End of the year video

I am closing the year with a video from my back garden, I hope you all have a happy and healthy New Year and Thank you for following the DragonFly garden blog.

Merry Christmas

To all my loyal readers I would like to wish you and your families a Merry Christmas, Feliz Navidad and Happy Holidays from the DragonFly Garden

The winter birds are home for the season

This is turning out to be a good year for bird watching in my urban garden.  So far this winter we had Painted bunting, Cardinals, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Gray Catbird, Yellow-rumped Warbler and hummingbirds visit the back garden.  I make sure that there is plenty of food and water available for my aviary friends, the dense trees and bushes around the garden are also popular hiding places for the small birds.

South Florida in the winter is a great place for birding; we are the final destination for many migratory birds and a pit stop for those flying on to the Caribbean, Central and South America.  These days I spend more time out with my binoculars that I do working in the garden.  

The bill for bird food  is high this time of the year, besides the new visitors; we also have many year around residents, like doves, Blue jays, Mockingbirds and House Sparrows.

Starting over again

These last two weeks in South Florida have been the third rainiest December, since they kept records.  Last weekend we had one day where my neighborhood received nine inches of rain in a six hour period.  As you can imagine too much rain is no good for a garden, and it is devastating to a newly planted vegetable garden.  Most of the small seedlings in my vegetable patch were destroyed; I also had to pull out several tomato plants and most of the red lettuces.  The Kale was the only plants that made it through without much damage.  Today I replanted spinach seeds that were left over from the first planting and in the next couple of weeks I will shop for more seedlings.  The weather forecaster is predicting a wet winter due to “EL Nino” good news for the water needs of the area, not so good for us gardener if it continues to rain at this rate.   The good news is that the winter vegetable season is early and is not too late to start over.

This week at the DragonFly Garden.

The Brunfelsia tree is in full bloom, I call this tree my outdoor natural Christmas tree.  The Lantana and Crown of Thorns flowers are also doing well.

This small hawk has been hanging around my garden, trying to hunt birds from my birdfeeders.  Yesterday she finally got one, according to my book she is a Sharp-shinned hawk.  

Today I found this young Monarch butterfly and an open pupa nearby