Trees, and shade

So I have decided that I want a tree for my front yard. The Western sun comes blazing through the sky and melts everything in front of my house from 1pm on. I can't even touch my front door because it's so hot sometimes!

So I have decided that I want a holly tree. Yes I know the berries are poisonous to humans. But I have done a lot of research (just ask Chris my husband if you don't believe me!) and this is the tree I want:

They are hardy in my zone (zone 9) and grow in many soils. They prefer full sun and are slightly drought tolerant. It's an evergreen, so it will not loose it's leaves in the winter. This tree has beautiful berries that I can't wait to use to make some Yule wreaths! It gets 40 feet tall and 20 feet wide.

I can hardly wait to have a shady front yard :)

Updates

Hello all!

I have not been on here in a while- I found out I was pregnant on March 28, and I have had 12 weeks of morning sickness and energy drain. I could barely get up and play with my three-year old, much less go outside in the 85* Florida heat and pull weeds. But, I feel better, and am ready to get back into the swing of things again!

Some random updates- most of my veggie garden is gone. The corn yielded one good ear of corn, the rest my husband picked too early. The cucumbers gave me three cukes, then succumbed to the Florida heat. They are water hogs, and watering every other day did not cut it for them. My basil got 3.5 feet tall, then went to seed so I cut it back. Same with my oregano. My three pepper plants seem to be struggling under the heat, but I have gotten two jalapenos and a habenero pepper so far. My tomatoes are out of control, well over four feet tall and giving me more tomatoes than I could possibly eat. My family has been eating tomatoes for a while lol. My onions seem to have stopped growing, maybe because they are in the shadow of the tomatoes. The carrots are coming along slowly. My lavender and rosemary are doing well.

That is it for for updates, more pictures and topics soon!

Flower mania!

So, it seems that I keep finding spots in my yard that I want to destroy and start over. This week, I took a 5x10 plot of sparse grass, ants and gnarly roots and uprooted it all. It has a fence to the east behind it, a shed to the north, a gigantic oleander bush on the south and my arbor on the west. Along the shed I put three trellises, with two confederate jasmine and a purple passion flower. The west has a newly built border of Indian hawthorn and butterfly weeds. The hawthorn is still small so it is not much of a border. The oleander is about 15 feet tall, pink and white, and will shade the area more as the sun moves further south.

So anyways, I took some packets of flower seeds and just randomly started to plant them. I tried to pay attention to which needed lots of room (since apparently I did not leave enough room for my cucumbers and green beans and now the are crowding what is around them, lesson learned). Here are the flowers I planted:

Alyssum

Snap dragon, though mine are lavender colored too

zinnia

 borage

candy tuft

marvel of peru

yeti

court jester marigold

So that is a lot of flowers in one area! I can't wait to see how they fair. If only half come up I will be happy. I just can't get enough flowers :)

Summer is creeping in

So I went outside today, and I noticed something- the humidity is creeping back into our weather! Don't get me wrong, it still isn't hot yet, but man oh man am I starting to sweat! Guess planting season is pretty much over here in the sunshine state. Just waiting to harvest what I planted months ago.

Speaking of, here are some more updated pictures:

This is the first bed. Clockwise back left- corn, cucumber, stevia, dill, lavender and basil.

This is the second bed. From far left- tomato, lavender, basil, various kinds of peppers, carrots, rosemary, oregano, and green beans.

Close up of the baby tomatoes

Close up of the green beans

Cucumber flower

tomato cage

Carrots

peppers

blueberry bush

Can someone please tell me what this is? It cropped up where I planted nothing, and it looks like nothing else I have. It wants to wraps it's little vine on things...

purple passion flower

bird of paradise

I got these at a local gardening fair. They can each hold six potted plants. What a great way to decorate my entrance way!

That's all for now. I will write about my new flower bed after Indiana goes to bed tonight.

Pest problem

So, I have noticed that I have a little problem in my garden- ants. I have never noticed them before. I don't know if it is because they are truly becoming more prevalent or if it's just because I am in the garden more. Either way- they are a nuisance! They creep into all my potted plants and infiltrate them. They are eating my morning glory buds. Now today (the absolute last straw) I noticed one of my green beans was a little droopy. I checked it out and saw the a bunch of ants were crawling up and down the stem!!! Luckily they hadn't gotten to any other plant-yet.

So, what do I do? The bed with the green beans is 8 inches off the ground surrounded by wood. If they can get up there, they can get anywhere. I can't just spray them with pesticide, since they are around delicate flowers and veggies. HELP!

Orange blossom memories

Growing up in central Florida, we had a lot of time to garden. As a child I never liked to myself. I did not (and still don't) like to get dirty (go figure!) and it seemed to be something I wasn't good at anyway. Looking back we were surrounded by all the wonderful heat loving plants and veggies Mother Earth allowed to grow in Florida. On one side of my house we had a huge hibiscus- easily 6 feet tall, with gorgeous fuchsia flowers. My grandfather would cut it down to nubs every winter, and by April it would be six feet tall again. On the other side we had a gigantic oak tree. The kind with roots that got so gnarly you would have to jump over them if you happened to be running. It shaded the whole east side of our house. Our back yard was crazy. Right behind our back fence was a mini jungle. We grew bananas, at least 4 trees. Some random elephant ears, and a bunch of other greenery I never knew what they were. I was always scared back there because it was home to dozens of snakes and spiders.

My grandfather also had an old antique bath tub. The kind with legs that made it stand up off the floor. He planted all sorts of annual flowers in there, and in a refurbished toilet. In the corner of the yard was a huge Aloe plant. It was at least 2 feet tall and 3 feet wide. He also grew peppers and tomatoes in large 5 gallon plastic buckets. I remember putting 2x4s in the soil and tying the plants to it with an old ripped t-shirt when it got too big to stand up.

The big kicker, though, was the fact that right next store was two lots full of grapefruit and orange trees. Some guy in another state owned the lots, and he had us take care of the trees. Imagine enough space for two houses to go on full of citrus trees! I hated having to go in them. The ground was covered in fallen leaves and bugs and gross stuff like rotting citrus surrounded by those tiny flies. I will never forget the smell of rotting citrus! My grandfather would take this long pole with a saw on the end and trim the topmost branches and knock oranges and grapefruit off. You had to watch out or you would be caught in an orange shower! We would drag back garbage bags full of fruit, where we would peel and squeeze them. To this day I have never developed a taste for citrus. The trees are all gone, and two houses are squeezed where they once stood. Even my grandfather is no longer around. But one thing I do have that I can grab onto is an orange tree in my front yard. Every year, right around this time, it gets covered with orange blossoms. The easterly breeze brings their scent in the house. One whiff of it and I am taken back to when I was a kid in those trees. And it's a great feeling  :)

Orange blossoms from my own tree!

New crop, and such

Hello again! Well, it has been about 3 weeks since I planted veggies and herbs in my garden. We already have some things sprouting! Here they are:

This is my red rose bush. It has never given me a rose in two years, until now!

I planted my aloe vera and mulched around it. It seems to be doing good, except it absorbed some of the red from the mulch :-/

Larkspur! Doing great in my front walkway.

My cucumbers are coming in nicely. I planted these strictly at the request of my husband and mother-in-law. I can't stand them, but they love them!

My corn! 6, each gets a square foot. Everyone had a horror story about their corn growing experience to share when I mentioned I was growing it, so we will see. The back row is Country Gentleman, and the front is Silver Queen.

The sprout in the back are green beans. To the left are a colorful mix. The right is some organic bush type green bean. They have some kind of Jedi force with them, they are willful little guys! Sprouted after 3 days. In the front is a rosemary I planted.

These little guys are carrot sprouts. Nanes half long to be exact. I am nervous about these, veggies that grow underground and I do not have an awesome track record.

Above the lavender is basil! And lots of it.

This is dill. It too has really taken off. My friend Brittany had some last year, and it smelled wonderful. Can't wait!

Welcome back crepe myrtle! The bush definitely looked sad all winter, but even it is starting to get it's leaves back :)

That's all for now!