God's Creation looks different now than since my last post

The First day of Summer

It is amazing that Spring has come and gone already.

Today is a beautiful perfect day for a summer day.  Temperatures in the high 70's low 80's

I will post some of the beautiful flowers that are round about us.

Day Lilies just outside travel trailer.  We use this as a headquarters while we are developing our property .  Perhaps next year we will be able to move into our tiny house yet to be built.

Flowers in small box are impatiens.  Clicking on pic will give a larger pic.

The above are some of Amber's Roses

This is the first bloom on some that I planted this spring.

And another.  I have one other yellow and a pink one that has not shown signs of buds yet.

Amber has tried to build a rock garden here to keep soil erosion at a minimum.  It is getting better each year.  Day Lilies, rocks, some low spreading evergreen and I planted a few impatiens here this year as well.

The view out the trailer front door first to the left and then to the right.  I love the woods!!

This is a very curious sort of thing.  It is a rather ferny moss with these flower like protrusions in a coral red color and in different sizes or stages.  I know nothing about moss and spores, etc.  But a very interesting find outside my front door.  Note cicada wings and some of the body left after the great 17 year revival  this year.  A very noisy time during May but endearing as well.  Those woodsy sounds, you know?

Tomato Plants

I pulled up my tomato plants this morning. Some varmit was eating the ripened tomatoes before I could get to them. There were only 4 or 5 green ones left and small ones at that. I decided it is time to start over. The next growing season is beginning for Florida, so I will try again.

Gardening

One other thing about the Zinnias. They have attracted butterflies of varieties I have not seen before. That is pretty exciting. Butterflies and Hummingbirds would be really fun to see on a regular basis. I would like to cultivate the art of a garden that attracts these lovelies.

Yummy tomatoes

I picked numerous cherry tomatoes from these 2 plants planted in my 4 foot square garden. I had a couple of stakes as you can see in the photo that they were tied to. However they outgrew the stakes and lay over onto the ground. My lawn care fellow has been very good not to mess up the tomato plants. I think he weed wacks close but hasn't damaged them and keeps the yard looking good.

I think when I replant the square I will not plant such tall plants. I didn't know that the zinnias were the giant ones. The smaller pom pom type would be prettier in this arrangement. I will probably plant future tomato plants at the back fence so the front yard doesn't look so messy with them all over the ground. It has been too hot for the green beans that I planted. They were leggy, thin, and didn't produce much of anything. Ugly actually. The cuumber plant got buggy and died. Lettuce didn't come up. Florida is very different when it comes to gardening. I may stick to flowers. I do better with those.

Square Foot Gardening

These are the flowers that I plan to put in my 4 Square Foot Garden. See the photos of my progress. Kerry helped me assemble the box, mix the compost, peat moss and perlite to put in the lined box.(lining is a weed blocker fabric which allows moisture to pass through) Hubby helped me drill holes so that I could get the cross pieces in place. These help to keep plantings separated. The theory is no weeds to battle, and you can grow about anything in only 6 inches of dirt. Plantings can be a mix of flowers and veggies. These flowers are marigolds and red vinca. A friend gave me 3 seedling tomato plants which I have now installed in their respective squares. It is probably too late for the tomato plants because it is going to get exceedingly hot. I have bush bean seeds, zinnia seeds, and coleus seeds that I will be planting also. When we get to the cooler growing season I will try some root crops like carrots, beets, onions, radishes, etc. Oh, I am going to put in some lettuce and spinach too.

Rose bush

See the new growth on the small red rose bush after I took all the old blossoms off. There are buds coming on. I look forward to watching this plant grow and produce flowers. The flowers are more old fashioned looking as opposed to a tea rose look. I do love the tea rose look with beautiful buds that explode into full beautiful roses. I am not sure I can grow those here. We shall see.

Progress

I think there is some degree of growth here. The rain has been wonderful for the impatiens. I think the pink ones which are on the outer edge have had their blossoms beaten off by the incredible downpours we have been having. It has rained day and night for at least 2 weeks now. We have been in a drought for so long that it really seems strange to be in a monsoon mode at present. What I remember about Florida was the brief afternoon shower between 2 and 4PM every day through the summer. And of course, the odd hurricane. That is not what this has been. We are not officially into the hurricane season yet, although not far from it. I think it is June 1- November 1.

Front needs help

You can see the two front beds and yard look pretty bleak. We have been in a drought situation for some time. The last two days we have received some really good rain. These photos were taken several days ago. I have planted the red pintas in the flower bed beside the driveway. My new rose bush has been blooming well despite the lack of rain. It is suppose to be a drought tolerant one. I have trimmed all the past prime flowers off and waiting for the next round of blooms. See how the grass is practically non-existent in my itty bitty front yard. That is where I plan to put my 4sq. ft garden. I do hope it is an improvement and that I don't get any complaints from the park management over constructing it there. Other people have done things such as totally mulched their front and put edgings up around it. As I look at the photo of the front raised bed I am contemplating doing something entirely different there too. The freeze this winter destroyed my croton plants. I need to remove what is left of them. Perhaps move my crown of thorns pot and do........... something.......hmmm.

Early Morning Visitors

This morning I was getting ready to get in the car to go to work and I discovered the chickens, all of them in my impatiens flower bed! I started shooing them away and then realized I should have taken a pic of them in the flower bed. Ooops! They were already scattering. So I ran in, got the camera and took these shots. I tried to enlarge them so that you can see them better. They were running behind the homes to the east of ours. This gives you an idea of what I am up against in trying to protect my flowers. I thought only the little ones were on this side of the fence, but the whole crew is able to get through the fence. By the way, these two hens with chicks are only part of the whole flock. There is a rooster, and 3 other hens that don't have babies. They keep their distance from the chick brood.

More

Close ups of my impatiens and the arrangement around the grapefruit tree.

Chickens

This vacant house is across the fence at the back of our home. Recently we called the police when we saw 3 young boys go in around 8:00am. The house has been vacant for many months. Windows have been left open and I think the inside must be trashed. We knew these boys did not belong. By the time the police got there with a canine and flushed them out the final count of youngsters in the house was about 8 with one getting away. I never did learn what they were doing in there. Boys AND girls. Obviously others had gone in earlier that I had not seen. ANYWAY my purpose for this photo is to show a hen and 2 chIcks in the center of the photo headed for underneath the vacant house. They had been headed for my FLOWER BED!!! They saw me trying to get a picture and ran to hide. They have been scratching in my flower bed unearthing my plants and scattering my mulch till you can't tell where the mulch is. I have enjoyed watching the chickens until now. There are 4 hens and 1 rooster belonging to someone back in that neighborhood but I am not sure they are being cared for. 1 hen recently had about 8 chicks and another 5. So the population grew exponentially. I have noticed that the hen with 5 has lost 2 or 3 chicks by now. We have hawks and other predators that love a tender juicy chick.

Before and after

You can see in the photo with our grandchildren that on the left the evergreens go all the way to the ground and the grapefruit tree limbs hang almost to the ground as well. The other photo shows how I trimmed the evergreens. My trees didn't have any central branches. They spread way out. So they have a bonsai look now but it is nice to be able to walk under them. The grapefruit tree is much neater and the little orange tree on the other end now has room to breath and grow. Perhaps it might eventually bloom and bear fruit. I am assuming it is an orange tree.
Under the trees was bare sand. I thought perhaps since this area is shaded that I might be able to grow impatiens. I have not even tried impatiens before because I have had no completely shaded areas and the sun is too hot for them in unshaded locations. I planted fushia and white mounding type impatiens. I discovered when I watered them that the water rolled around on the surface of the sand just like mercury on a solid surface. I had not brought any soil in to work into the sand. My only solution for now was to apply red mulch to hold the water and absorb it for the plants benefit. It worked.

Trimming and Sprucing up

My neighbor has evergreens at the back of his lot just like ours. His, like ours were overgrown and had branches down to the ground like bushes you see that are overgrown and need to be removed. These are so big that it would be expensive and difficult to remove. As you can see he trimmed the lower limbs off kept the central ones and made a nice looking, neat, manicured look for his evergreens with tan mulch on the ground. I really liked the idea so started working on mine.