Spring is back, and we had a pretty violent winter this year in Florida. I got married in February, and thought that would be the perfect time for an outdoor wedding. It hardly rains in February, and it's usually in the high 70's, low 80's. I expected to have a cool, comfortable, bright and sunny wedding day. ...And then we had this really mean winter and all the plants at my wedding venue took a hit from the freeze, and my wedding day was bitter cold and I had all my girls and I wearing strapless dresses for an outdoor wedding. It was in the 50's, and on the water...and the wind was coming off the water at 19mph, which made it feel even colder. I don't know what happened this year, but it hasn't been fun. And here it is, April 1st, and I was still cold when I went out to walk my dog this morning. I can't wait til we have our normal hot Florida weather back. (And then I'll complain about that! lol).
Anyway, on the Gardening end of things...let's see. The "garden" area thats in my backyard, doesn't look much different this year than last. But I didn't have much time for gardening while I was planning my wedding, so nothing that I wanted to do actually got done. Last night was the first time I went out to do some yard work in several months. I pulled a lot of weeds, but I didn't finish it.
My rose "bush" is still alive. It bloomed all the way through winter, which surprised me. It has some new growth starting in the middle there, right above that cluster of leaves. But it still looks pretty pitiful.
In August, I planted a Night Blooming Jasmine plant that a co-worker gave me for my birthday. He was always talking about how great they make his yard smell and I asked him to bring me a cutting, but instead, he just brought me a whole plant for my birthday. I thought that I might have lost it in the freeze, but it made it through. Yay!
My Frangipani tree is dead. I snapped off one of the branches last night to see, because it's been without leaves since even before the winter started. It's definitely dead. No saving that. So we'll have to pull it out. My husband didn't like it anyway, so I guess that's ok.
I cut back my hibiscus and now I need to go back in and weed it all out. But I didn't get in there last night because it's full of what looks to be carpenter ants, because it has scale again. I'm thinking about just ripping the whole thing out and replacing it with new plants. The plant just doesn't look healthy at all, so I don't know if scale is the only problem or if it's just that bad of a problem. I may take a walk around my local Home Depot and Lowes and see what plants they have to offer, and maybe find a local nursery as well, and see if I can find some easy to maintain plants to put in this area, and pull out all of the unhealthy stuff. Though I should probably treat the area with something, I'm sure...so my new plants don't get scale.
My confederate rose is doing great. I planted that in the corner of my backyard. The Banana Tree is still in the pot and still alive. The window sill planter and the herbs that I bought last year never made it. I will work on the yard some more over the weekend and take more pictures to post then. Thanks for reading and let me just throw out that if anyone has any gardening tips or suggestions, please feel free to comment. I do really want to learn how to properly care for my plants.
