From commentor Paul M:
I have a friend who lives in Micanopy, a small town in central Florida. I’m not a gardener, so I won’t attempt to identify what’s what in this collection.
I do know there’s a bottle brush tree in the yard. If you look closely, you’ll see a bee doing its thing in that photo.
***********
First pilgrimage to the local garden center yesterday — picked up a whole bunch of pansies / violas (which always sell out before May around here) and not enough white alyssum (which should *not* be sold out already, dammit). Also an overambitious hanging basket of salmon pink impatiens, because I couldn’t resist the splash of color; the only place to hang it is in full sun, but I’m hoping I can take it down and replant it in a more shaded area before it gets too hot / bright around here.
I’ve also got seven must-have tomato plants on order with Laurel’s Heirlooms, and the Spousal Unit’s favorite Chocolate Sprinkles and Sungold from White Flower Farm. So I can pick up one or two more favorites, if I can find them locally, and still have under a dozen rootpouches to tend this summer, which (Murphy willing) will leave me more time to work on the rest of the yard!
What’s going on in your garden (planning / prepping / notes), this week?
Pete Mack
#1 looks like azalea, but I can’t make out foliage to be sure.
•Lots of lilies
•Bottlebrush is Banksia spp, Australia’s iconic flower
•Amaryllis is weird heavy flower coming straight out of ground.
Don’t recognize bell flower.
sab
Seriously, is this now? Or just what you expect in six weeks.?
Ohio here. Deer and squirrels don’t seem to like daffodils ( I knew that) or hyacinths ( I didn’t know that.) They do love tulips and they chomped all of them. I do remember when a young deer followed a paper boy into the grounds of our local tourist tudor mansion. We named her Elizabeth. Everyone thought she was adorable until she ate the tulip tops.
sab
I used to live in Florida and I love bottlebrush. Too cold for it in Ohio.
sab
@Pete Mack: Florida is barely into the tropics. Australia has nothing out of the tropics. Such different climates.
NotMax
@sab
An atypical dish: Deep Fried Hyacinth Bulbs.
sab
@NotMax: Seriously? Who eats that?
ETA Not criticizing. Just wondering
ETA Also too. I love onions and garlic. Can’t get enough. But that would kill my dog if she ate it. Gives them hemolytic anemia, where their body kills off its red blood cells.
Pete Mack
@sab:
Huh? Alice Springs (right smack in the middle of Australia) is on the Tropic of Capricorn. Much of Tanzania is temperate climate.
Betty Cracker
This was pretty funny:
NotMax
@Pete Mack
Have heard that Hope springs eternal. What’s the story with Alice?
;)
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
“Nepo baby.” Heh.
sab
@Pete Mack: Yes, but just barely. Like Florida wants to be tropical but isn’t quite.
Van Buren
Leaving in a few hours for Key West, where I have not been since 1979. I am reliably told it’s different now. Weather forecast for the week looks worse there than here on Long Island. Since my wife is Irish and gets a sunburn walking to the mailbox and back, days of rain will not be much of a bummer.
raven
@Van Buren: I hope the sargassum hasn’t arrived.
sab
My pitbull just had a mast cell tumor removed. Huge gash in her side, about eight inches. Our vet is on vacation. This keeps happening to us ( surgery then vet/doc on vacation.)
Dog was in a lot of pain. Apparently rimidyl has its limits. Dog sobbed all one night because she was in so much pain.
Called next morning and was told our vet is on vacation. I insisted, because they claim to be a practice, with multiple vets.
When we got in the other vet was very helpful. There are a lot of painkilling medications that are not opioids. Antihistimines mostly. Stuffed them all into dog the last two nights and she slept like a puppy.
Baud
@sab:
I can’t handle a dog in pain.
sab
@Baud: Mine, normally a sweetheart, growls when I stuff pills into her. It is a bit scary to pry a pitbull’s mouth open to force pills into her that she doesn’t want while she growls at me.
OzarkHillbilly
@sab: That is rough, hope she feels better soon.
Pete Mack
@sab
Melbourne is at the same distance from the equator as Atlanta. It has a mild climate, and is definitely not tropical. (I’ve been to both.)
You are being led astray by crimson rosellas and sulfur-crested cockatoos, which despite their looks are not tropical birds. Given a chance, they’d be invasive all over the southeast USA. And Banksia thrives in Melbourne.
Baud
@sab:
I’m not the best model when it comes to training dogs, so I can’t have a big dog whose bite would actually do damage.
Van Buren
@raven: Keeping an eye on reports. Seems like a minor issue so far, hoping that’s accurate.
sab
@Pete Mack: At least you aren’t in Ohio with its lovely lake effect north coast snow storms.
So Australia is like Florida? Only with different birds? And fiercer reptiles?
Baud
Speaking of Florida, I can only assume drawing DeSantis’s ire has been good mojo for the Rays.
Jeffg166
Having a spotty frost in Philadelphia this morning. Maybe again tomorrow morning. Covered seedlings outside.
Cut the large forsythia to the ground. I like an open air look. Cutting it down every three years keeps it that way. Otherwise it would fill in and be a solid shrub.
Another reason to do it is with the rain situation becoming more iffy every year in the summer it will be a much smaller plant for a few years needing less water.
There is another big forsythia at the back wall that needs the same treatment.
sab
@Baud: I suck at training dogs, and I like them big. I have never trained one to heel properly. But they do let me stuff pills down them, but with scepticism on their side. Ponyo is the first one ever that actually growled at me.
sab
@sab: I wanted to grab her by the ears and yell “you realize you are a rescue?” but I didn’t. And she ingested her pills. So we are all okay and she is asleep and not in pain.
I cannot believe she wakes up every morning all cheerful and friendly when I am the one who drove her to the vet.
LiminalOwl
@sab: oh, poor dog! I’m glad you were able to find something helpful, and I hope she heals quickly.
Pete Mack
@sab:
Australia is a continent, roughly the size of CONUS. It is not “like” any one locale.
Sorry about your dog. That is hard, hard.
Raven
@Van Buren: Me too, I was headed there in 1975 when I was in a wreck in Atlanta and broke my back. I finally made it last October and did three offshore trips in 4 days!
OzarkHillbilly
Thanx for the pics, Paul, a real brightener for this Easter (blech) morn.
Not much to report in garden news:
Heard my first whippoorwill of the year.
Hummingbirds are now in south MO so I expect to get buzzed pretty soon.
I have finished cleaning last years detritus out all of my flower beds.
Still too cool to plant anything in them but it is a tiresome chore out of the way.
I bought some Asian Lily bulbs and stuck them in the ground last wkend. Already coming up.
Haven’t seen any sign of the ones by my mailbox, but I still have my fingers crossed.
My greenhouse spinach bolted this week, so I cut it all and froze it. Will start anew.
And oh yeah, I had total and complete germination failure of all my seed starts. Theory: Too warm in the greenhouse. So I’m opening the windows on it and try trying again.
OzarkHillbilly
@sab: Dogs don’t hold grudges the way cats do.
Raven
@Pete Mack: My cousin is in Melbourne right now! I was in Sydney on R&R during the moon landing!
delphinium
Lovely photos! Daffodils about ready to bloom so will be cutting some from my yard to take inside. Will do a bit of yard clean up today and trim back some shrubs. Still a few weeks to go before I can even think about planting anything outside.
Albatrossity
@sab: No. Most of Australia is not in the tropics. Brisbane, in the NE, is the same latitude as Miami. Melbourne, on the southern coast, is the same latitude as San Francisco. Sydney is the same latitude as Wilmington NC.
Not tropical.
Kristine
Lovely photos. Just a touch of envy. One of the things I miss about Florida is the variety of flowers.
We had a red bottle brush tree in our front yard. IIRC, there’s also a creamy white variety?
Yesterday was sunny/50s here in NE Illinois. Not consistently warm enough to remove winter ground cover, but I did do some weeding and dead stem removal. Hacked down a multiflora rose–they’re invasive around here. The tricky bit was digging up a hosta that I had planted in place of a hydrangea that I removed because it stopped blooming. Only I didn’t get of it, so last year it came back and even flowered despite the hosta that was growing on top of it. Anyway. hosta removed and planted elsewhere. I’m hoping I didn’t shake up the hydrangea too much.
In other news, the crocuses are winding down and the first daffs opened yesterday. Come on, Spring!
And a Happy Easter to all who celebrate.
Kristine
@sab: Healing pup thoughts headed your way.
Also, should be an “all” between the “get” and “of” in my comment #34
WaterGirl
@sab: It’s heartbreaking when they are crying like that.
There’s a painkiller that lasts something like 2 or 3 days, that they can give him before he comes home. After that you can start with the pills.
JAM
This weekend I mostly just weeded my flower beds in the backyard. Last weekend I planted an oakleaf hydrangea in the middle of the bed in front of the house. I also planted 18 strawberry plants in the raised bed I used for yellow squash last year. I decided that squash is too cheap to deal with the squash vine borers. I forgot to pre-order tomatoes this year, so I will probably buy them next weekend when the tomato nursery opens.
Gvg
Let’s see: azalea, agapanthus, abutilon, daylilly, bottlebrush Callistemon, amaryllis, agapanthus, abutilon, azalea, daylily, abutilon, amaryllis.
My azaleas are past by over a week and I am in Gainesville 10 miles north of Micanopy. The spring plants festival was over a month ago. Summer is nearly here really. early spring stuff starts in February and peak is usually March. Right now we want the summer rains to start. Yesterday I cleaned out the old bromeliad foliage so the new pups could show and have room to grow and not have the old ragged stuff making them look bad. I have the next week off and some of it will be in the garden. I am pulling the winter mulch away from the base of shrubs so that rain can reach the soil when we get it. Also lots of seed starting. Planting out the zinnias I started a few weeks ago, starting more sunflowers. My banana shrub is still blooming and the garden smells delicious. Michelia figo.
WaterGirl
@LiminalOwl: I can’t remember if you guys have dogs?
WaterGirl
I am so jealous of those African Lilies, aka agapanthus. (#2 and #7) There was a nursery that used to carry them here, but they closed. Did I mention how jealous I am? Definitely one of my favorite flower.
kalakal
Thanks for the photos, looks very like what’s flowering in my garden right now.
Those Agapanthus are gorgeous.
Amaryllis love it here in W Central Fl, just stick ’em in the ground and away we go.
I have a lot of criniums ( too many) which love it here as well and it is (non bearded) Iris city.
On the non bulb/rhizome/tuber/underground lumpy thingy front a lovely flowering plant that likes it here is Tibuchina.
Strangely for Fl my garden could do with more sun, it’s quite shady due to the Live Oaks and Queen Palms.
I must look into Azaleas.
Currently desperate for rain
Paul in Jacksonville
@sab: Actually, that was 3 weekends ago.
oldgold
My Get the Flock Out War with the waddling warriors from Hell rages on. These honking, hissing feathered fiends fecal fouling of my formerly red pier, once pristine beach and paean to procrastination and piss poor planning, West of Eden, continues unabated.
The pier white washing and saturating the sand with sh*t I might be able to tolerate without going to all-out limitless warfare, but in attempting to turn West of Eden into a goose guano pit these caustic crapping Canuck geese have gone too far. A fertile West of Eden might be capable of producing edible vegetables, like kale! Not acceptable. Hooah!
Paul in Jacksonville
@OzarkHillbilly: You’re welcome!
Another Scott
@oldgold:
Border Collies an option?
They’re scary smart dogs and need lots of exercise, of course.
Good luck!
Cheers,
Scott.
BeatriceAZ
We have a bottle brush tree in out yard here in Wickenburg Arizona. The Mexican poppies are also blooming.
oldgold
@Another Scott: Could be a problematic solution. A really smart dog might run me off and befriend geese.
StringOnAStick
We’ve had a very cool spring so the crocus are maybe 1/3 of the way and daffodils are barely leafed out.
Oregon got a lot of splashover from the atmospheric rivers that pounded California, so the local snowpack is over 160% of normal, with rain predicted today and tomorrow, then one more shot of snow in the mountains. We’ve been getting hydrologic outlook warnings for several days about streams hitting bank full or more, but this morning’s warming had a lot more weasel words that suggest growing concern about flooding. Heavy rain on snowpack can spike melting and runoff significantly, so could be interesting.
I finally felt well enough to build the pea trellis and plants peas early last week, but this Covid crap is lingering. My husband finally went to urgent care and after an X-ray to make sure it’s not pneumonia he’s on antibiotics for a lung infection, inhaler, etc. He started working out hard again before 14 days were up and ended up like this, took one day off and now I can hear him riding a bike trainer in the garage. I give up.
Ken
@Gvg: I am in Gainesville too! Beating back the jungle at my new house, where nothing seems to have been done for decades. Have some really fine, old camellias. The Wilmot Botanical Gardens plant sale is this coming weekend. Looking forward to adding a fringe tree, fragrant almond bush, tea olive and 6 azaleas. Loving Gainesville weather, after 25 years in Montana.