Less is more

What to do on my week off from work? I’m the kind of person that can’t sit home with noting to do, so this week I went out into the garden looking for a project to keep me busy for the week.

I found the project in this corner of the garden. Much to the dismay of my dog Rosie I decided to take some of the grass out and expand the flowerbed. The grass in this area of the garden did not do well and most of the area was cover with weeds.

I recycled all the border stones from the old border; and went looking for annual plants at Home Depot. The selection was poor, this been Christmas week and gardening was not on the top of the agenda for most people around here. I purchased impatiens, begonias, pentas, dianthus, and marigolds; I also transplanted lantanas, blue daze and Bolivian sunset from other areas of the garden.

In this corner I planted milkweed (butterfly weed) they are the favorite host plant for Monarch caterpillars.

In this area I transplanted all my canna lily rhizomes and added rain lilies bulbs.

Here I planted black eye Susan, coneflowers and hollyhocks.

All in all it was a very productive week and to top it all off Santa left some goodies for the gardener.

I hope all of you in Blog land have a Happy and Healthy New Year and I’ll see you back in 2010

Merry Christmas from The DragonFly Garden

All gardeners with bad knees need a potting bench

This morning I decided that I needed a potting bench in my garden, my knees are not what they used to be, and I need to do as much gardening standing up as I can. I was inspired by Marlene at the “Why I need a garden” blog, she did a fantastic job with her potting area.

(Before)

This corner of the garden is where I keep my compost bin, and the only place I have room for a potting area; it gets plenty of shade and that’s good protection from our sunny summer days.

All the materials that I used for this project were recycled from other areas of the garden. The total cost to my pocket was zero.

Yesterday was a very strange December day for us; the winter storm that is hitting the northeast today passed by here yesterday, and gave us torrential rains that caused floods and even a tornado. Definite not typical Miami winter weather. Today is a different story, the weather is magnificent sunny, breezy and temperatures in the upper sixties perfect for gardening. The heavy rain yesterday dropped a lot of flowers from my Brunfelsia shrub.

This coming week I will be off from work and I am planning for plenty of time in the garden, so stay tune for more projects to come.

GBBD from South Florida

I have not done a GBBD post for a few months, I decided to start again as public service to my gardening friends in the northern hemisphere.
Here are some blooms from my garden on this December 15.

This white begonia is blooming again; it survived the heat of the summer in very good shape.

My other two bougainvilleas that are planted in pots are also blooming.

This white with a touch of pink is my favorite.

Brunfelsia or yesterday today and tomorrow is beginning to put on it’s annual winter show, by Christmas it should be totally cover with flowers.

Italian basil

Coleus, I usually don’t let them go to flower but the bees love them.

Flowers of the Tricolor Ti

Crown of thorns, I have two colors red and pink. These are excellent plants for our hot South Florida weather.

The last flowers of the plumeria tree for this year

WDW for the Holidays

It has become a tradition in my family to go to Walt Disney World one weekend in December to kickoff the Holiday season.

This weekend we drove the four hours north to Orlando, for the experience of the sights and sounds of the season. We were hoping for cooler weather but no luck. The Miami weather fallowed us to central Florida.

This year for the first time, we attended the Candlelight Processional at EPCOT. This event retells the story of Christmas with a special celebrity narrator, accompany by a live orchestra and a mass choir. Last year we tried to go but the lines were impossible, this year we purchased a package with dinner at an EPCOT restaurant and tickets to the show, it was worth every penny. The celebrity narrator for the weekend was fellow Cuban American actor Andy Garcia; he is my wife’s favorite actor.

If you are going to be in Disney during the holidays, I strongly recommend this show, if it doesn’t get you into the Christmas spirit, nothing will. (Sorry no pictures, I left the camera in the hotel)

Another reason we go this time of the year is for the decorations, specially the flowers. This year I was a little disappointed, it looked like Disney skimped on decorations and especially real flowers, it must be the economy.
All in all we had a great time, but most important we had quality family time together.

Color for the winter garden

This week I purchased petunias and impatiens at the local Home Depot, to give the winter garden a colorful look. These plants do well in our cooler winter months, and are so easy to take care.

Update on my vegetable garden. The eggplant and squash have many flowers; the tomatoes are growing fast and have lots of fruits (I think, I planted too many plants, too close to each other).

The peppers are not doing well, every year I have the same problem the leaves shrivel the flowers fall off and eventually the plant dies. May be the problem is with the soil.

We already are eating the lettuce and the arugula. This is my first time growing arugula, it has been a success.

This weekend I am heading for Disney World to enjoy the Christmas decorations and hopefully cooler weather, I’ll be back in the garden next week.

Not much gardening this week.

For the last two weeks there has not been much time for blogs or gardening at the DragonFly, my employer kept me busy at the office. My company is getting a new president and he came to NY this week to meet all the US based employees, needless to say we were all trying to put on a good show. My week culminated with a last minute trip to NY for three days of work and more work, I didn’t get to see much of the city. I was there during the lighting of the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center but didn’t see it.

One of my bougainvillea plants in a pot, this is their time to bloom.


I am glad to be back in hot Florida, the weather in Miami has not changed much, we get up in the morning with temperatures in the mid seventies and by the time lunch comes around is up to the mid eighties, typical Miami. For the last two days we had some needed rain, enough to fill my empty rain barrels.

Ornamental grasses doing what they do best bend with the wind. The yellow flowers in the picture are thryallis.

This jug was part of a broken water feature I had in the garden, now is part of the garden decoration.

This four by six feet space is my miniature jungle, where many creepy things live, and not even my dog Rosie dares to go.

Happy Thanksgiving

The oldest plant sale in South Florida

Today I visited the Ramble at Fairchild Tropical Garden. The Ramble is the oldest plant sale in South Florida, and is the event that all us gardeners wait for every year
The plan for today was to bring little cash and be very selective of what I was buying, and when the money ran out, it was time to go.
I did not count on a new technology, wireless credit card authorization machines. This year many of the plant sellers had these machines that made it very easy and tempting for the weak gardeners like me to buy with plastic.

Here is the list of plants that follow me home this year.
1 – Neo Royal Burgundy bromeliad, the color is magnificent I could not resist this one.
2 - Vriesea Zamorensis this sun loving bromeliad is perfect for my front garden.
3 – Elephant Plant (Bonsia Portulacario) I will be trying to do a bonsai with this plant.
4 – Sansevieria Cylinndrica “skyline” – This exotic succulent caught my eye and I had to have it.
5 – Horsetail (Equesetum Hyemale) – Another exotic plant that caught my eye, this one came with a warning from the seller, to keep it in containers and not to put it on the ground, is suppose to be very aggressive.

Next year the credit cards are staying home.

Garage Sale Day

Yesterday the girls decided to do our yearly garage sale; it has become a tradition in my home to do a yearly spring-cleaning garage sale in the fall. The weather was perfect; the temperature was in the mid sixties in the morning, reaching the high seventies in the afternoon, no rain and not a cloud in the sky.
My only participation on garage sale day is helping taking the staff out and picking up at the end of the day. Yesterday was a perfect day to do some maintenance cleaning in the front garden.

It was time to clean up the bromeliads, every year around this time I take out the old plants so the new offshoots have some room to grow.

My winter herb and vegetable garden is done.

I am finally done with my winter herb and vegetable garden, for the last couple of weeks I been planting the vegetable bed a little at a time. This year I added more than ever, for the first time I’m growing butternut squash, arugula and yummy peppers. Wish me luck with the squash, I don’t know how big is going to get, I am hoping it grows up the trellis.

This is the list of what I planted.

Vegetables
Eggplant – Black Beauty
Red bell peppers
Yummy peppers
Butternut Squash
Four different kinds of tomatoes – Red cherry, Yellow cherry, Celebrity and Better bush

Greens

Mix lettuces
Arugula

Herbs

Sweet and Italian basil
Parsley
Chives
Rosemary
Dill
Oregano

I’ll keep you posted of the progress, so far in two weeks the tomatoes are growing nicely.