I am taking a Winter Olympic garden break.

For the next two weeks I will be glued to my TV taking in as much of the Winter Olympics as I can, the DragonFly will have to wait.
I am a huge winter sports fan, I don’t know where it comes from, I was born in Cuba and now I live in South Florida, in my younger days when my knees were in better shape, I was a decent skier; these days all I can handle is recreational cross-country skiing when ever I find myself in winter country.
I have to say that the opening ceremonies last night were the best I have ever seen, Vancouver and Canada put on a great show. I know that there is controversy about the cost of putting on the games, but I am glad that there are cities willing to take on the challenge.
I spend a few days in Vancouver five years ago, and the city won me over. What a beautiful place, of all the cities I have visited in my lifetime, it is easy on the top of my list.

I lost my night bloomer / Dragon fruit tree.

Last night we had a violent storm with winds up to 60 miles per hour, and my night bloomer was the casualty.
I had a feeling the days were number for this beautiful plant, the coconut trunk holding it was rotting and showing signs that it was cracking.

This picture was from better days.

The mysteries of seeds

I have a demanding full time job and my time in the garden is limited, that’s why sowing seeds has never been high in my gardening priority. I don’t have the time or the patience.

This year for the first time I’m sowing seeds in my vegetable garden, and having mix success. In this tray the squash did well and the zucchini did not.
My neighbor tells me that is all about the seeds, and that as long as I insist on buying those sold by the major home stores it will continue to happen. “Buy from catalogs grasshopper”
I have a question when is a good time to transplant the squash to the ground????

This year I am having an abundance of yellow sherry tomatoes.

Kalanchoe my new garden BFF

After the freeze we had two weeks ago is hard to find any plant in the garden that was not affected by the cold. Only the Kalanchoe plants are thriving and in bloom.

It seems like the Kalanchoe can tolerate the cold weather with no problems at all.

Ring around the moon

I took this picture last night, folklore has it that a ring around the moon signifies bad weather is coming.

Art at Fairchild Tropical Garden

This winter Fairchild Garden is featuring the art of Yayoi Kusama. Her art is playful and very colorful, perfect for an outdoor garden.

Look kids a playground…… “No, don’t touch” said the guard posted by Fairchild, each piece is worth over $700,000

Is this art?????

The cleanup continues

Today I dedicated my time to the front garden, as you can see my ground orchids took a hit, I am hoping that they’ll come back.

For those of you new to my blog this is what they looked like in their best days.

The weather today was great for gardening, I managed to finish this section of the garden but I had to stop and go inside my lower back was killing me.

My bromeliads did well in the cold weather, no damage so far.

Tomorrow my entire family is heading to the Fairchild Tropical Garden for their annual chocolate festival. How can you go wrong, plants and chocolate?

The cleanup begins

Pictures from my backyard garden yesterday.

I usually wait for spring before I cut back all my trees; this year Mother Nature started the job early. Next in line are the side and front garden. That will be for next week, there is a limited amount of trash I can put in our garbage containers.

This is what it looks now after all the pruning and cleaning.

I totally forgot about GBBD (Garden Bloger Bloom Day), there are not many flowers in the garden this January 15, what I have is mostly in containers, after I saved them from the freeze in the garage.

The butterfly weed is the only plant on the ground that came through fine. I guess that’s why is weed.

New in the garden this winter the Lobelia.

Finally a picture you don’t see very often in Miami, a frozen birdbath from last week. Today the temperature is 78 degrees. That’s more like it.

30 degrees and tropical gardens don’t mix.

I am getting tired of writing about cold weather, but what else is there to talk about around here. Last night was the coldest night so far; the temperatures dropped bellow the freezing point, and this morning the garden is showing the effects.

Banana trees are not meant for cold weather, if it’s below 50 it will affect the plant.

The starburst tree is dropping all the leaves, that’s a shame because it was getting ready to bloom next month.

My collection of coleuses are mostly gone, these plants are very sensitive to cold weather and are very difficult to bring back after a freeze.

I covered the vegetable garden and it worked, I had some damage with the basil and eggplants but the tomatoes are ok.
We have one more night of sub freezing temperatures and then back to normal winter weather by the middle of next week.

The Siberian Express is coming to Miami

Is cold this morning and is getting colder by the minute. This morning we woke up with temperatures in the mid 40’s and the forecast is for the mid 30’s by the afternoon. Is going to be raining and windy all day, perfect for staying inside.

This is longest cold spell I can remember since I been in Florida for the past 30 years. It started after New Years and it has been going back and forth between the 40s and 50s during the day and some nights in the upper 30’s. I know that those you experiencing sub zero temperatures most be laughing at all of us wimpy Floridians, but we are nor prepare for long stretches of low temperatures. Usually our winter patterns are a couple days of mid 40’s and back to the 60’s and 70’s and we rarely get temperatures in the 30’s in South Florida.

The economic effect to the state agriculture is tremendous, there has been many reports of crop damage to the winter vegetable harvest in the south and the orange groves in the center part of the state, so get ready for higher prices at the grocery store this winter.

As far as my garden is concern, so far is coming through ok, except for rats as big as New Jersey moving into my compost bin looking for a warmer place. I know I need to deal with it, but I have no idea how to evict rats from a compost bin. Any ideas???
All my flowerpots are put away in the back porch

Salad anyone?

Yesterday I picked my first full salad from my winter garden, as you can see I got a couple of bush tomatoes, plenty of yellow cherry tomatoes (they are so sweet), arugula and lettuce.

The amount of work I am putting into the vegetable garden this year, does not compensate the production I am getting back, but I don’t care, everything is so tasty and is all organic.

This is the vegetable garden tonight, the temperature is supposed to go down in the mid 30’s. We are in the middle of a cold spell that is going to be around the entire week, definite not typical Florida winter weather.

Happy New Year

White angel’s trumpets hailing the New Year, I took this picture last night with a full blue moon, the aroma from the flowers was to die for.

Wishing the very best for you and your families for 2010 and may your gardens grow and bloom in the New Year.

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