All creatures great and small

There is, on occasion, a day when I find myself awestruck by the glories of this Creation, Earth.  How blessed I am to be surrounded by this vibrant, living garden!  Yes, today, I was inundated by gobs of natural beauty and lots of life flitting about.  At times, this garden and all my unrequited plans frustrate me and leave me with feelings of despair.  Oh, not so today!  I am in love with this garden today!  A turn of the doorknob, a few steps, and it seems I have been transported into a natural paradise.  Yes, I feel so blessed.

Piles of Smiles

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If you smile when no one else is around, you really mean it.

~Andy Rooney

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In Celebration of Spring

For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;

The flowers appear on the earth;

the time of the singing of birds is come,

and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;

The fig tree putteth forth her green figs,

and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.

~Song of Solomon 2:11-13a (KJV) 

Out with the old...In with the new!

My garden is going out in style!  Check out my end-of-the-year photo shoot:

Five Thousand Words

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Nightmares on Oak Street

My walk through the garden today fell a bit short of idyllic and peaceful.  In fact, I witnessed a few outright nightmares!  If you are squeamish or prone to fainting, beware as you enter this post today......

A Positive Spin on a New Day

You know, sometimes, I'm just in need of a pick-me-upper.  Yes, I had a Melancholy Monday.  But I rose early this Tuesday morning and got my hands on as much positive reading material I could to put a proper spin on things.  Sometimes a little positive thinking and peaceful meditation is what we need to start a new day.  I have a nature that struggles a bit more than most with that concept of optimism.  My post today is hardly original, as I've gone a little quote-crazed, but I just wanted to share some of the inspiration I found this morning from some of history's great minds. 

"I'm a Gecko, not a Geico."

Don't you love that cute gecko from the Geico commercials?  That lovely, bright green specimen is the Green Day Gecko, a resident of Madagascar.  The sort of gecko we have at PITV is the nocturnal variety and not quite so brilliant colored.

Learning Curves and Growing Pains

I know many of my blog readers are experienced gardeners of the master sort.  I can tell from viewing your garden photos, which are always from the long view, by the way.  You know who you are.  Back a long, long time ago, in my early gardening days, I read in a magazine article that it takes about five years for a garden to reach anything near maturity.  Period.  It just takes that long for one to figure out sun rotations, soil idiosyncrasies, weather patterns, and that mysterious thing known as "microclimates."  And of course, it takes time for perennials to clump, for trees to stretch upward, and shrubs to attain some girth.  So every time I've moved into a new home and planted that new garden, I've worked and worked and waited and waited patiently for that elusive five-year anniversary to come.  (Leave it to me to take things so literally.)

Wednesday Walkabout

I really have far too much to do this week and am really feeling that Wednesday "hump day," so I have no business spending time in the garden or posting on this blog.  But you know, I must have a quick meander through the garden.  So much is going on! 

Of Order, Diversity, and Madness

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I am no garden planner and that I cannot seem to bring myself to plant in large groupings.  I write on the sidebar over there that my garden style is "cram-as-many-plants-as-possible-into-a-half-acre-lot."  Well, that is about as true a statement as I can make.  I don't believe in putting on airs that aren't there.  This garden is what it is: a reflection of a botanically obsessed, compulsive plant collector.  It is not a garden that will appeal to everyone.  It is a far cry from the self-control of landscape design with its perfectly trimmed shrubs, ideally spaced trees, and huge groupings of colorful annuals.

The Power of Purple

All the other colors are just colors,
but purple seems to have a soul.
Purple is not just a noun and an adjective
but also a verb - when you look at it,
it's looking back at you. 

~Uniek Swain

"That ain't exercise, honey!"

Lately, I've been trying to add exercise to my daily routine, you know, to improve the health and all.  My life has become pretty sedentary in the decades that followed marriage, job, and motherhood.  Yes, I do work in the garden once or twice a week and occasionally on Son #1's property, but it has clearly not been a good substitute for routine exercise, as evidenced by my physical condition.  So in an effort to uproot this office-chair potato, I have been making valiant efforts to get out for a daily constitutional. 

Distractions

I wasn't planning to post today, but yesterday, there was such a flurry of activity about the firebushes that I marched out there with camera in hand determined to capture a shot.  Literally, there must have been twenty or so hummingbirds flitting in and out of the area, perching in the bottlebrush now, then in the bunya-bunya, and later in a crape myrtle.  What a delight to watch!  Much fighting seemed to be going on among the males, yes, those beautiful males with their flaming throats.  Then the lot of them would flit off into the nearby oak trees.  And back again!  There I stood, for easily an hour, hidden behind a couple of huge Florida cracker roses, trying to get that blasted camera to focus and shoot. 

Come, walk with me.

Come, walk with me.

Hunting Assassins and Hanging Thieves

There are a few visitors in my garden that are so vicious and cruel that they are quite welcome to stay as long as they like.  I'm talking predators.  Here are a few I have spotted recently:

Into the swamp...

I decided today to head out on a swamp trek to visit my river again.  For those who don't know, Florida's Peace River is just a skip and a holler from my house, and it was the inspiration behind my blog's name.  I really don't get down to the water enough, which is shameful.  Today, I wandered out with high hopes of doing some birdwatching and maybe even some gatorwatching.  Come, walk with me, and visit my little piece of the world.

Confessions of a Photo Faddist

I have a teenage son who is a very picky eater.  What makes things even tougher is that he gets caught up on these "food fads."  He absolutely loves eating a certain food for lunch everyday for two months, then suddenly won't touch it.  Never mind that I just bought a month's supply, and no one else in the house wants the stuff.  Then we're off on a new food fad.  It really drives me crazy.  Don't get me wrong, we don't spoil him.  Most nights, he must sit down and eat what the family's having for dinner.  (Though in his younger days, many a tear was shed over broccoli.)   But for breakfast, lunch, and snacks, we pretty much just grab stuff from the kitchen.

Winter Interest: It's All in the Details

When I walk in my garden on a normal day, my attention is drawn toward the bright, colorful blooms and giant tropical leaves that make up my garden. But for a couple of months every year, we feel winter's effect here in my Zone 9 Florida garden. It is during this time that I really notice the details in my garden. Searching for little, interesting things makes it much easier to ignore the all-consuming brown. And that is what I did on my walk through the garden today: