Garden Walk on the Eve of a Freeze

We shall see how this garden looks in 24 hours. 
This is just a quick post to pay my last respects to a few beauties.

Enjoying My Eden

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Who can explain the secret pathos of Nature's loveliness?
It is a touch of melancholy inherited from our Mother Eve.
It is an unconscious memory of the lost Paradise.
It is the sense that even if we should find another Eden,
 we would not be fit to enjoy it perfectly nor stay in it forever. 

~Henry van Dyke

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Ha! I laugh in the face of winter!

Old Man Winter just can't keep a good garden down!  For those who haven't read my blog from the beginning, you are probably fortunate to have missed out on the whining and belly-aching that flowed from my fingers for the first three months of this year.  Central Florida was hit by a frigid, long-and-drawn-out winter, the kind that comes maybe once every twenty years here in my neck of the woods.  Just in time for me to start a garden blog.  Exactly the kind of winter that those pushing the boundaries with tropical plants dread the most.  But no more belly-achin' here!  I am thrilled to find that each week of May brings more growth and more flowers to this pseudo-tropical garden.  I'm so glad I didn't rip the whole lot of it out and start over.  From here on out, my only complaining will probably have to do with the incessant weeds.