Robellini plant bed

Here's what I started with Saturday morning, a clean slate. DH was called into work, so I went out to the nursery

And picked up a few plants - here's a large agapanthus (lily of the nile), 2 smaller agapanthus, and 3 aztec grass to start. Oh, and there's 2 small golden dew in the back. They're ok in shade and get pretty big, so I didn't want them to hide the others in the front.
Then I went to Lowes and Home Depot. Lowe's had flax lily and society garlic 3 for $10 - a 1 gal flax lily was $7 at our local nursery and society garlic was about $4 there too. So, I picked up 3 flax lily and 2 society garlic. I also wanted some form of yucca that could take the sun for the right corner. I found this at Target for $10 - good deal! It's a 3 cane yucca, resistant to 0 deg F, likes full sun and can do good on frequent waterings.
So far, this is what we've got - I counted, I planted about 21 plants this weekend! We went with yucca cane on the right corner, agapanthus, aztec grass, society garlic, flax lily, golden dew and canna - but many many of each.

Last addition to come soon will be a Mandevilla (formerly Dipladenia). There are many different colors - white ‘Summer Snow’, yellow, pink, red. For now, I'm set on 'Sun Parasol Crimson' aka Red Riding Hood, because I've heard that is most resistant to bugs. I'm going to try to train to climb the small part of the fence shown at the left, it's about 6ft high and 3 ft wide before the swing gate. It's a flowering vine, sometimes called Brazilian Jasmine that is great trellised in containers or in hanging baskets. This will be the only plant out front that's not rated to withstand freezing weather.

But I also like the other colors. The pink may go better with our lavander azaleas. We'll see.

Happy St. Patty's Day!

Today is St. Patrick's Day and yes, I'm wearing green! I've had corned beef and cabbage cooking all day in the crockpot and we may even go out for a green beer. I'm not even a hint of Irish, but I think DH is a little, so for tradition's sake, we're Irish for the day.

In other green news, we picked up and planted our 4 trunk robellini this weekend. It looks great! I've been having to hand water the azaleas due to the recent heat and drought, and they're looking good too. We had some rain last night, but don't expect any more for at least another week, so more hand watering until they're established. What do you think? And notice the new fence on that side of the house. We're extending it to be flush with the house
Sunday night was the last night launch for the shuttle. It was perfect - so clear we could see everything. Here is Discovery on it's way to space around 7:30pm. The reflection of the sun setting made the smoke look like a rainbow. More photos as viewed from our front lawn on flickr

Belated blogging

First things first, today is my Aunt Joyce's birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

I know, I've been MIA in blogger world for the last couple of days. To tell you the truth, the weather's been so beautiful and since it doesn't get dark until around 8pm now, DH, Rufus and I have been living outdoors everyday after work until we absolutely have to come inside. We've been playing in the garden, planting plants, going on walks, and last night DH was teaching me how to golf. Real golf, not putt-putt!

Thankfully he set me up to practice with a pitching wedge on a part of the grass that has been affected by bugs, so there's not much grass to start out with there - and after I was done, it was like I used a tiller! I would either swing 6 or so inches ABOVE the ball or dig the club into the ground sending dirt everywhere. Rufus enjoyed that - typical boy, loves the dirt. After several complete misses, I started to get the hang of it and actually hit about 3 or 4 good shots. Oh, that reminds me, I have to go into the neighbors yard and get one of our golf balls. (DH hit that one - I was learning with little wiffle-like balls, so they wouldn't go very far even if I did make contact.

DH and I have tickets to the Gatornationals for tomorrow and since we're leaving early tomorrow morning and staying over in Gainesville Friday night, Rufus gets to stay over at grandma's for 2 nights. I mentioned it to him last night, he does know the word 'Grandma', but I made sure to tell him, 'not right now'. I don't think he has a sense of time, but he knows what that means. I know he's going to have a blast!

This is our front yard. The first photo shows the ixora that didn't survive the cold, once again. This plant is beautiful when flowering, but it's not cold hardy enough for our area. So, we went out to the nursery this weekend and got some azalea plants. So far they're doing great. Eventually, they'll bloom to look like the second photo below.
I'd like to start a notebook where I keep all the detail info on all the different plants we have in our yard so that I can remember their scientific names and also remember their likes and dislikes and other data. So, this is what I've compiled for the species of azalea we have in our front yard now, Azalea, Formosa Lavender.
Full name: Rhododendron simsii 'Formosa Lavender' - Azalea: Formosa Lavender Southern Indian Azalea
Size: 6' - 8' tall, 6' - 8' wide (can reach 15 ft in height), slow grower
Bloom: 4" Pinkish Lavender, in Early May - Formosa is a twice-a-year bloomer!
Leaf: Green

Natural attraction: butterflies
Light and soil: Full Sun or Shade, Acid and humus rich Soil, Blooms on Last Years Growth

Notes:

- Water regularly until established and during dry spells for best performance. Maintain a mulch layer year round to conserve moisture and limit pesky weeds. Prune after flowering to maintain desired shape and height.
- This is considered to be an old-fashioned heirloom plant which endures popularity amongst gardeners. Minimal care and it withstand drought, heat and cold (hardy to 10 degrees F).
- The 3 inch blooms of the shrub often completely cover up the leaves showing off its beautiful lavender color. Lavender blooms that turn deep pink or magenta hue during the fall, depending on where you live.

I'd like to try pairing with Autumn Royalty Encore Azalea, Azalea x 'Conlec', the Azalea that blooms up to 9 months a year, but we'll see how these hold up for a while.

Effects of a freeze

Winter is a strange season in Florida. Most winters we can be out on the beach every day, some winters we have to light the fire. This winter has brought a few good, cold freezes and our plants are there to remind us of it. Before we went out to CA, we had 2 nights below freezing and we covered all the plants. While were were out in CA, there were a couple more nights of freeze and when we got back, we had a lot of trimming to do. Below are the bananas and elephant ear a few months ago at their peak and third is a photo from last weekend. Their leaves were all wilted and brown so we had to trim them all back. Don't be sad, we're seeing green sprouting through and there's actually 1 leaf about to open up so there's still hope! A couple of the smaller ones I don't think made it, but we'll keep them in the ground for a few more weeks to be sure.

The crotons didn't survive at all. They all dried out so quickly, you wouldn't even be able to tell they were there. Our nightblooming jasmine didn't make it, but it had a fungus before the freezes. The areca palms are brown, as are the bird of paradise but I see some green on birds. The ixora and ficus trees out front were all brown and we trimmed them back last weekend. There's new green leaves coming out so they're all clear. We also modified the front flower bed so that it's not taking over the whole yard and walkway anymore and made the outline for a new flower bed with room for a tree or bush. Don't mind the dirt, it's covering transplanted grass that seems to be taking to its new home.

One plant that did well through the cold is the lily of the nile, or Agapanthus. This is great news as these are ones we love - nice big green leaves with beautiful flowers in the spring and summer. We first saw these at Epcot last year. Wonder what Disney puts on theirs to make them so big and full?

Who knows if we're past the freezing temps. Forecast for early next week show lows in the upper 30s. Usually by mid-March, the weather warms up for Spring Break, so we'll see.

We've got a nice weekend planned. DH went golfing out at LPGA today with his dad. Saturday we're doing some work around the house and yard - weather looks perfect, upper 70s. Saturday night our church is starting Saturday Night Life church and that's where we'll be. And we're also going out with DH's dad for a belated birthday dinner. Sunday our friends are playing a gig out at JB's Fish Camp so we're going to support them and eat some delicious rock shrimp! We'll have to bring our jackets as there's 40% chance rain and a high of 62! But tonight, it's a movie and Giuseppes for pizza and wings.

Oh, and side note. Partylite Summer Catalog goes into effect April 1. That's a long time to wait!

Weekend Recap 2

After dropping Ruf off for his haircut Saturday, I stopped at the local nursery to check out trees for our front yard. They had both foxtail and queen palms, but also a Christmas palm which I think I like the best of the palms. A little older gentleman Arlon pointed them out to me. It's fairly reasonable in the price of palms and it is basically 3 or 4 palms in 1 as there are several different trunks. It still has nice palmy palms and is pretty easy on the upkeep. Arlon suggested if the temps were to get in the 30s, a couple spot lights in the yard facing up would be both aesthetically pleasing and also keep heat and warmth on the tree. We also looked at other options including robellini's and some type of Japanese plum and of course citrus trees.

Then it was home to meet what was hopefully our last window estimate appt. This guy was from Window World, which is a national company that lures most in with their $189 installed window. He was friendly and knowledgeable as usual. He did bring up a good option on our windows - slider style rather than the standard double or single hung up and down windows. Now, we don't have mountain view, but this is similar to what a slider on our front window would look like, except it'll have 4 full sliding glass sections due to the size of that window.

And this (except not detail on the glass) would be what our bedroom and office windows would look like.It definitely surpasses current egress requirements, and I like that it's just large pieces of glass (they'll still be impact resistant). And it's just different than the standard up and downs. There's a house right down the street from us that has this style, I'll probably go chat with them after we get back from CA.
Window World wasn't the least expensive, but wasn't the most either. I haven't heard of their brand of windows, so I'm still leaning towards PGT windows which several people carry and love. I didn't have the other people quote slider style windows, but I think it's not that much more for this style.

Other than that, we watched a couple movies this weekend and did some shopping We saw Righteous Kill with DeNiro and Pachino and Bangkok Dangerous with Nicholas Cage. Righteous Kill was ok, wouldn't have been good at all without Al and Robert. Interesting fact, in their first movie together The Godfather 2, they were both gangsters, the next Heat, one was gangster one cop and in this one, they're both cops. And Bangkok Dangerous was terrible. Wouldn't even had made it to the movie theaters or into our DVD player without Nicholas Cage. He's basically an assassin, but they throw a couple extra story lines in there that slow the move to a screeching hault and oh, just save your self and don't watch it.

Countdown until San Diego - we leave Friday! Off to dinner at Outback with the girls!

Landscape curbing

We're in desperate need of some landscape curbing for our front flower beds. We tried the black plastic edging and that just warped and didn't hold in the mulch. Then we tried something DH came up with: slats from wood fence panels cut to size angled on top stuck in the ground. We had extra fence panels to use (although they do sell strips of wood for this purpose - see photo). It was sort of like a picket fence for our flower bushes. We set them too close and didn't allow for expansion, so they're all laying all over the place now. The ones from the store are pre-spaced with wires to make install easier, allow for expansion and to help keep them in place.

We looked into stone borders from Home Depot similar to retention wall stone. They're about $1.50 per stone and for our 80 ft. line, we'd need 2 layers which would be about $300 plus all that time and lifting. Plus it would take away from the visual height of our flower beds since 2 levels of stone would be about 8 inches high. So then we started looking into concrete edging. Typically, this is done by a professional with a concrete forming machine that he just runs down the outline of the prepped border and wha-la, permanent edging to withstand the rain, sun, sleet and snow. There's all types of stamping and color options to decorate the concrete. There's even different forms to make the border a different shape.

This first one's supposed to look like cobblestone.

These two like real rocks with texture. I'm not a big fan of the one on the left - the random lines are not orgainzed enough for me. The one on the right is ok. It may be an option as this shade would match the brick front.

But the one I like the most is the plain concrete color in mower's edge style. The concrete is natural gray color, I say classic, some may say boring. See the little lip near the grass, this allows the lawn mower to ride right up to there assuring an even mow all the way up to the edging.

We had 1 guy come give us an estimate, and if you know me, you know I've got to check all my options and compare prices, so we've got a 2 more companies coming over to give us an estimate. Hopefully I'll have some nice 'after' pics soon so I can do a before and after post.