Gardening on the wild side.

Today I was in the garden pulling weeds and I looked up to see the biggest possum I ever seen walking on my fence.  These animals are nocturnal, why this little guy was out in the morning? I don’t know maybe date light savings time is confusing him.

My urban garden gets its share of wildlife, from many different birds to possums, raccoons and garden snakes.  All these wildlife visitors makes me happy, after all that is one the reason I garden, all creatures are welcome, including passums.

This picture is from my cell phone 

This bird is Prairie Warbler, most days it can be found on the trees hunting for insects. Soon it will fly north to spend the summer in the Southern US.  

This week at the Dragonfly Garden.

Not much is happening at the DragonFly, the gardener has a bad case of laziness and very little spare time to spend in the garden.  All my big projects will have to wait for the humid mosquito infested summer

New blooms this week

The winds of Lent or “Los vientos de quaresma”

There is a superstition in Cuba, told by farmers that every year during the time of Lent, the days become very windy and they call it “Los vientos de Quaresma” This year Lent started last Wednesday and so did the windy days, today is a beautiful day outside but very windy.   This weekend I decided to spend time outside enjoying the garden, no work except for watering and some weeding.  I noticed that the bird feeder is not as busy as previous days and that many of our winter visitors left early this year.

This is my only azalea plant, I love these flowers, but the heat and humidity of South Florida is not to their liking.  I was in Orlando last week on business and noticed that they are not in bloom there yet.  The bougainvilleas on the other hand love our climate; this year’s mild winter has been great for their flowers.

This week at the DragonFly Garden.

I have another cat with kittens making her home in my garden, she gave birth to two babies.  We have many feral cats in our neighborhood, unfortunate our local government does not pick up wild cats and is up to us to pick them up and take them to the humane society.  This is the second litter of cats for this mama in my garden.  I am going to try to catch her when the babies are older and take her to the vet to have her fix and release her back in the neighborhood.  By default she has become my cat, my wife is allergic to cats so bringing her to the house is out of the question.  I will also try to get these babies adopted. 

Update on my vegetable garden.  All three tomatoes plants have flowers and fruits.  The herbs are doing well and the swiss chard is ready for picking.

This is Cuban culantro, it is similar to cilantro but much stronger, great for cooking Cuban food.

My two key lime and lemon trees in containers are full of flowers.  A great surprise because both plants were not doing so well not long ago, both plants were sick with a fungus disease.

I divided these giant white begonias last year and planted the bulbs all over the garden.  This winter I was rewarded with these beautiful white flowers.