Any Mudflat is Better than None!

 And this one is more or less west of the road so the sun is behind me viewed from the road. I say as though this was a permanent situation. Unfortunately it'll probably not be here long. This field, that adjoins the ~west side of our community, is now owned by The Villages. Their recent grading produced this birdwatcher's delight. It'll likely soon be reconfigured into a subdivision.

This morning, though, I saw egrets, Great and Snowy, Glossy Ibis, White Ibis, Sandhill Cranes, various herons, Killdeers, both Yellowlegs and a raft of smaller sandpipers I couldn't identify. Plus a kestrel and our resident red-shouldered hawk. And Meadowlands on the wire and bluebirds in the air. I dreamt of this in retirement. 

There are countless ponds, drainage basins, infiltration basins... around us but virtually none of any use to wading birds. We're at the epicenter of The Villages. Their priority for pond management is a clean esthetic; no messy edges. That means steep slopes on the margins to prevent emergent vegetation and definitely no mud. I'll just enjoy this as long as it lasts.🙂

Rain at Last!

 

Sitting on the porch enjoying the rain

You have to be a gardener to know how wonderful I feel listening to the first rainfall in weeks of mid-90's temperatures. No doubt golfers are disappointed, but we gardeners are ecstatic and will sleep well tonight.

We water, and that keeps the garden alive but there's nothing like real rain. I've always hand watered my gardens with a goal of keeping the plant alive, not happy. Carrying them through, uninjured, to the next rain. Well we've done it again and I'm feeling really good. Eventually, likely in the next month, the weather will relax and we'll be looking at high temps in the 80's not the mid-90's. That'll make everything easier.

Drunken Sailor, Combretium indicum indicum

Best, and most, common names ever: Burma Creeper, Madhavi lata, Chinese Honeysuckle, Irangun malli, Ishq peccan, et alia. I read at some point after we planted it that this is the most popular/commonest vine in Delhi. I can believe it. It's got so many virtues. It's vigorous (more on that later), it's fragrant, it's pollinator friendly though possibly more so in its native habitat than here (it does attract certain moths in our garden, it flowers for at least 8 months for us in Central Florida, it seems to be pest and disease free, I never water it at any point in our, occasionally 8 month, dry season. Wow it's like a perfect plant. I have read that some people find the fragrance unpleasant, but smells are like that. I enjoyed the scent when I could smell it. I was never diagnosed with Covid, but a couple of years ago, I lost the ability to smell certain flowers and this is one of them. Oh well.  Before I forget, the plant is highly regarded by Feng Shui designers being considered indicative of abundance and prosperity.

We have been watchin Good Karma Hospital for a few weeks; it's filmed in Sri Lanka, not Delhi, but there's plenty of  Drunken Sailor in the backgrounds. Last night, the plot featured a drunken, maybe he was a sailor... It appears to be native to a wide range of tropical East Asia possibly even stretching around the Indian Ocean to Easter Africa. Undeniably a beautiful plant though its color, white flowers aging to red, and its relentless exuberance may make it more suited to some gardens than others. We love it.

As to invasiveness, I can say that in 5 years we've not seen seeds or seedlings but apparently it can, and is, a problem in South Florida. The flowers are hermaphroditic so, barring physiological or timing issues it could be self fertile. After a limited search all I could find on the subject is that there seems to be some level of self-incompatibility. So maybe if you have only one plant you're safe. Of course that's only if your neighbors don't have a compatible individual. It's hardiness is generally listed as 10a or 9b and we are securely 9a. There's a list of plants that are hardy in 9b that we lose regularly. I'd lose to grow Sea Grape, Coccoloba, that is very comfortable in Tampa, but no... Maybe I'm being unduly optimistic about chances of it escaping but I weed relentlessly and identify all seedlings especially new ones. Still, I wouldn't plant it in South Florida so we're going to keep it.

 

Hurricane Idalia Coming to Wildwood!

Tropical Storm Idalia will break from Cuba, become a hurricane, and race north northeasterly picking up strength till it crosses from the marine Gulf to the terrestrial state of Florida. That'll slow it down considerably and quickly but by then it'll surely be at least a 3. And we're only just under 50 miles inland. Up to the minute forecasts have winds not exceeding 40mph, but hey, twenty four hours ago, the spaghetti models almost all had it pointed far enough west of us to where rain would have been problematic and wind a non-issue. Until it starts to move, who knows?

In the meantime, I'm roaming the garden taking pictures and trying to commit things to memory. At a minimum the bananas will be shredded and likely, some of the elephant ears. And we'll get enough rain to last us a week, which is good. We planted a jacaranda this year and it went from four feet to eight. Should I remove the staking and let it move freely with the wind or leave it loosely staked at 4 feet? 

/
 

Odontonema strictum, Mexican Fire Spike: hot color in the shade

 If only I'd known about the shade deal when I planted it! In 2007, I sited it on the se facing back wall of our large shed. It was bleached and miserable for years. For the past few years it's been shaded by an elderberry, an avocado, a volunteer Simpson's Stopper, draped by the natives Coral honeysuckle and Virginia creeper. I finally saw many plants at Kanapaha Botanical Garden, growing in varying degrees of shade but all happier than ours. A lightbulb went off! Anyway, as I used to tell design clients, "shade happens", and it happened to us and the Firespike is happy.  

It looks like a hummingbird plant and it is. Once in a while I pull out a chair, sit across from it, and watch them zoom back and forth from the Coral honeysuckle and this plant. Butterflies flit among and between both plants. 

There are a few families (plant) that seem to be disproportionately represented in our garden. The Ginger family, the Heliconia family, the Pea family, the Acanthus family, I'm sure I've forgotten a few; sorry. Firesticks is in the Acanthaceae, along with Brazilian plume, Ruellia caroliniana, Brazilian mask, and a handful of others. It's a tropical family, and in fact, there are occasional problems with winter burn or even dieback. The pink odontonema burns half of the time. But here's the thing; They are all so wonderfully colorful in bloom, that we put up with an occasional need for season regeneration. 

 

Brazilian Plume, Justicia carnea loves the heat

It actually is native to Brazil, an evergreen in warmer places than Central Florida. For us, in USDA zone 9a, it gets very unhappy in the winter, enjoying neither cold (lows occasionally at or a bit below freezing) nor drought. It barely rains from November to June. When the rains return though, and temperatures push into the 80's and 90's, new leaves cover the plant and it flowers. Ours flowers, usually three times a year. 

I read that it's an evergreen that it reaches five feet tall with large leaves. In four years, ours is staying about two feet tall, mostly defoliates every winter, and has never had leaves more than two inches long. That size works for us as it stays nicely below the screen porch windows.  

Despite preferring ideally warmer temperatures than ours, I grew it successfully in zone 7a just north of the Washington DC. It died to the ground in winter but came back in late spring until finally succumbing to a severe cold spell.

 

Osprey with Fish (no plants today)

We've got this little pond out back; many years ago the initial owner/developer dubbed it "Mirror Lake". It does reflect nicely sunrises, trees, clouds, etc. but it seems a stretch to call it a lake. Ten houses, a vacant lot, and 150 feet of road circumscribe it. It's a steep pond dropping off rapidly from the shoreline. Ponds are like that in Florida or the vegetation would rapidly encroach until eventually there wouldn't be a pond. Herons and egrets wade from the side catching typically minnows or small bluegills, sunfish, ... . Bald eagles occasionally fish from the air. Our next door neighbor Nick has great video of them. We have alligators occasionally; they usually don't stay long. If they're too big we've always had them removed.

There've always been fish. Karen's brother Blake caught a 24" bass soon after we bought this house. Other family members caught similarly large fish, always returning them to the pond. The osprey ate his, as does the resident anhinga. 

During a transition of  the ownership of our community, the pond maintenance company wasn't paid and stopped maintaining the pond. I wince a little to think how they maintained it, chemically, I'm sure. Anyway, without the management, submerged and floating vegetation exploded, which combined with a hot dry summer to produce a massive fish kill. It was sad but interesting. We had dozens of large birds scavenging the corpses; raptors, herons, egrets, crows, and more. When all was said and done, fish came back but until the oxygen levels are righted, our fish populations are limited in number and size. Our grungy pond is more fun than the pristine version. More species and more individuals of frogs. Plus a family of Gallinules, parents and 6 small ones. I'm hoping for an ecologically based management program that'll balance vegetation and oxygen levels.     

 

Loot from Brigitta Sandu who is no longer Eldon Tropicals

Brigitta Sandu is no longer Eldon Tropicals. She sold the mail order nursery that shipped rare, beautiful, and uncommon tropical plants around the world. The nursery, still exists under the same name, and received  almost all of the stock. Brigitta will be moving back to Austria where she's already purchased a property with a greenhouse. Like a botanical Noah, she plans on taking two of each plant with her. That is, if they can survive bare-rooting and quarantine and if they're small enough to be movable. That still left a lot of plants; Karen and I went over to poach and bought the individuals in the picture below. There are some good ones: Dioscorea discolor, Milletia reticulata, Cornukaemphaeria aurantiflora, Musella lasiocarpa, Passiflora coriaceae, Anihurium superbum, Dichorisandra thyrsiflora, and a few more!

We first met Brigitta in 2019 though I'd been watching her site's availability for a few years before that. After all, she was located less than 30 miles from our Florida home. The space hasn't changed much on the inside except that there are many fewer plants in the greenhouse. Outside it's a bit more overgrown but I love the feel of the place. It's clearly the province of a plant lover. I worry that 50 years from now there won't be any, or at least many, places like this. I've loved plants my whole life and stumbling across small nurseries was a joy. I love Plant Delights and Cistus and their ilk but there was just something about these little nurseries that thrilled me. You knew there'd be a plant you'd never seen before. And you'd be able to buy it! And talk about it to the people who'd grown it. And grow it yourself. I cherish the connections that arose from these personal provenances. 

                                         Brigitta with one we didn't get: purple-leafed globba.
 

Hummingbirds Love Aloe maculata...and so do I

Along with a few large oaks, some cabbage palms of varying size, a coral honeysuckle, a variegated Agave angustifolia, and a crinum, this species was one of the plants that was here when we arrived/bought in 2006. Back then it was Aloe saponaria; it's still called the soap aloe. Don't hate the taxonomists; they only go where the science leads them. (and the nomenclatural protocols) We discovered early on that these flowers are amongst the favorites of hummingbirds. Since we started to garden here, we've planted dozens of "hummingbird magnets". There are a handful of nectar plants that truly do attract hummingbirds. Most of the rest are visited occasionally or even never.

They are the easiest plants in the world to move. Just slide a shovel under them, pry up, and pick up the plant with however many roots you got. You don't need any. Now you can plop it down anywhere and it'll eventually root. Even bare sand in full sun in the middle of summer. It may look a bit sad before it grows roots and experiences enough rain to rehydrate it but it will survive 100% of the time and start sending out runners within a year. 

In the beginning the garden was empty and this was a great cheap source of a lot of plants. I created 5 colonies around the space thinking that, when the flowers came, it would be a wonderful design element to pull your eyes through space. Alas, while the plants in any one clump bloom together, different clumps, in different spaces, don't. And as the years passed and growth happened, some clumps got so shaded they barely flowered at all. A few diminished to a point where, out of mercy, I moved them back to better sites. Oh well. they're still beautiful plants even if there's only two colonies left.

 

Plants from the Plantsman of Marion Fleamarket

Desert Rose was Beautiful Today 

 

Karen and I have been buying plants from Richard Toth for, going on twenty years. When we first met him, he had a small inside stall. Now he's expanded to the large outdoor space near the back of the market. We've always liked his mix of showy dependable bloomers and unusual or uncommon curiosities. Today he had Cieba, silk floss tree, which I haven't ever seen in retail. It's a spectacular plant and I'd have snatched it up in a second but we have no room. Though, I can't believe it knowing what to do with a plant actually stopped me!

Other choice plants we've got here include Brazilian Cloak, Calatropis, and Jacaranda, 

It's butterfly season here; there was a good selection of pollinator plants that were being swarmed by a variety of butterflies and other pollinators. On the larval host plants, we spotted a handful of females laying eggs. The passionflowers were particularly popular.

Long-tailed Skippers appeared this week

I don't know where they come from, whether they just hatched from cocoons or whether they've been living somewhere else.  They show up every year about this time. They like this dwarf firebush, also porteranthus. They seem to prefer full sun.
 

We have one plant of this non-native, dwarf firebush that we grow at a distance from our native Hamelia patens. I love the native; its presence guarantees an abundance of zebra longwings, my favorite butterfly. other butterflies and hummingbirds also frequent it. I worry about cross-pollination diluting the genetic purity of the native species. Wow, I sound like a Nazi! The problem is that our native species has coevolved with our native insects, including butterflies, over time. They work together. I haven't done scientific studies, hey I'm a gardener, but it seems apparent to me that the native pollinators greatly prefer the native species to the non-native. I've seen hybrids both in my garden, which I remove, and in nurseries. Indeed, some native plant nurseries sell the non-natives. Furthermore, they all, including the hybrids, produce red fruit. Birds eat them and distribute seeds. One of the red flags for an invasive plant.

I greatly fear the ship has sailed on this one. Still, it seems wrong for me to grow this plant. It's hard to rip it out when it does attract bees and butterflies.

'Tropical Weather for Tropical Plants

 It's been a hot summer in Central Florida (like everywhere else) and we've had plenty of rain. Yesterday, we got two inches of this in about 20 minutes. Driving west, we hit the rain about three miles east on our way home. By the time we got home, coaxed the dogs out of the car and into the house, and got dried off enough to check the total, we were already a smidge over two inches. Damn! No wonder Karen had to carry the  dogs the 20' from the driveway into the house. There haven't been a lot of rains over two inches but it's rained at least 4 days out of 7 for the last two months. 

We grow a lot of plants on ~quarter acre: Florida natives, scrub natives, southwestern plants, xerics from around the world (we have 7 month without any significant rain), and in spite of those parenthetical dry months, we grow lots of jungle tropicals because we both love them. Bananas, heliconias, gingers, random epiphytes, and a gaggle of one-offs. They love this weather, that is, steamy with regular rain. 

This Blue Java banana is ecstatic. The clump is 5 years old and we haven't had this wet a summer since it was planted