Sunday, September 04, 2016

After the rain, the rain lilies bloom

It has been a long couple of weeks of daily rain; tropical storm Hermine passed south of us but her effects lasted for days.  Today is the first sunny day with no forecast of rain and this morning the rain lilies decided to make an appearance. 


Not much gardening this week, the rain limited the time outside.  I updated a couple of beds in the front of the house.

 Most of the plants in my street garden are pollinator friendly, here I have a combination of milkweed, firebush, blue porterweed and yellow buttercup flowers.

 I let the lantanas grow wild in this area of the garden, I don’t have the hart to cut it back, and the butterflies love these flowers.



Update on Zika

Last week the Miami Beach botanical garden closed its door and decided to pull out all their bromeliad plants, the garden is located within the Zika designated area.  This is worrisome for me; my garden is about 40% bromeliads.  If this disease gets out of control I can see, how the state will mandate the removal of all bromeliad plants from local gardens.  They did it before with citrus trees when canker threaten the citrus industry, this time the consequences are much more costly especially to unborn children. 



So why am I planting more bromeliads?  Because I don’t like to throw away any of my extra plants.

I hope you all have a peaceful and restful LABOR DAY.

4 comments:

Susan said...

Oh, that is horrible about pulling out all the bromeliads. They are such a perfect plan for Florida. Yikes, I hope it doesn't come to that. We are still feeling the effects of Hermine since last Thursday. We desperately needed the rain and we got very little wind and virtually no damage. That's what you call a 'good hurricane.' Love your rain lilies and they really set off St. Francis. Perfect!

Anonymous said...

Try getting some mosquito bits to sprinkle in your bromeliad "cups" It is supposed to be environmentally sound.
jan in ocala

Misti said...

Ooh, I think the pulling out of bromeliads is a bad idea and jumping the gun. Considering the state is losing many of its native bromelaids to the weevil, I find even pulling them out of gardens is misguided. Mosquitoes live EVERYWHERE in Florida, pulling bromeliads is just a drop in the bucket.

Your rain lilies are beautiful!

Rusty in Miami said...

I agree pulling out the bromeliads will be extreme, but I don't trust the state of Florida they tend to overreact. They did during the citrus canker crisis.