Photos of my winter gardens

Unlike most areas of the country, Florida has temperatures that allow it's residents to enjoy nearly year round gardening (save a few months in the summer). Most of my hardy perennials are still going strong, though some lay dormant. We still have splashes of color amongst the sticks and twigs. Here is what is going on in my gardens today:

 This is my defunct pond that my hubby swears will be revamped this spring! I will plant herbs and flowers around it.

 My crepe myrtle. It is so funny, because it is pretty and full of flowers in the summer, but is basically sticks at the first sign of chilly weather.

 My two garden beds. I cleared the one closest. Here is where I will plant my veggies.

 My sweet magnolia tree, or as my son says "Mommy's tree". My favorite kind of tree, it has grown so much in three years. My daughter snuck in at the last minute lol

 My rose bush. It has such pretty red blooms that smell wonderful. It gets powdery mildew from time to time, but I now know ways to prevent that! If you look on the left, you can see that it has some new leaves coming up.

 After the squirrels got my apples last year, I am cautiously happy about these little guys. 3 little buds on my apples tree!

 The first lime on my key lime tree!

 My meyer's lemon tree. It has some blossoms on it, I cannot wait to smell them!

My lettuce, the unusually warm weather is causing it to wilt :(

That is all for now! What do you have in your garden?

Winter garden

Hello! I thought I would share some pictures of what my garden looks like in Florida during the winter months :)

This is my aloe plant. It was so tiny when I got it! It seems to like the unusually warm dry winter we are having, which makes sense since it's a succulant.

My beautiful magnolia! We did our biannual pruning, so now the last branch starts about two feet from the ground. Did you know trees don't grow up, they just get taller? So branches that are 2 feet from the ground will always be that high. I didn't know this! I want a magnolia tree, not a magnolia bush, so I have to prune it every 6 months.

This is my jewel blueberry bush. Last year it gave us some berries, so I am excited for it this year. There is already some new growth on it.

This is my rose bush. You can actually see the new leaves forming!

This stick tree is actually my crepe myrtle. It looses it's leaves in November and stays looking like I planted sticks in the ground until about April. This things LOVES heat. It blooms late summer and is the first plant in my yard to lose its' leaves.

This is my apple tree, and it's blossoms! It has a cluster of 5 flowers, and another little bundle right behind it that hasn't opened yet. They smell great!

This is my holly tree! It's tiny now (maybe 7 inches tall) but already producing beautiful red berries. I can't wait for it to get bigger.

These are my baby crepe myrtles that I got for joining the Arbor day foundation. I planted them along my southern yard between me and my neighbor. I figured that would make a good natural barrier. As you can see, the top two and bottom one already have growth on them. The third one, not so much, but when I scratch it I see green underneath, so I think it might just be dormant like the one I talked about earlier.

There you have it! The ecosystem known as my yard in January when the daytime temperatures are in the low 70s :)