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.