The photo below is of my orange hibiscus and rose bush after planting in my yard. This past April, 2017, I dug up a little patch of grass in the back yard to create a space for a colorful flower garden.
The pretty double-flower orange hibiscus is a typical plant to grow in Florida. I prefer the double type flower, and I thought the color was lovely. You can see that it was a small plant.
New Garden, Hibiscus and Rose Bush – April 2017
Roses are such a bother, but this one was pretty and I decided to try it. The rose bush looks awful now, but the hibiscus has grown like crazy. This just goes to show that if you plant what likes to grow in the local climate it will flourish.
Here it is 7 months later.
Hibiscus and Rose Bush in November 2017
The hibiscus plant was watered regularly after it was planted, as was the rose. There were some mites on the buds, so I picked off the buds and threw them away. I’ve noticed that sometimes there are still mites on the plant, but it is not affecting the growth. I never water it now and it is flourishing in the sunny spot by the house.
Hibiscus are tropical plants and I fully expected it to survive quite well. I didn’t realize it would grow so fast. It constantly buds and blooms and the leaves are nice and green.
All I do is occasionally pick off the bug infested buds and give it fish fertilizer and sprinkle some bone meal around the base for good root strength.
I have plans to plant more like this in the front yard. The wind blows from the front and it’s also more shady, so I don’t know if that will be a good location.
Something I’ve always enjoyed is watching my plants grow and change. I once took photos of the Pinky Winky hydrangea in my New Hampshire yard for an entire blooming season to show the changes in the flowers from summer through fall.
The image above is not from my dinner table but it contains all the necessary items for a decent Thanksgiving meal, in my humble opinion.
My son smokes the turkey on the grill. He just bought his favorite Jack Daniels Wood Smoking Chips which are made from old oak barrels that once held whiskey. The turkey was delicious last year, so I am leaving it up to him.
This will be our second year together for the holidays and the guest count total is three! Yes, it’s a small gathering. So the focus is on the food.
Our dinner planning has begun. Turkey, stuffing and gravy are a given. It just wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without them. Also high on the list is mashed potatoes, Acorn squash and rolls. I don’t eat much bread these days, so I will most likely skip adding the rolls to my plate.
Personally I can’t eat any of it without cranberry sauce as an accompaniment. Last year I made my own cranberry sauce and I will do so again this year. I added the recipe to this blog so I would remember how to do it.
Boiling the cranberries
Another new thing I did last year was to make my own broth. I used the turkey innards / gizzards or whatever all that extra stuff is called that is packed inside a big frozen bird. The broth is used in place of water in gravy and stuffing. And boy does it make a difference in flavor! Any leftover would make an excellent soup stock too.
Making Stock
Many people already know to do all of this, but I didn’t grow up with a mother who was a good cook. Most of my life I had to make most of the Thanksgiving meal myself, for my husband and kids. We never had much family around. After all the cooking, serving and eating, I had the clean up.
Thanksgiving meals of old, back when I was growing up and tables had to be pushed together to seat all fo us, the menu was larger. Aunts and grandmothers slaved for days to bring their homemade specialties to the table. Boiled onions, turnips, carrots, homemade breads, and many pies and desserts we included. My grandmother made cookies called monkey faces. There were so many before-dinner appetizers I had to be careful not to fill up.
Our simple menu will also include apple pie which I will make.
I need to find some recipes for after Thanksgiving. Usually sandwiches and soup use up the leftovers nicely. This year we have a new refrigerator which means plenty of room for keeping the carcass until I can use it to make soup stock the next day.
Now that the weather is cooling off here in central Florida, gardening is on my mind. I can comfortably step outside and work in the yard. October was a little hot, but November has been nice.
My Gardening in Florida book says that October is the time to think about growing cool-season crops. Now it’s November and I still don’t have enough dirt for planting. But if I did, this is what I would have planted.
Also, further down the page, see what is still growing and beginning to produce vegetables!
What to Plant in Fall
Suggested planting includes carrots, beets (I seldom eat) and turnips (I never eat), which can be started as seeds. No need to buy seedlings. Last spring I planted carrots in a fabric pot and they did pretty well.
My book has a section about building strawberry pyramids – so I assume I should plant strawberries this time of year. I don’t really have the space for them, so maybe I need a pyramid? There is probably no time or money for that this year, but it’s something to keep in mind.
What I really need is a fence. It will give me some place where I can add containers and keep the raccoons out at the same time. There is no money for that right now.
I must deal with reality, so here is my list of vegetables I could have planted in October. My garden is 10 feet long by 3 feet wide. So not a lot of space, but I do have fabric pots to use as well. If only I had a garden full of good dirt.
Lettuce Kale Onions – plant around the edges, take up little space Peas – Will need a trellis
Some Plants Are Still Growing Well After Summer
I all but gave up completely on growing anything over the summer. I had planted tomatoes, eggplant, squash and peppers in Spring. I did get some small tomatoes but the raccoons helped themselves. The squash plant got bugs and died before it gave me any squash. The Eggplant and Peppers are still going strong. In fact they are now doing well.
My neighbor, who does no gardening in summer, said that when it’s too hot the plants won’t produce. She covers the ground with plastic to kill the nematodes. However, I wonder if she realizes that burning out the bad also affects the good. I’m not sure it is wise to do that. And because my plants survived the summer and are now looking good, I plan to keep the garden going all summer long next year.
My Eggplant “Tree” and green pepper plant in the raised bed
I honestly thought everything would eventually die in the summer heat. I kept watering, just in case. My eggplant grew into a small tree! It was pretty, and has plenty of purple flowers, but never gave me an eggplant to eat. Finally I cut it back hoping the excess energy put into growing would be used to possibly give me some eggplants.
And then…. today (maybe 2 weeks after trimming it) I was watering in the morning, as I do every day, and I found a small Eggplant beginning to grow! Yay… more please.
November 15th – Finally, a Little Eggplant is Growing!
The only other vegetable producing plants that have survived are the peppers. The hot pepper plant gives me a pepper here and there.
I have 2 bell pepper plants. One is in a fabric pot and it has produced a couple of peppers over summer. Now that the weather is cooler, the other pepper plant is producing like mad! I’ve never been able to grow peppers but maybe the secret is to plant in Spring and wait until Fall to eat them.
So, what I’ve learned so far is that planting in Spring gives me vegetables in Fall. The plants seem to go dormant over summer and then produce when the weather gets nice.
I’m continuously amending my soil and will continue to do so. I think poor soil was inhibiting growth.
When I visited New Hampshire recently, one of the first things I wanted to do was get outside and take a walk.
Fortunately my daughter lives in a rural, wooded location with a walking trail nearby. We could have walked down the road to reach this trail, but we decided to take the (nonexistent) path through the woods instead.
We only got lost once, but at least we were headed in the right direction! The section of the trail we walked is only a small part of the 6.5 mile long path. No motor vehicles are allowed, but walking, biking, cross-country skiing, skating and fishing (it follows a river at places) are allowed.
There wasn’t much foliage to view, but this cool “tree tunnel” was interesting.
Walking Trail
Tunnel of Trees
Moose have been seen in this area and I would love to see one. On the other hand, I have heard about how they can be aggressive. It could be scary to come face to face with such a huge animal and have nowhere to hide but behind a tree!
Covered Bridge
This is the river that the trail runs parallel to. My daughter’s boyfriend was nice enough to take us out on his boat and we cruised up and down this section of the river. The water was icy cold!
Before I left on my trip north, I checked (and watered) all my plants and discovered that my croton is flowering! Pretty fluffy little off-white flowers are shooting off the tops of the big-leaved stems. Long ago I may have seen croton flowers, but if so, I had forgotten that they have flowers.
It’s Saturday morning already. I lost a few days this week it seems.
All my mornings begin with me making coffee for myself. While the coffee brews I take care of the cats. My two black cats simply want to go outside. I change their water and make sure there is food in the bowl.
Then I deal with Earflap aka Mr. Mites aka Bitey. He is the stray who adopted us a few months ago. He manages to fill his litter box every night, so I empty that. He gets special canned food, so I serve him breakfast. The porch door stays shut overnight so the raccoons won’t come in and eat his dry food, so I open it and give him his freedom. Usually he goes back to sleep on the chair inside the porch.
Earflap the stray cat
Two days ago I walked into the garage at 8AM and it wasn’t sweltering. I put the door up and a wonderful breeze hit me. As I walked into the driveway I stretched my arms and breathed in the air – something I haven’t done in months. Trying to breathe outside here in summer is like slowly drowning. Okay, I am exaggerating a bit but the humidity here is stifling – 24 hours a day.
I hadn’t been back to my old home town in New Hampshire in over a year, but recently I took a trip to New England.
I expected to see some nice fall foliage, but it wasn’t anything spectacular. Probably because of the unusual heat and humidity that Hurricane Maria dragged up from the south. At least the air was crisp and clear by the time I arrived and I certainly enjoyed that. Sleeping with the window open at night – ahhhh, heaven.
My daughter and I took a trip to the Lakes Region of New Hampshire and visited Castle in the Clouds. The weather was incredibly perfect. It was a Monday, so there were very few visitors, which was also wonderful.
I’ll share a few photos here, and if you are ever in New Hampshire and it’s beautiful weather, I suggest you visit this place.
We began our visit with lunch at the horse stables turned restaurant, and what a view the horses used to have! You can see the old stables and the new seating area at the restaurant in my image below.
Horse Stables Turned into a Restaurant
Inside seating includes tables within the old stalls.
My daughter and I chose to eat outdoors because the weather was so beautiful, and the view was fabulous.
Our sandwiches were yummy and we brought a cooler where we saved the leftovers in the car after eating. Then we climbed aboard a trolley car for the short ride up to the Castle.
A delicious lunch of sandwiches, chips and onion rings (and a glass of wine) to start our tour.
We took a short trolley ride up to the Castle and then did a self-guided tour through the mansion.
Road up to the CastleThe mansion museum front yard
Lo and behold, I found a hydrangea plant on the grounds! I believe it might have been a Limelight hydrangea but I am not absolutely sure. The flowers look elongated and the flowers are creamy white. It was nice to see a flowering hydrangea. I miss the ones I used to grow.
Limelight ? Hydrangea
This is only one thing we did while I stayed in the north for a week. We also ate ice cream at a roadside stand (I had raspberry chocolate chip) and we took a walk, and a boat ride on the river. I also got to meet my daughter’s new cat who has unique coloring. Isn’t she pretty?
The best part of my trip, besides seeing my daughter, was the breathing that wonderful Fall air. It was a relaxing time and was nice to get away. I dislike flying, but it was worth it to spend time in an area I love.
My short experience with Fall was nice. It will never be true Fall here in Florida. Temps are still in the 90’s and even what they call Fall here is really not.
I will be getting my raised garden bed ready for planting soon, as soon as it cools off.
Hydrangeas Blue 