The Monarchs are in the House

Summer time brings more Monarch butterflies to our South Florida gardens. This morning I spotted two Monarchs enjoying the sweet nectar from my Lantana flowers.

Throwback Thursday - visit from a screech owl

Six years ago we were lucky to have a screech owl, pick our garden as her home and the place to have her chick.  She set up home in an old palm tree trunk in the back garden.  During the day she would keep an eye on the nest from the top of our fan in the porch or from on top of the patio furniture.   The experience changed the way I garden; now I’m more concern on how what I do in the garden will affect wildlife.

Vegetable garden, see you next season.

Today I took out the last of the vegetable plants, I also enlarge one of the beds and planted some bromeliads and succulents in the concrete blocks.  My plan is to let these vegetable beds rest until the next planting season in October.  I usually turn the soil over a couple times during the summer to avoid weeds from going wild. 

                                                                    Before

The week at the DragonFly garden.

We are harvesting mangos every day.  These mangos are sweet and have no fivers.

This mango tree is one of three trees in my back garden.  This little guy has been here only a year and this season we got the first and only mango.

This week we have new blooms from the Heliconia, Lantana, Thryallis and Ladies of the night plants.

Success finally a Hibiscus flower

Hibiscus are picky plants, all the right conditions have to be perfect to get this beautiful flowers.  If they are not happy they'll drop all the buds, I have waited for this one for over a year.

Chihuly glass art in the middle of the rainforest.

The Chihuly art exhibit at Fairchild garden is coming to an end on May 31(hurricane season does not mix with outdoor glass exhibits).  This weekend I walked the garden one last time to take in the beautiful art. 

One of my favorite areas of Fairchild is the rainforest section.  The tall trees, plants and the running water mimic the best of Central and South America rain forests. The well placed Chihuly art glass pieces throughout, made the walk a true delight.

White umbrellas

This week the garden is cover white mushrooms, they look like perfect little umbrellas.  The heavy rains from last week created the perfect ground conditions.

The Zebras are back.

The Firebush has become the hub or Grand Central station of my garden.  This morning I counted five Longwind Zebras and three Julia butterflies, plus hundreds of bees, all flying around the tree (what a site).  You can hear the buzzing from far away.  

I love all butterflies, but Zebras are my favorite and they love the firebush tree. I recommend this plant to anyone that wants to create a butterfly garden in south Florida.

This week at the DragonFly Garden.

Today on the agenda, I was planning to trim back my powderpuff tree in the front garden and give it a more round shape.  This morning while I was having my coffee and before starting my gardening work, I was reading my twitter account, and a tweet from a birder in England caught my eye.  He was asking gardener not trim their trees during nesting season.  Good advice, so I decided to check my powderpuff tree and what do you know, up high and out of sight I found a nest from a Mockingbird.  For now this job is on hold until the family moves out.

This planter box is in a sunny area.  Nothing I plant there survives and the planter is too heavy to move.   Today I collected all the snake plants (Sansevieria cylindrical) from the garden and relocated them there. Snake plants are succulents from Africa; they thrive in sunny and dry areas of the garden.

The garden is not only about plants.  I could not resist buying this wind spinner at Costco.

Is he saying hi or challenging me to duel???

The blooms of the week. 

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY 

A gift from the gods

After a miserable week of rain and temperatures in the mid 90s, this morning we woke up with sunny skies and temp in low 70s. A parting gift from our mild winter, too bad I have to go to work.