IRMA the recovery

This is what it greeted me Monday morning after Irma left us, the garden was totally trashed.  It could have been worse and our friends in the Florida Keys and Florida's west coast were not so lucky.   

We were hit with a category 1 winds and possibly cat. 2 gusts, must of the houses and buildings in the area did well, not so much for the trees and people's fences.  I lost my favorite flower tree, the yellow Tap tree in front of the house and my date palm.  I have a couple of trees to straighten up and a lot of clean up.   The good news is that all my feces held and so did my tool shed.  

Is going to take a long time to get the garden back to normal, this might be a good time to reevaluate the entire concept for the future.  My back yard went overnight from a shade garden to a sunny garden.  Thanks to my wife, daughters and son-in-law for starting the clean up while I had to go back to work.  

 This is my orange Geiger tree, I want to save it but is not budging.

 The trunk of the date palm will need professional help to remove

 The debris in front of the house is all from the garden.  It will take a long time for the county to pick it up, there are so many piles like this all over Miami.

 Yesterday I had to put together the small patio off my dinning room, it gives me hope that soon the entire garden will look normal again.  The beauty of mother nature is that it always comes back

Let's not forget the people of the lower keys, they are suffering so much. Is going to take a long time for their recovery and to bring life back normal again.

Dragonfruits anyone?

It has been a while since I had time to work in the garden.  Between family vacation, a hectic work schedule and harsh summer weather, there was little time for gardening in the past couple of months.  Today I got up early, before the sun came up and put in a couple of hours in the front garden. There was a need to do some weeding, cutting back some plants and general cleaning up.  The overgrown plants was bothering me every time I walked into the house.   

This week at the DragonFly Garden

These flowers were at peak this week

Every year these orchids put on a show. (I need some help with the name of this white beauties)

The next batch of bananas.

My new garden cat, he was born here and stayed around.   Now I am feeding him, so I guess he is my cat. He doesn't have a name yet and is a little shy.  He doesn't let me touch him, but we are working on it.

When I came home from vacation, I found two Dragonfruits in the Plumeria tree.  We get many flowers every summer but few fruits.  The flower are only open for one night and must be pollinated by moth in the middle of the night. The chances of getting a fruit are not that good.

Summer green everywhere

A new garden resident.

My new garden man cave

I was complaining the other day, that I needed a working bench for outside my garden. Look what I got for fathers day,  I finally have my own garden man cave.

This week at the DragonFly Garden

The hot July summer is doing a number on many of my plants.  The good news is that we are getting daily rain storms, soaking the ground and keeping the garden green.  The only plants that don't mind the heat and the rain are the Bromeliads.  This is one of my favorite bromeliad flowers. 

  

Ruellias do well during our hottest months

Every now and then I get one day flowers from my cactus collection.

My garden is full of Blue Porterflower weeds, it is an invasive plant that as some point you have to pull them out or they take over the entire garden.  One positive about this plant, bees love the flowers.

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY 

Happy Fathers Day

Happy Fathers Day to all the dads, including my 104-year-old dad, the man who is responsible for all my gardening genes.  I want to thank my talented son-in-law for his gift of this beautiful garden bench he built.  Fernando is a master fine carpenter who does wonders with wood, The fence and the gate were designed and built by him.  If you are in South Florida and have a wood project in mind contact him at FEFCDesigns  The bench will sit in the sun for a couple of weeks for the wood to dry and will then be stained in the same color of the fence.   

This week at the DragonFly Garden

Is that time of the year for the vegetable garden to go into the compost bin.  This year the production was dismal, it's time to rethink the concept of  a future vegetable garden.  I left the eggplant below because is doing well and it has many flowers, but not a single eggplant (what I'm I doing wrong??) 

Is summer and the Fire Dragon bush is on steroids.  I can't keep up with all the plants that need to be trim and the weeds that got to go.

This is a Monk Skipper butterfly, it likes all the flowers.

At sundown the Zebras gather under the Firebush, some times there are twenty to thirty flying around.

The DragonFly garden is at war against a nasty invader.

I am at war with this nasty climbing weed.  My neighbor on the right side of the house has let this weed go wild on his property and now it has jump to my side.  This nasty plant is impossible to stop.  Every week I pull branches jumping on to my garden.  Today I noticed that it was covering the top of my Firebush tree, it only took a few days and it already was covering the top of the tree and moving on to the mango tree.  I don’t know the name of this weed, but I am going to have a talk with my neighbor and see if he let me try to fight it from his side of the yard.

This week at the DragonFly Garden

The summer heat has arrived and is time to pull out all my winter flowers, and plant summer hardy plants like Moss Rose and Purslane.

Periwinkles are another strong summer flower for us; the good news is that they grow wild everywhere.  I let them grow to give color to the summer garden.

Mango season is in full swing; this is my neighbor’s tree.  I did not get a single mango this year from my two trees. I made the mistake last year of over pruning both trees after the last mango was picked.

This Cardinal couple has taken residence in my garden; they like to come to the feeder and the water fountain in the late afternoon after all the other birds are gone.