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? 

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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.