The ordinary things

I haven’t been able to spend any time during the week in the garden other than to drink a cup of coffee in the morning. It’s been wet for a good deal of the month so there’s really not a lot to do but watch it grow and sweep up fallen leaves that begin to stick to the tile.

I bought a small succulent last week at Living Color, on Griffin Road.  It looks as though it wants to bloom, there is a hint of coral at the end of two twisting extensions growing out of it. Stay tuned.  Succulents and cacti come in some very interesting forms, but I’m afraid to throw my hat into the ring with these guys as they are like begonias--potted, the rain and high humidity can easily take them out.

The cereus planted last week looked stalled out and maybe even on the decline. I gently subtracted a piece or two out of one of the pots and found the beginning of micro-roots forming. Thin as hairs and white.  I packed the pieces back into the ground.

I was going to poke something in the ground under the orange tree, an area which I use as a nursery, or for  temp parking, and I came across a litter of snails – just hatched. Bad.

The tropical perennial bed with begonia popenoei (with the round leaves and beautiful flowers in front of palm), at the Fairchild Botanic Garden. 

Nurseries of interest; Palm Hammock Orchid Estate

 Monstera dubia

Palm Hammock Orchid Estate in southwest Miami, has the best collection of begonias in zone10.  They offer an extensive selection of rhizomatous and rex begonias, some of which are their own hybrids. Not a lot of canes last visit as years before. I don't know how they keep their begonias looking so fabulous through the rainy season.

Begonia peleata (species)

Aroids, vines, water plants, and succulents abound. This nursery is filled with jewels.

They have mail order and are a good source of info.

PALM HAMMOCK ORCHID ESTATE, INC.
9995 S.W. 66th STREET MIAMI, FL 33173
(305) 274-9813

Sculpture in the garden: the wild life of Nancy Hayes

Coming Forward

Nancy Hayes' ceramic forms bring to my mind some of the fantastic twisting vines, flowers and fruit of the fauna we are able to grow in zone 10b. The colors are vivid and often she will create a surface that appears to be an intricate inlay of textured leopard spots or armadillo scales impossibly fit together on the endless Escher-like twists and turns. 

For this rather odd yet imaginative mind (yours truly), they would make a perfect companion for the garden. 

Speaking of life forms, I have begun to see lizards, mature and recently hatched scooting around. A tiny frog hopped out from under a pot when I moved it. Snails, those $%#@!! things are here too.  It is heartening that my terrace garden is to their liking. Being on the fourth floor one can feel isolated from Terra Firma and its bugs, worms, snails, frogs and the like. They will be here long after we're gone hopefully. 

Growth Form 6

To take a look at more of Nancy's work:
 http://www.nancychayes.com/Site/Ceramic_Sculpture.html

Put some clothes on that thang

Masonry is not a very friendly surface, but it is one that most terrace gardeners will probably have to deal with. 

If it is a light color, it reflects light- major squinting. If dark, it will absorb too much heat- at least in zone10b. A garden should be a cool place.

Best to let some creeping fig loose on your walls. It absorbs the heat and transforms the hardness of the concrete into a soft texture of green.

As the walls become covered with green, the terrace is transformed, from being a collection of pots to truly being a natural looking garden.

The climbing cereus will be an interesting addition to the fig. But ficus repens, or is it pumila, is the most elegant climber I've seen down here.

Of course the Zone10b sun limits the number of vines we can use. Ivy will not grow in the hot sun, even trumpet vine, a clinger that does well in the central part of the state isn't recommended, though i haven't tried it yet. 2 climbers that I know will grow are creeping fig and the climbing cereus. Even these may have trouble in the parts of my walls that get hit directly by more than a few hours of sun. I'll keep you posted.

I just finished a more proper planting of several nice chunks of the climbing cactus and a quart of creeping fig. The pot is approx. 17" and I drilled 10 holes in the bottom to insure drainage. I covered this with 1 1/2" of lava rock and then some fabric that doesn't get clotted over time with dirt. In the pot I put 3 nice pieces of cereus, 2 with nice roots and 1 I simply laid on top of the soil. The cacti were put toward the wall as was the creeping fig as that's their destination. Purslane and a snip of persian shield fill the other side of the pot. Hopefully the purslane explodes in the sun. I love persian shield. Iridescent purples fading from dark to almost white washed with a silvery patina. A yank off of a mature plant can be slapped in the ground, and if you're very nice, it will grow.  To top off this ice cream sundae of a collection, I shoved in a dried branch (about 1/2" width) of plumeria I had trimmed the other day into about 4" of soil. The branch had been left out to dry for a few days, as I read somewhere it should.

That pot has got it going on.

Persian Shield in the garden. A nice specimen for a pot. I have mine in an old iron urn. It looks right nice.

Goodnight Irene ?

Hopefully we've missed a visit by hurricane Irene. The pictures from the islands paint a pretty nasty picture of her strength.

Very humid this morning. No need to water in this weather. 

Plopped a macho fern for filling behind bamboo. Ferns are very tropical looking and macho ferns grow into shrub-size plants.

Hylocereus undatas, Irene in the wings

After a few deadend searches, I think I've id'd the cereus I was given. It is a species of  Hylocereus --found naturally occurring from Southern Mexico, Central America and Northern South America.: Hylocereus undatas
As to culture and growing it on the porch in direct sun will be a different matter. Evidently this plant grows up trees suggesting that it might not like full sun. We'll see.

Night blooming cereus for the masonry

[dragon fruit climbing]

Leonard brought me a huge chunk of his night blooming cereus. It will go right up the outside wall. The virginia creeper was  never able to get a grip. I'm going to clear out a pot or two and get this experiment under way.

Went to Living Color nursery this pm. They usually have a few nice rhizomatous begonias to choose from. Not today.  I am very happy to say that the nurseryman that helped me said the rhizomatous begonias all looked horrible because of the very high humidity and frequent rains and had been taken away. I'm not alone.

Living Color has an extensive selection of plants and the plantsmen working there are knowledgeable. It isn't the cheapest. Saw a great looking papaya about 6' with huge fruit on it. It wasn't in a very large pot, but had a big trunk - nice proportions.

Here is my cactus and creeping fig in a square planter that I love. Up, up and away? 

 http://www.livingcolorgardencenter.net/

Varieagated Bougainvilla

The lime green pops against purple. Notice light blue pot for a further jerk to the palette.

The sun heads south

A new culm

Sunlight has begun to hit the north wall during  morning and pm now, being blocked midday by the portico roof. Growing will become a little less stressful for the plants and myself as the overhead sun eases up some.

I fed (with Colorburst 15-30-15 on the blooming plants, Bougain on the bougainvillea) and watered in, the last two days had been sunny and dry. It doesn't take long here to cause the bamboo leaves to curl.

The culms on the bamboo ventricosa are coming up fine.  I hope they take on the distinct bulbous shape the bamboo is known for. There is probably a way to force them to do this. I'll have to check.

And it rained

The end of a summer day and it rained furiously. The bolts of lightening lit up the clouds in all directions, like illuminated branches on a tree. There was no low, rolling thunder, only ear-splitting cracks that seemed to encircle us.

Southern pm

It was a still and sunny AM, perfect for sweeping up bamboo leaves and other flotsam. Need to keep drain areas open.

When I left for my visit on Cumberland, I stuffed the begonias in the guest shower to dry them out. WRONG. The cool air inside combined with the already damp soil was deadly. I think the cool might of smacked them into dormancy? In any case, I lost half of my army. The tough boys still with me are back in protected spots with a medium amount of sun.

It's 5:30PM  and a thunderhead seems to be advancing from the west-- and the air has picked up quite a bit. It's gonna rain somewhere around here.

I've got too many unused pots. I need to make a run over to storage I guess. Unsightly.

The bleeding heart is growing pretty smartly, I have a few of blooms (white with a red center).

There is a large begonia, I've been calling ricinifolia-- who knows, I thought it was Caribbean queen or something. I saw a huge bed at Fairchild. I need to go back and take pics. So silly not to take one's camera to the greatest tropical botanic garden in the world.

Anyway, this begonia is growing in the large pot with the orange tree. It's strong grower. One end of the plant's thick rhizome is getting ready to climb out of the pot. There are several other ends with strong new leaves coming out of it. But the plant ain't ready to show in the local fair. It's leaves are torn from the wind, there is a little rot on some. It shows the wear of hot, humid, breezy weather. That's what plants look like in the summer. Having everything in a container, they all seem like 'specimens'. There is a spotlight on each because it's not growing in a bed or in the natural environment. I have to respect that. That will come with time. It's been not quite a year since we've moved in.

Still look like I was in a air-bag event because of the poison ivy. It's been kind of a miserable week-- the first few days, I couldn't sleep through the night because of the itch. I had socks on my hands and wore long pants/ shirt to bed. WHAT HAPPENED?? It's getting better. My face no longer looks like I lost.

More later-- as Jack Van Bibber used to say. He first told me about Vita Sackville-West. We used to play poker on his rooftop at the corner of Christopher and west side highway. My first Lobster Thermadore.. He was a brilliant cook. He wrote a book, "Fast Feasts". The title was ridiculous as every meal in the book would take a day for the normal person, and even then the genoise was likely to curdle on any but the saavy-ist stirrer.

Humidity and rain ---boring

It's been wet. Wet enough to bring active gardening to a halt. The bambooo is growing-- everything is growing in the hot humid weather. Though the poor begonias are really getting decimated by leaf rot.

Bird of paradise looking fine, sporting tall, broad leaves. The oak leaf croton looks healthy though the upper part of the plant has lightened up in the direct sun.

I want to trim and propogate some plumeria. Need to google methods.

Poison Ivy

Cumberland Island-- haunting beauty. Wonderful to see some of the family, others are smiling puff adders.

Left with a bad case poison ivy. It seems that the 'trumpet vine' clinging tightly to the palm tree- which would have been fabulous covering my masonry walls, turned out to be POISON IVY. I've been scratching for 2 weeks now. Sad that I may have to limit my excursions into the beautiful understory of the Island.

Cumberland island

Nothing to do with Cumberland Island but I love the combo

Driving up to Cumberland today. I've crammed begonias into guest bath, pots and big bowls just in case tropical storm Emily brushes the tri-county area. She's not supposed to but you never know.. it is very humid out today. Nice rain in the pm yesterday and seems during the night as well.

A striking storm

The afternoon's of the last two days have brought heavy, though somewhat brief torrents. The lightening strikes today were especially exciting. South Florida is gifted with a remarkable amount of electro-static charges dancing around in the sky. It strikes upward supposedly. It does not look like it to me.

Anyway, the rain is needed in the macro environment. It's been a dry start of the summer. Howeva,  in my potted universe, the sudden humid, flooding pose a problem for the begonias. Always the begonias... so I won't bore you with that.

Let me tell you what's working with little bother. The bamboo seems to be fine. I noticed some scale on the bottom of several culms so I sprayed it with a weak bleach solution.

The bleeding heart that are now planted in every box along the handrail don't seem to be very shy.

The claredendron that Leonard gave me is doing beautifully. It had bee planted with a good deal of it's tap root in soil that it had been growing in. Both of which make perfect sense. But, the new growth started appearing stunted, small leaflets, etc. I repotted it in MiracleGro soil-- and trimmed the roots back sharply. It kicked started some fiesty growth. It's a mature plant, in topiary form. Very pretty.