Today marks our first anniversary being a Florida resident, more specifically, a Vero Beach resident. Lots of tropical plants are now emerging from dormancy or are blooming. Many of my plumeria are just starting to leaf-out, but several are now in bloom and many more are budded. The earliest bloomers are my DD's Fragrant Pink and Aztec Gold. The plumeria plants you see below max out around 36" but one of those Aztec Gold plants is only 30" tall, has four tips, and of those tips, three have inflo. that are loaded with flowers/buds. The fragrance of both of these varieties is very nice. The Pink has a floral fragrance and my wife says that the Gold smells like peach cobbler baking in the oven.



Aztec Gold

DD's Fragrant Pink

Happy anniversary. You are almost exactly 6 months ahead of us, we moved in on 10/10.

I'm having a lot of fun right now, seeing all my tropicals waking up. I also purchased a few plants at the Tropiflora Spring Festival, and one of those is a climbing philodendron. When visiting botanical gardens down here and in Sarasota, I saw lots of these climbers on various trees and palms. I thought that they would do well for me and contrast with all my non-climbing plants.

There is a (white) crinum lily in the pot at that first photo, and Clusia, small crinums, and several pots of Colosasia esculenta in that second photo. I'm not a big fan of those colossal "elephant ear" plants both because of their size and the fact that they'll literally take over a landscape. These Colosasia only get about 2.5' tall, are clumping, and don't become invasive. The third photo is a really unusual plant and 2 wk. ago, it was dormant, with no stem.



Giraffe's knee, Gonatopus boivinii

Happy 1st Florida Anniversary Ken! Time sure flies, I didn't realize you'd been here that long already but then, I can't believe my husband and I have been back here at our Sebastian home for four months already.

Your Plumerias are really gorgeous! I'd planted my only Plumeria in the ground here a couple of years ago but it died sometime last year. Unfortunately, with all of our large trees, we don't have enough hours of sun for one to thrive.

Your Split-Leaf Philodendron (Monstera deliciosa) will probably take off and climb that tree very quickly! The Elephant Ear (Colocasia esculenta) must be one of the more dwarf varieties; they really add a tropical look to a garden! The Giraffe's Knees is a new one I've never heard of, very cool looking!

That big crinum in the pot looks like a C. asiaticum, they get huge, better give that one some space, a LOT of space.
Do you have a variety on the colocasia esculenta? I would be interested in learning about some that stay small like that. My esculentas, just the species, were about 4' and they ran all over creation and even sent out runners that showed up under my house on the other side from where they were planted. I did have another colocasia that stayed small and clumped but I forget the name.

Don't worry, Alice, I have a ton of space for whatever I grow. I will probably just leave the giant crinums in these large pots (maybe increase the pot size), just to control their growth. Yes, these colocasia esculenta are compact growers and won't ever be a problem. They are nothing like the elephant ear plants that all of us are used to seeing.

I wish I could remember the specific C. esculentas I had that were so well behaved, they came from the Riverbanks Botanical Garden about 20 years ago. My original plant inventory, which spanned 35+ years, has gone missing in my computer. It was an older format that is no longer recognised. I had copied it into a document and saved that but it too seems to have hidden itself. There were over 600 plants on the list although some were just interesting annuals. One of these days it will pop up.

My plants might be the 'Elena' variety.

Nice find! I love that chartreuse color in the garden.

Happy Anniversary Ken!!!

Thank you, John. Still learning the "Florida-ways".

This is the beginning stage of the "pasture" planting. The raised boxes are 30" deep x 26" wide, treated 1 x 6 and 2 x 2" and are leveled with the slope from the fence to the "creek". The fence side of the box was put slightly below grade so that when rain or watering, the box would better catch and hold moisture. I was able to move the plants 2' from where they were. They are now almost 6' from the fence. The creek only has water flowing when the pond overflows and it is now dry.



dry creek

Here is the end result of those nine, alternating plants, the white bird of paradise and (giant) white crinum lilies. The last photo is of the crinum lily. Notice the wiring I added to that barbed wire fence, so that the cows couldn't stick their heads through the fencing. These plants are now about 5' from the fencing. Hopefully, they'll get well established before the cows can reach one side of them.

I think both plants will establish easily and it will look terrific when they fill out.

I sure hope so, Alice. I've put some thought in their placement (and an awful lot of work) on this project.

For the first time in over a year, I posted some plants for sale yesterday. I had three "customers" come to the house today and purchased a total of seven plants, adenium and plumeria. It's a start and just about as much volume as I want in a day.

I guess the words out. I had a lady contact me a couple of days ago asking if I would be willing to take her huge adenium and euphorbia plants. She said they have completely taken over her deck and she wants the deck back. She said that most of them were around 25 years old. Because they were all basically specimen plants, she wanted them to go to a home that could support their huge sizes.

Well, naturally I said "sure, I will take them and give them that good home". Little did I know the size and weight. The largest adenium is over 6' tall and 8' wide. And there are 8 of them. And the euphorbia (mostly crown of thorns I think, though 2-3 varieties) are growing in some of those pots, alongside the adenium. One euphorbia is 8-9' tall! There was no way I could get them all in my Jeep SUV so the lady's husband loaded the largest and heaviest ones in his truck and followed me home.

Now, to decide what to do with these old, huge plants. I have never dealt with either of this family of plants being this large. My thinking is to simply begin cutting them back to a reasonable height/width and hope that they'll sprout from those cut ends. I imagine I can root all the tips, both adenium and euphorbia.

I also got some other plants that piggybacked into those adenium pots. Over that long of time, I guess seeds/spores were brought to those plants by birds and they just sprouted. I know I have a coffee tree and a neat fern that the lady said was a real jewel. She told me its name but I don't remember it. I'll ask. There are also some succulents, but again, I don't know their name.

39 1/2 critters so far. I still can't trap either of the two armadillos though. These critters are said to be dimwitted, but these two must have an IQ in the upper 1% of the armadillo kingdom.

It's unusual to find one of my soft shell turtles out and about, but this morning, it was headed across my lawn. As soon as it saw me, it turned tail, heading back towards the pond, some 100' away. Perhaps it knew it was feeding time and didn't want to miss out. These water-turtles can really move fast on land as well as water, with their webbed feet. This one has a 16-18" long shell and with the neck out fully, it's about 2' long.

Only a "mother" turtle could love this really ugly variety of turtle.