You Can't Keep a Good Vine Down

Today I saw a sign of life in the lifeless sticks left by my coral vine. I wasn't the least bit surprised, though. This is one tough vine.

Every plant in a garden has its own story. My coral vine has a long one. It started over ten years ago when I bought a little vine at my local nursery. I didn't know anything about it, but I planted it in front of the porch of my old house. Over the next few years it covered the front porch, and the bees just loved it.

Hurricane Ivan blew through, and while the house still stood (although thoroughly flooded), my garden was destroyed. The next year the coral vine came back and flowered again.

Because our house had been ruined, we chose to have it demolished and to build a house ten feet higher. I was attached to what little remained of my former garden, and kept the survivors in pots near the FEMA camper we lived in (for almost two years). The coral vine had dug itself in pretty deep and I couldn't remove it myself, so when they were scheduled to demolish our house, the last thing I asked my husband to do when I left for work was to dig up that vine for me.

I came home from work, and the house was gone. My husband apologized about my vine, and told me that he tried to dig it up, but it was too close to the foundation of the house, and he just couldn't manage it. I walked up to where the front porch had been, and all that was left of my poor vine was a ragged stump. He told me it was useless to try to save it now, but I dug up what was left of it, and dumped it into a container.

The next summer it not only started growing, but grew so big we had to create a makeshift trellis for it to climb on while we waited for our new house to be built. After I was sure that the workmen were gone for good, and no one would trample my plants, I started my new garden and planted my coral vine. By the next year, it had already climbed up the pilings and covered our new porch. You just have to love a vine that works that hard to keep going.

Getting Organized--A Little...

I admire those super-organized gardeners--really, I do. I'm amazed by people who map out their gardens, make lists of plants, and follow those plans.

I purchase plants and then stagger around my garden with them until I decide where I want to plant them.

The thing is that from one year to the next, I don't remember what I planted the previous years. The garden looks so different when half my plants are dormant.

I keep the tabs that come with the plants when I buy them. I throw them into my bucket and wind up with hundreds of the little rascals. They were really starting to pile up, not only in my bucket, but upstairs by my computer when I needed to look them up on the web, and as bookmarks in my gardening books.

So, I decided to tackle it in a spreadsheet. I'm sure I could have done more, but for me (for now) it's the information I need. I like to take the simple approach to things, so I made a spreadsheet to track my plants. If it needs to be fancier, I can always add a column or two.

The great part is that I can keep adding to it, and with a few clicks of the mouse, sort it alphabetically. Let's see how this works.

The Birds and the Bees

I took a leisurely walk with my camera today to see what inspired me. We have lots of blackbirds around our property. I am no bird expert. It's a bird and it's black.

I think this one is a mockingbird. I could be wrong, but it looks like a mockingbird to me.

I wandered over to the false rosemary area to see what the bees were up to. These bees are farther from our house, and don't know me, so they shy away from me. I'll have to hang around the rosemary so they'll get used to me.

This gorgeous little thing was hard to photograph. It's a tiny green bee with a metallic sheen.

A turtle was enjoying the creek at high tide. It doesn't go with the bird and bee theme, but I just wanted to add this picture.

Blooms, Reptiles and Bees

My wisteria is finally starting to bloom. It's the later-blooming type, which is meant to be less invasive--and thank goodness for that because it is almost to the top of a seventy foot pine tree.

I can't decide what the plant below is. I thought it was an oakleaf hydrangea I'd planted early last year. It was one of those plants that the big box stores sell in a bag, and it never came up. Now I'm thinking that I may have taken a cutting from my Turk's cap hibiscus and rooted it there. I suppose I'll know more in a few weeks.

This anole posed for me on the railing of my porch. Every now and again he would stop and catch an insect. Anyone who catches insects is welcome on my porch.

These lizards have a look of ancient intelligence. 

The carpenter bees are busy looking for places to nest.

My Big Fat Greek Salad Garden

I don't normally grow veggies--mostly flowers and herbs, but I got this idea in my head that I should get a big container and grow myself some vegetables so I can make myself Greek salads. So, I've just filled it with a tomato plant, a green pepper, cucumbers, red onions, and (of course) some Greek oregano. Opa!

Hmm. I wonder what other meal-in-a-pot I could grow?

I just love the way some colors go together. The lavender-colored bacopa, the violet allysums, and the brilliant cobalt blue of the lithodora topped off with a crimson red calibrachoas make a delicious combination. This will look good when it all fills in. 

The Ugly Rash

Here is my reward for playing in the poison ivy:

Actually, it's much worse than this picture can show. It's an oozing mess, and is so swollen it looks like I grew a weird muscle in my forearm. The green stuff is some green clay I applied, which now refuses to wash off. Ah, the perils of gardening.

The daffodils may be starting to fade now, but the bracken ferns are filling in nicely while the wildflowers continue to develop. We have these ferns all over our property, especially this time of year.

My mason bees are drilling holes throughout my greenhouse. I don't mind them--they're good pollinators, and are pretty docile bees. There are also wasps building nests there too. I'm not so enthusiastic about them, as they tend to be a little more ill-tempered. I suppose we'll just all have to learn to get along. 

I spotted a lone bee again in my false rosemary. I just love that false rosemary. It's filled in so nicely and the only thing I did was ask my husband to stop mowing that area when I noticed the baby plants starting to naturalize. It thrives on neglect.

The Ugly Truth

Today's post is dedicated to newbie gardeners, messy gardeners, gardeners with low self-esteem, and those who are ready to see my garden in the raw. I'm showing you the ugly brown truth of my garden. Normally, I look for the aesthetically-pleasing parts, and frame them nicely, but I realize that there are those out there who must think that everyone else has a perfect garden.

For the most part, my garden looks like someone set off a bomb in the middle. There isn't much color right now. Most of my palms came out of the freezes quite fine, but I may have lost my pygmy date palm. We were smart to protect the birds-of-paradise.

There are piles of vines everywhere. The brown stuff in the foreground (above) is what's left of my coral vine that covered much of my front porch. It isn't showing any signs of waking up yet.

The back property is a work-in-progress. Yes, that's poison ivy climbing up the pine tree. We've slowly been cleaning up this area, but it will never be completely cultivated and will always provide shelter for wildlife. We plan to plant more trees.

I have lots of garden trash bags everywhere. I try to recycle what I can, but there is just too much to deal with.

So, now you know the ugly truth. I could show more, but it's much the same--mostly brown with a few spots of color. 

Today was washday for my garden gloves.

The Sky Vine is the Limit...

It's that time of year when it's difficult to blog about my garden. I am plenty busy, but don't yet have much to show for it. Well, that's not quite the truth. I have sore muscles, poison ivy rash on my forearms, and huge bags of garden refuse my husband has to deal with.

One thing I've been doing is moving vines. Crazy big vines. I'd planted a sky vine four years ago to a side of our house that was too close to the neighbors' house. At the time we hadn't closed in that part of the porch and I needed a rampant vine to give us some privacy. It did the job beautifully. We decided two years later to close in that part of our porch and turn it into a laundry room. I thought the vine would be happy on the existing lattice support, but within a year, parts of it were creeping inside the laundry room. We live on ten foot pilings, so it was working its way inside the house through the floors, and creeping around beneath the house. It also kept itself busy warping the lattice, and eventually popped it out of its support. This wandering vine was getting aggressive, and downright creepy.

It's a tropical vine, so it was completely flattened by the harsh winter. It's still dormant right now, so while the beast slept, we dug it out of the ground--a tuber the size of a man's leg. It's buried on the north end of our property where it can harass the chain link fence, and eventually, probably small dogs and neighbors too.

Meanwhile, it took a bag of dirt to fill the hole it left, and I've replaced it with Mexican petunias. They will fill in the empty spot in no time.

Tough Little Plants and Evil Twins

One tough little plant that I may have underestimated in my garden is the strawberry begonia. It's also known as a strawberry geranium, but is neither a begonia nor a geranium. This little guy loves to creep around my garden and sends out little babies in every direction.  It puts out delicate little flowers in the springtime.

I'm amazed that it's mostly sold as a houseplant. I left a few pots of them out in my garden during the winter, and was surprised to find them living and thriving after all those freezes we had. I wouldn't have thought the ones planted in the ground would have survived the prolonged cold. It seems, though, as long as they receive plenty of shade and rich moist soil, they are happy.

Don't you hate weeds that look just like the plants you are trying to grow? Have you ever saved and nurtured a plant only to find some sort of ugly green flower instead of what you thought you were growing? Have you been tricked into pulling out something you intended to save because it looked just like the weeds you were attempting to eradicate?

Yeah, so have I. Look at the similarities between nasturtium and dollar weed. When I am in a frenzy of weed-pulling, I could easily grab a handful of nasturtium before I realize what I'm doing. I have lost so many gerber daisies, because they look just like a nasty weed that grows here. I'm sure every cherished plant has an evil weed twin bent on its destruction.

Shady Dealings

The weather has warmed up and everything is waking up, including the weeds. I've been working on the back garden. The back garden is mostly shady, but this time of year the sun shines in from the south and the trees haven't filled in. The oak that is meant to give shade to the area below is still bare from its spring shedding.

Gardeners are always coming up with clever ways to protect plants. I just moved this shrimp plant from a shadier area, but I don't think it wants too much sun. Later in the season it will receive more shade, but for now I need to protect it. So, I made a mini-fence from bamboo and window screen fabric. I have lots of bamboo on my property. 

The screen diffuses the sunlight a bit, but allows rain and sprinkler water to reach the plant. Below I bent some longer pieces of bamboo over and laid the material over the top of some ferns. 

The banks of my creek used to be thick with ferns, but they were wiped out in a hurricane. Netted chain ferns are native to this area, but impossible to find in nurseries, so I've been digging them up from other places. Southern shield ferns are also native to this area, but easier to find in stores. Eventually, the trees above will provide more shade and the ferns will fill in  this area (by the creek).

Rain--I Don't Mind...

Beach-goers may have a problem with rainy days, but to me a good rain can perk up a garden like no irrigation system ever can.

I love rainy days, despite not being able to work in my garden. Anyhow, it's a good excuse to curl up with a cup of cocoa.

I'm working on a web page with more about my garden, because while a blog is perfect for a garden, which is ever-changing, it will save me the need to repeat myself on some things. It's here: Deborah's Garden  I'm still working with the quirks of Google Sites and trying to decide what to put in it.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Ah, those things we don't invite into our gardens. I deal with the weeds in a meditative way. I just park myself in an area and work my way through. It's soothing when I'm not in a hurry.

Vines are another story all together. They're tough, they're stubborn, they take a lot of energy to remove them, and they attack with their vicious thorns. Vines grow rampant around here.

I have a weird relationship with the poison ivy. It's everywhere, and it's not going away any time soon. I tried to get rid of it, and it won the battle. I'm not sensitive to the leaves, but I am to the roots. I learned this the hard way. We have an understanding now. It can have a few pine trees, but may not be in my flower beds. The birds eat its berries, and the squirrels build their nests in its branches. 

The poison ivy doesn't bother the trees, but there are other vines that do. Below is an example of what these vines do to my trees.

Smilax tries to destroy the trees by smothering them. It shoots to the tops of them and then covers them with masses of leaves. During a mild winter it will keep growing. It has nasty thorns on it so thick gloves are essential.

The wild grapevine is just coming out of its dormancy. It develops a thick woody trunk and actually pulls entire trees to the ground and gradually destroys them.

Its tendrils become hard, so attempting to pull the vine out of a tree can break the tree branches.

On a cheerful note, the daffodils are doing well.

Don't Worry Bee Happy!

I saw a honey bee today. It's the first one I've seen in almost a decade. I don't know where she came from, but I hope she'll bring friends next time.

Mostly for the past several years we've had plenty of carpenter bees and bumblebees.

The honeybee was collecting nectar in the false rosemary shrubs. False rosemary grows wild here. It looks very similar to real rosemary, and smells similar. They are blooming like crazy right now.

I planted a real rosemary bush among them. It's hard to find right now, as it blends well with the false rosemary. (It's the one on the left in the picture below.) Eventually, it will be easier to locate when it towers over the others. 

I've Got the Blues

I can't stop myself from buying blue flowering plants for my garden. I also can't resist purple and lavender colors. I found this little plant with its vivid cobalt blue flowers today. It's called Lithodora, but I don't know much else about it. Described as a trailing perennial, it's supposed to be fairly drought-tolerant and tough. I don't yet know how it endures the Florida sunshine and endless hot summers, but I'll soon find out.

I found a "chocolate" ajuga recently that also has vivid blue flowers.

 I love salvias. My favorite is Indigo Spires. My salvias all went dormant for the winter, and are just starting to green up again, but I couldn't resist the one below at the garden store. Anything for a bit of color this time of year.

I also couldn't resist a purple calibrachoa. I'm not really sure how to pronounce the name, but it's also known as trailing petunia or million bells.

My violets are doing well this year. They are popping up everywhere.

Later in the season I look forward to blue daze, cornflowers, and heavenly blue morning glories.

Of course I do get a year-round view of blue just by looking out my kitchen window.