, to the point where all of us have been feeling a bit overwhelmed. That prompted my wise and perceptive boss to declare a "hibernation" period where we are going to concentrate on finishing work we have already started, postponing or avoiding unnecessary meetings, and tabling new projects until we get more comfortable with what's already going on.

I did a bit of the same thing in my personal life, too, though it was only one day of the weekend.

The weekend actually started on Thursday night with my town's monthly street party, Alive After Five. They close the main drag downtown to traffic and it fills up with vendors, food tents, people, dogs, and kids. This month's theme was Seafood Shindig. Here's a very bad photo of the pirate ship that was parked in front of one of the restaurants. (I need a little more practice with Hal's camera feature, obviously.) 

Afterwards we stopped in at the local blues bar. Real music, real people, real fun. The ceiling in this place is painted with chalkboard paint and when you are drunk enough they will give you the chalk so you can stand up on a table or the bar and write your own particular special message up there. The results are, shall we say, mixed. Not everyone draws pictures of hearts.

Friday was spent on the river, scouting for a paddling trip I'll be taking next month. Much as I enjoy the silence and closeness to nature of kayaking, it's fun to zoom along in a powerboat, too! 

Saturday was the hibernation part. I stayed home all day, except for a brief foray to the community garden to do my spring planting. Such a luxury to do chores, do some organizing, and generally catch up on things. It seems that when work gets busy, I start cutting corners everywhere at home, to make everything fit into the time available. I am still learning that taking some downtime before things spiral out of control is essential. But please don't ask me how many loads of laundry that took!

Sunday started slowly with more chores at home, including some yard work. My house has the typical bare grass backyard with a few spindly plants here and there. I'm working on transforming it (with my landlord's blessing) into a welcoming space that shows the best of Florida's lushness, and provides food, water and shelter to birds, butterflies, and small animals. That means laying out a plan, thanks to the local native plant nursery.

Yesterday, though, I was just laying out mulch, hoping to keep the lawn guy from mowing over my latest plantings. They don't look like traditional landscaping, so I want to be sure he can tell they belong. Eventually I won't need to mulch except with my own leaves, but in the meantime: I need to speak to him in a language he understands. And that language is pine bark.  

Sunday afternoon we went hiking, back to one of my favorite springs.  It was a perfect day to be out, just hinting of the coming summer heat. The same place is so different in different seasons, and I never tire of seeing what's new in Nature.

This spring was restored 10 years ago, after being drowned under a lake created by a farmer who wanted to water his cattle. After the property was acquired as state land, a restoration project removed the dam and uncovered the little ravine where the spring vents and boils lie. After being entombed under so much water, the spring was barely flowing and the banks were nothing but mud. In the time since, though, they have become a magical forest glade surrounding clear, quickly flowing water.

We got back to the car just before a monsoon of rain began - real pouring rain, with thunder and lightning. We need it so desperately! At home, my back yard puddled right up. Now my rain catcher is full to the brim and the cycle begins again.

At the Garden Store

I went on a plant binge. What can I say?  That dreary backyard was starting to wear on me.

At the native plant store, it was (to say the least) lush. A lot of native plants are interesting because of their leaves, not necessarily because of their flowers. But plenty of them have interesting flowers and fruit, and they are so much better for the ecosystem because they support the native wildlife. It didn't take long to realize there were many happy bees and butterflies hanging around

I had done some homework in advance, so I had an idea what I was looking for, but once I arrived I was paralyzed by indecision. Brain overload! Too many choices!

Fortunately the folks there took pity on me, made helpful recommendations, stayed within budget, and even loaded up my new friends for the trip home.

Whereupon I arranged them in the backyard in a configuration I couldn't really see from the windows.  Oops.  

Seems the things I want to disguise (ugly chain link fence sections not covered by vines) are mostly out of sight anyway.  A little redistribution of the pots did the trick.  Good thing I didn't put them in the ground before I checked the view from indoors!

Photos of the completed planting to follow. By the time I finished the digging, I was too exhausted to take any pictures.

But the birds showed up right away, so I must have done something right.

  

  

One More Native

This flowering vine leans over to my side of the fence from the neighbors' yard, thank goodness. I hope they never decide to take it out.

Its common name is Passion Flower or Maypop. I don't know the scientific name (there are many varieties) but who cares? I'll just let the pictures do the talking.

P.S. For those of you who thought this was a book blog, I have started reading again. Believe it or not, I might even post a review soon. Won't that be something new and different?!

More Plant Talk

I have a theme going here, I guess. It's just that it's easier to get a handle on the outside of the new place than the inside (which is still fairly box-intensive at this point).

Plus, I went to the native plant show and I had my checkbook with me.

Backyard "before."

Some people see a patch of bare ground. I see a blank canvas for some serious landscaping fun over time. The handsome old tree may be a camphor tree, but I don't have a positive i.d. yet.

Here's the first addition, a beautyberry plant. This is a Florida native and will have tiny purple flowers along the stem, followed by spectacular magenta berries. Birds love it.

This spindly pair is a set of pawpaw trees. The pawpaw is also a Florida native. It's a host plant for the zebra swallowtail butterfly. They were BOGO and that means the squirrels and I will have fruit . . . someday! Also, some zebra swallowtails, if I'm lucky.

Meanwhile, it takes a lot of imagination to see them as 20' trees.

Last but not least, this is a firebush, another native. Its new growth is a pretty red color, and it has tubular red flowers that the butterflies love.

I also got a little carried away at the book sale. That's what a book sale is for, right?

Lots to learn, especially in the Florida native category. I've just been educated that while having plants of any kind is important, using native plants is even more important because it supports the whole ecosystem.

For example, flowering plants that a particular kind of butterfly loves are just fast food stations if you don't also have the kind of plants that that kind of butterfly's caterpillars can eat. To the butterfly, it makes the difference between passing through for a snack and moving in to raise a family and establish a butterfly dynasty.

I like the sound of that. Butterfly dynasty. Coming soon (someday) to my back yard.

One More from the Garden

Zucchini, I presume.

I've been warned about the very real possibility of zucchini overload. When I lived in New Hampshire everyone warned me not to leave my truck unlocked during July and August, because people would leave bags of zucchini in it! I think they were joking, but I never took the chance.

Hope I haven't planted too much . . . with this one plant!

Garden Action

The garden is coming along, at last. I was a little late getting started. Also, I suspect that my plants are not as robust as certain others because I am using organic seeds and fertilizer. (GMO, anyone?) Still, progress is progress.

Less progress is being made on getting a faster connection so I can upload photos without devoting a whole afternoon to the project. Once I get that solved I can post about watermelon seedlings, squash seedlings, and some baby sunflowers. At least, I think that's what they are. Garden maps are for sissies.

Meanwhile, this isn't my sunflower but I couldn't resist it. Sunflowers will always be my favorite.

Barely Blogging

Life continues to be insanely busy, despite my determination to stop trying to be everywhere at once. There are just so many things I want to do . . . and spring seems to be a particularly busy time of year.

Meanwhile, on a much different time scale, the garden continues to grow. Even so, the teeny beans remain quite, well, teeny.

The other day I noticed some new leaves pushing up where I'd planted squash and zucchini. I was all excited that they were coming up so soon, although not quite in the place I remember planting them. Hm.

Since then some new sprouts have appeared, and they are much more readily identifiable as squash and zucchini. The first set looks suspiciously like grass. Double hm. I don't know the history of this bed, having just moved into it, so I am just keeping a weather eye on them for now. Once I'm sure what they are, if they're grass, they are out of there!

The nasturtiums can definitely stay, though. I never get tired of them.

Garden Pics

Okay, here goes with the relocated garden. I moved from Bed #13 to Bed #21, which gets much better sun. Now my plants won't be leeeeeeaning sideways anymore.

Clockwise from top left: Nasturtiums (little round parasol leaves), bush beans (pointy leaves), mesclun lettuce (multi-colored and -shaped leaves), frisee lettuce (fluffy leaves), and more mesclun lettuce. The mesclun is a mix of tender baby lettuce types, some sweet and some spicy. They are ready to harvest now with a snip of the scissors.

Some very happy parsley, with beans in the background and frisee in the foreground.

Bug's eye view of mesclun (center) and parsley (at left), with beans and nasturtiums in the back. That's not a black snake, it's a soaker hose that automatically comes on once a day for about 15 minutes. I use the regular hose every other day to hand water. Because the beds are raised, they drain very well, so it's almost impossible to drown anything.

Aren't the nasturtiums brilliant? They are easy to plant, too, because the pale, wrinkly seeds are about the size of a pea. (In contrast, the lettuce seed is like dust.)

I have loved nasturtiums since I was a little girl, planting a garden with my dad. He was a New Hampshire native who lived in Florida for 40 years, but never failed to rejoice when the Burpee catalog appeared in the mailbox every January. Old habits die hard.

Nasturtiums are edible, but I just like to enjoy them.

Planted, but nothing to show yet: zucchini and yellow squash. They should be up any day now.