Have a nice holiday

Good evening Friends ~

Hope you are all enjoying your long holiday weekend.

It is very warm and humid here, but at least we had some nice breezes today. We even had a nice bit of rain during the wee hours of the morning.

The first two pictures below are of canna blooms. I grew this from seed and these are my first blooms. There are more sprouts coming up beside the main one in the pot. I had to use some snail and slug bait today, because someone has been munching on the leaves with great abandon.

Next we have Kathleen.

***

Gardening is medicine

that does not need a prescription.

And with no limit on dosage.

Author unknown

***

Zone 10 ~ s.e. FL

People can't leave comments

I want to thank Sweetbay and Susan for letting me know that they were unable to post a comment to my blog. I just went through my comment settings and all looks as it should be so I don't know why the problem is happening. At least I know it just isn't happening to me because it is happening to many others also.

I was wondering why no comments have been made for a couple of days. :-)

Mystery solved.

Hopefully Blogger can fix the problem soon.

Zone 10 ~ s.e. FL

A thank you, heat-humidity, blooms

Good morning Friends

I want to say thank you to Cameron at Defining Your Home for the contest she held recently. I want to thank BHG also, for sponsoring and donating the 5 - 1 yr. subscriptions. I was one of the winners, randomly chosen. I have known Cameron for years via the web, we met a long time ago in a forum about Cottage Gardens. Her colorful gardens are always an inspiration to me.

I also want to thank Susan of Central Florida Gardener for the sweet post she did on my humble cottage gardens where I grow roses and other plants on a shoestring.

A thank you goes out to Meems of Hoe and Shovel for the ID on the unknown grass at the library, Fakahatchee grass.

What a bummer! We are most definitely into summer down here. Yesterday I was out moving potted plants, weeding, raking, hand watering from around 9-12 and that was almost too much. I couldn’t seem to stop until I did and was surprised at the time. I was sweating buckets too but remembered to drink water also. I've got some plum tomatoes growing in cement blocks, they seem to be doing well. These are from seeds of tomatoes from the veggie market. There are blooms so I hope we get to see some tomatoes soon. I screened the area off with old screens in our stash of 'stuff', to keep night critters out. Every time I've grown tomatoes something takes bites out of them and throws them on the ground. Grrr.

I've got basil growing from seeds I recieved from Sharon Lovejoy and Renee of Renee's Garden. for becoming a member of Sharon's Grimy Girls Hands Club. I have enjoyed Sharon's writings and artwork since I first found her in the first issue of Country Living Gardener in 1989.

I used some of the basil last night in homemade pizza sauce. Yummy! I hadn't made pizza in quite sometime and it is a favorite of ours. I love my bread machine for making the dough.

I also made a banana bread yesterday afternoon, using a 5 spice powder blend, different and good. Great with a cup of coffee this morning.

Our little restoration project, is going to be a stationary garden fixture, not a camper to go out on the road with.

We sure need the rain, and it is predicted for us to get some next week, we'll just have to wait and see.

I'm trying to group all container plants into a couple of areas to care for them easier, then try to handwater the garden areas and am hoping for the best.

The other day I was smelling a wonderful rose scent, and I thought where is that coming from, and then I spied an open bloom of Chrysler Imperial. Oh, oh, oh. There is just something about the rose scents that touches my very being.

Then I smelled another rose in a different area and it was Maman Cochet. This little shrub is from a cutting, that I used the Fish-it Fertilizer on and it has quite a few buds about to open. I didn't get a picture of this bloom.

A few weeks back we were driving in a different neighborhood, and DH spied something in a curbside pile, and this is what it was. It is made of iron.

We found this street side Monday as we were coming home from doing our errands. The chip will go to the back, of course, so shouldn't be noticeable.

These are So. African foxgloves, grown from seed.

Penelope roses again. They are so sweet.

Queen Crepe.

So far, I am really enjoying using Live Writer to write my blogs and upload them to Blogger.

***

"The secret of improved plant breeding,

apart from scientific knowledge,

is love."

Luther Burbank, 1849-1926

***

Zone 10 ~ s.e. FL

Restoration Project

Good Sunday afternoon Friends,

Summer is here, and no rain is predicted in the near future. We are in drought conditions so I am hand watering to keep things from crisping up. In the shade isn’t too bad but once the sun comes up over the trees, it starts becoming really miserable, especially when the humidity is high.

We are working on a restoration project. It has been on our mind for a few years now and it feels good to be making forward progress

We are calling it our Gypsy Wagon. Size is about 6’x9’. It was a Datsun Chinook Pop-up Camper, from the late 70’s. We bought this from a friend of ours who was dying of brain cancer. It was a rust bucket, but still had some life. Then three hurricanes brought down heavy, hard sections of the melaleuca tree in our back yard, right onto the little Datsun.

We popped the top after hurricane Wilma as the camper had a propane stove so I set up camp as we were without electricity for 13 days, and this was our little cookshack.

This past winter we decided to save the camper and sell the Datsun body to a junk car dealer

We wenched the truck out from under the camper shell. The guy hauled it away, we moved the shell back, made a floor on a base that is anchored into the ground, and have started working on it.

I love the project. We are using curbside shopped materials that we’ve had in our stash, trying to buy as little as possible, although, we’ve had to buy some pressure treated wood for base and flooring.

I’ve already got the garden area going to the east of it, which is where the clothesline and the picket fence garden are too

I will just give a some teaser pictures as to how it looked before. The first picture shows how it looked with a pile of cut up pine branches, from our tree that smashed into our back shed and into the neighbor’s yard. We were cutting it up in our neighbor’s yard and bringing it into ours. From here it went out front as the trucks were able to come by and pick up more debris. It took weeks and months to clean it up all over the county.

I put a piece of marble over the little stainless steel sink for counter space to set hot pans.





The pop top is gone as it was wrecked, and DH is making a solid top with a tin roof with extra windows above the lower windows too.

I’ll show pics when we are all done with the project. I just wanted to share this much with you all.

Here’s a picture of a camper that is similar that I found online.



I am writing this post using Windows Live Writer and will see how it does posting it to my blog.

Zone 10 ~ s.e. FL

Went to the library and fell in love ...

... with Magnolias and my DH even more. I had never seen a magnolia in bloom up close, much less smelled it. Tuesday morning I went to the library and blooms were open. I walked up to one for a close look and a sniff and was in love. I smiled all the way into the library. I told DH about it when I got home, and the next morning we went over there early to take pictures and for him to take in the scent as well.

While there we saw some interesting grass, and DH found something too. (He's always on the look out for treasures of one sort or another.) When we got into the car to leave, he asked me to close my eyes and hold out my hand and then I felt something slipped onto my right ring finger. I opened my eyes and laughed. It was a funky lucite ring with colored dots on black with a high clear top so that there was depth to the ring. That little 'found' gift made me fall in love with DH more. He has made me laugh and encouraged me since the beginning of our life together.

Anyway, I think the Magnolia might be 'Little Gem'. I would love to find one of these at a bargain price, and even then, I think it will be expensive. I'll have to start saving up for this beauty.
















I don't have a clue as to what this grass is but it is very interesting and DH like it too.







That's it for now. I've got to get ready for work. I was out earlier sanding cement off a 4'x8' sheet of plywood that DH will be using on our latest, neat project. More about that when we are done. This is a recycled, reuse project. :-)

Have a great weekend.

***

"To analyze the charms of flowers

is like dissecting music;

it is one of those things

which it is far better to enjoy,

than to attempt to fully understand."

Henry T. Tuckerman

***

Zone 10 ~ s.e. FL

Signing out of blogspot

I have been having a problem signing out of my blog for the past few days.

I checked into Google to see if anyone else had the problem and plenty do.

I changed my password, but that didn't fix the problem.

I have Firefox 4.

I don't save my passwords, I sign in every where I go. But with this new computer we decided to save the password for my blog.

I won't be doing that again.

In my Firefox browser DH went to Tools. Options. Security. Save Passwords. We removed the saved password for my blog. Clicked OK to save changes.

Back to Tools. Clear Recent History. Checked every box except for Site Preferences. Clear now.

It worked. I can sign out and I get the sign in window again.

Maybe this will work for some of you.

When the little window pops up asking you if you want it to remember your password. Click never remember for this site. Otherwise you might have to go through this all over again.

Happy blogging.

Zone 10 ~ s.e. FL

May Blooms

Here we are half way through the month of May already. Time sure seems to zip by the older I get.

Hope you all have had a great week. Between working 4 days and taking care of home, I've been learning Windows 7, using new keyboard, and a card reader for my camera.

This morning I got outside for awhile working under cloudy skies in my main garden. Weeding, trimming, raking and sweeping. Thunder started moving closer and closer so I stopped for the day. We then had a little rain. We had a little last night too. Really nice for us, although we really need a good soaking. More rain is expected today and tomorrow, so we'll see what happens then.

Here are some pictures of what is blooming down here now. Blogger seems to be having more problems so I hope this all works.

The first three pics are of blooms from the 'Incense' passion vine. The scent is sweetly exotic.




This one is starting to open.

Datura bloom, what a nice scent.



Here is a poor raggedy Gulf Fritillary butterfly sipping nectar from Golden Dewdrop (Duranta erecta) blooms.



The next few pictures are of the blooms from the Dwarf White Orchid tree, Bauhinia acuminata.









Last and certainly not least, Penelope rose blooms. Aaahhhh.









***

"The air is like a butterfly

With frail blue wings.

The happy earth looks at the sky

And sings."

Joyce Kilmer, Spring

***

Zone 10 ~ s.e. FL

Greetings from sunny Florida

Hope all of you mothers had a lovely day today.

It was a gorgeous, sunshiny day today. We went out early to check on a metal door I had seen curbside on the way home from work. We decided against it, and left it where it lay.

There was a house I wanted to get a picture of though, so the trip wasn't totally wasted, and did get several shots which I hope you will enjoy. This poinciana tree is only in bloom once a year. I love the color contrast.

Click on pictures for larger views.

Here is another sweet place that we found for the first time today.





Here are some pics from around Plum Cottage gardens.

















It has been somewhat stressful the past few days, crashing of Windows Vista in old computer, getting a new computer, transferring files and finally we got it all, and we are thankful to be done with this part. Learning a new operating system is always a challenge. DH also had computer problems and had to get a new computer in the last month. At least now we are both Windows 7. I've shed some tears and said some unlady like words, and have been stressed. I told DH this morning after we spent another couple of hours together downloading to this new computer,
"I have to get outside for a breath of life, butterflies, breezes, flowers and scents." He told me he had to get outside yesterday for the same reason. Too much concentration into these computers is not necessarily a good thing at all. It ties you in knots, your brain gets numbed. Now that it's basically done for both of our computers hopefully we won't have to do this again any time soon.

Every day is a learning experience in this life. Whatever we are dealt in this life, we all have to deal with our own circumstances. Some times are better than others. We have catastrophes, and we have small problems. We live life the best we can. hoping for the best and pray to God for guidance, blessings, healing, strength, peace, love.

I hope you all had a nice day today, whatever you did, and that you have a great week.

Zone 10 ~ s.e. FL