Flower walk

I decided to take a walk around the yard, and look at flowers, both those intentionally planted, and those who chose to reside here for one reason or another.

Oh Petunia, you're such a pretty little enemy. So now what do I do? Destroy you, even though the butterflies like you? Work to keep you in check? Why can't you just behave?

Snapdragons shouldn't be blooming, or so they tell me. I hear they don't like our Florida summers, but this one is holding on just fine.


We planted Pentas to attract hummingbirds. I haven't seen any, but the butterflies visit several times a day.

I love Spiderwort. It surprises us all around the lawn. Even dear husband, who thinks anything you didn't plant yourself is a weed, doesn't like to mow them down.

A hibiscus flower that hasn't opened yet? No. Turk's Cap. So named because that's what is supposedly looks like. These are in the far northwest corner of our yard.

And finally our Crepe Myrtle tree is blooming. These are all over our neighborhood, as trees of various sizes, and seeing them is always a treat.

Square Foot Fool

After many years of unsuccessful vegetable gardening, I decided to try Square Foot Gardening.




It's recommended that the smallest beginner garden should be 4x4, but I thought even that would be a bit much for me. So I have 3x3. My sweet husband built a raised bed for me, and designed a "critter cover" to keep the squirrels and rabbits out. Although I planted in all 9 squares, not everything took, so I currently have 3 open squares. I'm not sure what I'll put in them. This time of year in Florida is not really the best for planting. Right now I have cayenne peppers, bush beans, chives, basil, rosemary, and cherry tomatoes. The beans don't look too healthy, and I'm not sure they'll survive now that the wet season is here. The basil and chives were struggling in little pots in the kitchen, so I moved them outside in the hope that they'll be happier there.

Look! We have one ripe pepper. What can you do with one pepper? I guess I'll need to search out some recipes.




And here are the not so healthy beans. It appears to have attempted flowering, but the flowers dropped before any beans formed.
Ah! Some tomatoes. Not many will be ripe at once, so I'll have to get creative and try to pretend there's enough for all three of us. We'll be having very small side salads.
















This looks a little sad in the picture, but it really does look like a decent little garden in person.





*Note: I have no idea how to load these pictures. No matter what I do, they all load above the text, then I have to try and move them to where I want them. They look a little haphazard don't they? Kind of like my garden at times.

Flowers First

I suppose the first post should have some pictures of pretty flowers. I was going to start with my square foot vegetable garden, but hey, that's not pretty. So here we go.


Here is the milkweed in our butterfly garden. We have seen many Monarchs lay eggs on the milkweed, and we've seen many Monarch caterpillars. We've only seen one butterfly emerge though.



This azalea is no longer. I'm sorry, but azaleas in a garden are just not that great to me. They grow all leggy and you can't prune them after late June. They only give you a few weeks of flowers, and you spend the rest of the year keeping them trimmed. Azaleas look much better in the wild. I did try to transplant it to the far back area of the yard, but it didn't make it.

By far my favorite in this group is the sunflower. This is an accidental sunflower so I don't know if it counts as part of my garden. These grow all the time, from birdseed that drops around our birdfeeders.



Ah, Sun-flower, weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the Sun,
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller's journey is done:

Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow
Arise from the their graves, and aspire
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.

~By WILLIAM BLAKE~

Moving my homeschool blog

I've moved my homeschool blog over to here http://floridamom.homeschooljournal.net/

I'm in the process of turning this into my gardening blog.