Fall is in the air.

Finally this weekend fall arrived in South Florida, and with it came, cooler temperatures, low humidity and the beginning of the dry season.  Yesterday I headed to the garden, Fairchild Tropical Garden that is, ready to take some pictures, do some bird watching and exercise.

I arrived at the garden at opening time (7:30 am) with my camera and tripod in hand; the perfect early morning light waits for no one.  There were no special events at the garden, so I had the place all to myself.

The garden is getting ready for Halloween festivities; the statue is of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, the famous environmentalist and author of the River of Grass book about the Everglades.

The spider is not a Halloween prop, but one of many real spiders throughout the garden.

This cat bird was very gracious, and let me take his picture.

Winter vegetable gardening begins.

Yesterday I took a trip to my favorite nursery in the Homestead FL; I was looking for seedlings to start my winter vegetable garden.  I come home with arugula, butterscotch lettuce, broccoli, eggplant, tomatoes and peppers.    The tomatoes and pepper are going in containers; in the next few weeks I will be adding more seedlings and sowing seeds as the temperatures get cooler.

Last year when I started these vegetable beds with construction blocks, I used the squares inside the blocks for planting, but soon found that they were not ideal for growing vegetables.  This year I planted a combination of bromeliads, succulents and drought resistant plants.  I like the way it looks.

This is my garden work station; I call it the garden’s garage.  Like everyone’s garage it needs cleaning every couple of months.  The beach umbrella you see in the picture, I found in my neighbor’s garbage can, now it shelters me from the sun and at the same time it makes this corner of the garden standout.  

Not a fan Palm trees

I never been a fan of Palm trees,  when I moved to my house 30 years ago, the house came with 10 Queen palms, today I am down to three.  These trees are mature and too high to maintain, the fruits drop to the ground and all become pops, the dead leaves are not very attractive.

As far as I'm concerned these trees are grandfather in, so I'll keep on complaining.

This is the second Dragonfruit of the season.  I get many flowers but few fruits, it all depends on a night moth to pollinate the flowers.  Lately they don't seem to be around at the right time.

Vegetable garden update.  I'm waiting for South Florida fall weather, so far this season we are getting a lot rain and the summer heat continues.

In the garden this week: The Mexica Flame is blooming.

 

After four hours of hard labor today, pulling palm pops (they don't come out easy) and cleaning up, this is what this corner of the garden looks like.

PS. This post is done with my IPad