Could it be a baby queen? They come up everywhere.

Jim

I was going to suggest queen palm.

Elaine, didn't you say it grew quickly? Queens do shoot up when you blink.

Hmm, could be I suppose. We are in an old neighborhood with a great variety of palms around.

Anybody want a 15ft. baby queen palm? It's got to go, I'm afraid. Too big too fast for where it's at.

If it is a Queen that close to the house, you'll spend a lot more time on the roof, if it stays. I know from experience. They shed something all year ... blossoms, calyxs, seeds, fruit, stubs if you have them trimmed , and fiber.. It's an everlasting mess!

Well, I hadn't considered before, but it's also growing on the south side of my mango tree, so will be shading the mango pretty soon at the rate it's growing. Cutting it down tomorrow. No worries. I like palm trees but I LOVE my mangoes.

I have nothing against Palms...if they are in the right location. Mine is not, but it belongs to the mobile home park, and I can't get rid of it....been trying to for 25 years.

A really nice flush of blooms on my double Brug 'New Orleans Lady' is perfuming the garden in the evenings. I feel forgiven after leaving this big baby out in the cold all winter. It was making mostly single flowers last fall, but most are double now, too.



Nasturtiums are one of my all-time favorite annuals, and they really do well through winter and spring here. They'll be gone by June though.


My supervisor, Mia "the princess" waits to have the door opened for her, despite the fact that her cat door is less than 2ft. away to her left. Sometimes I make her wait, and you can see by the set of the ears she's saying "Hoo boy! It's hard to get good help these days."

Mia is beautiful, Elaine! I've always preferred long-haired animals (and people truth be told! )

The New Orleans Lady is lovely! What is a brug?

Do you eat your nasturtiums? I hear they're good in a salad...

Since I have just spent the morning photographing some of my mounted staghorns, I thought y'all might find interest in seeing not only the beautiful mounts but also the variety of forms I see with my staghorns.

A young and very rare P. Mickey's Rainbow on 150 yr. old cypress

A young and rare P. veitchii 'Lemoinei' aka "French Staghorn" on cypress knee

Another one of the French stags on driftwood

The P. bifurcatum 'Netherlands' on heart pine

Netherlands on cedar

Netherlands on cypress knee

Ken, loving the various mounted Staghorns.

They're beauties, Ken. Very interesting wood, too. I think we might have seen a veitchii on a tree at Tropiflora. It was huge and attached to the bole of a palm tree!


Patty, brug is short for Brugmansia, aka Angel's Trumpet. If you want some starts, they are dead easy to start from cuttings? They do get big, and I keep mine in pots because they are terribly prone to nematode problems, but . . as I said, just so easy to propagate, I always have a few - there's an all-white one and another called "Milk n Honey" that starts out with long, white trumpets and they suffuse gold as they age. Nice fragrance in the evenings, and they cycle about once a month all year, except less in winter. Heavy feeders and need lots of water, too.

Elaine, the French Staghorn is also known as the "Silver Staghorn". The fronds are not only much narrower than the bifurcatum but also beautifully silver, particularly when the frond are young. May favorite of all my staghorns is Mickey's Rainbow though. Very narrow, cascading fronds but the fronds don't get nearly as large or as long as the bifurcatum. It is a very compact grower and pups well.

I sure love the Brugs and the cute Kitty, Elaine!

Ken, interesting Staghorn ferns, I like the 'Netherlands' very much. Nice mounts.

I no longer grow or sell the "standard" bifurcatum. The Netherlands grows a bit more slowly and doesn't get quite as large. It also is supposed to be more tolerate of heat extremes and drought. It is now my most plentiful staghorn. Those two rare staghorns were divisions of five year old "mother" plants. I have one last rare variety that I haven't yet divided, but it is a huge plant. It is the P. mauna loa.

I bought this Helleborus last fall from Home Depot. It had no label - not even one saying it was a Helleborus. But I fell in love with the dark colored leaves. When it bloomed this week, I was in love...



The best part is that this is the only Helleborus I have that doesn't have frost damage on the old leaves.

Daisy

Showy!

And its little faces point up! I don't have to lie in the dirt to admire the flowers.

Just love those Hellebores, and that one's a beauty, Daisy. I have to satisfy my Hellebore cravings by planting them at my daughter's house in Salt Lake. Hope I'll get to see the big white one there when I visit next month.