Ill probably just leave it in a pot on the patio, altho I put it out in the rain last night, and today the bees were all over it.

hi everyone hows the weather its rained here for 3 days non stop, dont need to water anything anyway
im doing my second hobby knitting ready for the cold weather, great photos and topics by the way
im away in our second home a touring caravan in snowdon mountain range in north wales, my son in charge of the plants again
1st time asked him to do that i brought him box of fudge with( thankyoufor looking after my plants) written front of box and he managed to kill 10 house plants :grumbling
no more fudge for him:

Keep bringing him the goodies, Janet. He will learn it's worthwhile to do a good job taking care of your plants.

If you punish him, he'll kill your plants on purpose . . .

Just got back from vacation and had trouble finding this forum, things have changed while I was gone. I'm just posting so I can get this to show up on my home page..fingers crossed.

@sunkissed
Did it show up Sherri?
Go here:
The thread "September 2016 website redesign is complete!" in Site Talk forum
it will answer a lot of your questions

Thanks Ann, I'll have to read all that later when I have some more time.

hi folks well i am back from the last break guess what son managed to kill off only 7 this time
weather has gone into the rainy season already got 100 plus bulbs to get in and all the pansys to plant, my dear son said he buy themfor me to replace the plants he kills off
he just been told hes got type 2 diabetes quite young under 40, rare to have this problem
and my husband fell while we where away, thought he broke his leg, got a prained ankle very swollen, hes ok got a walking stick some holiday, back to the gardening, fish not eating as much, we had a storm and high wind while we were away broke a few pots garden looks needs a tidy up
how the weather with you, it cold in the morning now

Hi, everyone! I'm vacationing in Naples this week and I started a thread about it over in the BBB forum, if you want to follow along: The thread "Melanie visits Naples, Florida" in Gardening for Butterflies, Birds and Bees forum

Ever since Hurr. Matthew blew by here, the night temps have dropped and the humidity is down. The roses are once again inspired to bloom. I am very happy about this and find since the summer flowers are waning, I can spend more of my energy tending to the roses.

Of course we haven't had ANY rain since the last hurricane so I must water all the things I planted late this summer. Not really a problem as I always find things I had forgotten about and this activity is very relaxing. The butterflies and birds are always very active between 4 and 6:00 pm.

I went on a rose binge the other day and found I needed to make some more space for them. I have a young teen come over and help do the heavy stuff. I have an arched trellis as an entryway from the drive way to the garden path to my door. Until yesterday there was a pampas grass plant on each side of the trellis. When I bought these two, they were marked as dwarf..................hardly. They got really big and I was forever trimming the slicing blades from the path. Lots of dead foliage gets caught in the center of these and they became an eyesore.

So Michael removed both of them yesterday. I'm sure after he played with every tool I own, he wished he had some dynamite. He was handicapped with my restriction of not digging that 20amp wire buried there leading to my shed.

Ultimately, he couldn't get the roots out of the ground, so we re-positioned the trellis toward the driveway a couple feet or so. Today, I put in some new climbers. I have some reds and whites that I think would look stunning twined together.

Watching the weather forecasts hoping first frost doesn't come on time. I've got a couple contractors bags of pine needles waiting to mulch in the most tender of the plants for the winter. I hate to do this until the last minute because they do enjoy the sun and warm for as long as they can.

How's things in yall's gardens this month?

Molly

I was just thinking we hadn't kept this thread active for a while. Nice to hear from you, Molly. How about some pictures of your roses? Mine have all pretty much petered out or been eaten by the Sri Lanka weevils.

It's been almost completely dry here since Matthew went by, too. We didn't even get much more than a few little showers (plus wind) from Matthew here either. So all my rain barrels are empty and I'm watering with well water which my plants really don't like all that well.

My Chalice Vine has finally put on a nice show of flowers after at least 4 years of sulking. They start out white and mellow down to yellow as they droop with age.


Third show of flowers on these Bromeliads since July. They seem to respond to weather changes - first bloomed after Hermine, again after Matthew and now these are maybe a result of cool nights in the last week or so.


I got this nice variegated Abutilon aka Flowering Maple back in March, and it has grown like topsy to over 7ft. but is just now finally blooming. Guess it was waiting for cool, dry weather, too. I'm hoping some of my orchids are also going to respond to the cool.

Bloomwise, everything is fading around here. It's been quite dry and we didn't get the amount of rain from the hurricane that I expected. Hubby was checking our irrigation system a couple of days ago and found that two of the eight zones weren't working so he went and got whatever parts he needed and repaired it but it sure would be nice to get some rain since we're heading into the dry season!

With few blooms, it's nice to have the color of Crotons (Codiaeum) and Caladiums to brighten things up:



Forked Blue Curls are showing a couple of blooms and a Geranium has been blooming sporadically since August:


This past Friday I finally tackled a job that I'd been procrastinating on since the hurricane blew through ... cleaning the deck at the back of our property. We have a little storage shed out there for lawn equipment and it's where I do a lot of potting of plants and keep most of my succulents. The deck was covered in about 6 inches of leaves, twigs and branches from the hurricane so it's nice to see it tidy again. I wish I'd taken before pictures but never thought about it ... this is what it looks like now:

Lin what a lovely garden you have, I sure love that deck. Where do you get the shelves you have? That is exactly what I'm looking for.

I have drip irrigation and the squirrels are forever chewing my lines. We haven't had much rain for a good two weeks, but it did rain during the night the past two filling my rain barrel back up again.

I don't seem to get this Florida thread showing up on my updated watching threads since the new update... I had to go searching to see if anyone has posted anything.

I went to the Meade Garden plant sale yesterday and found some good deals on Bromeliads. I got three plants and a bunch of cyrptanthus, some were two dollars each. Wasn't a whole lot there but I did find some goodies.

@sunkissed/Sherri Sorry about getting back to this thread so late. You asked about those wire shelving units I have on my deck ... they are very old and rusty. I bought them back about 10 years ago at Walmart and put casters on them so they could be rolled around. I originally used them indoors; I rigged lights up to them for my African Violets and Gesneriads. I had two of the 5 shelf units and one 3 shelf unit that was shorter and wider.




It appears they've gone way up in price; I googled and found them at a couple of places.
Target:
http://www.target.com/p/adjust...

Walmart: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Wor...

KMart (I didn't know they were still open): http://www.kmart.com/search=bl...

Check around at your local stores because they do put them on sale at times!

Check at Big Lots and Lowe's Sherri. I have 3 sets of light wire shelves that even came with a little 'greenhouse' cover and were, I think, $35 each.

The down side is they don't last long outdoors in Florida if you are watering plants on them.

Thanks Lin and Elaine. I plan on putting one in my Florida room for the winter to put my orchids and some precious tender tropicals on. My husband just looked a pic and said he thinks Sam's had something like that too. No Kmarts here anymore, but I'll check out Target and Big lots. Walmart shows out of stock.

Yes, Sam's Club has similar shelving units too, some with casters for easy rolling: http://www.samsclub.com/sams/s...

At one time I had PVC shelving units that I used in my greenhouse and years later when the greenhouse was dismantled, the shelving units were put to use on the deck but I haven't seen the pvc type shelves available anywhere in awhile ... could be I just haven't noticed because I've not needed them. The good thing about the hard plastic/pvc was they didn't rust so they were nice for use outside. They came in white or black:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001KYJQMI/
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0083ESFA2/

I had the white ones but I painted them hunter green because the white was just too stark for my taste. The only thing about the ones I had is the shelves had a small lip so when I watered my plants, the water didn't drain so I had to drill holes into all the shelves to allow for drainage.

Thanks for all those links Lin. I did want one in black and found one at our local Home Depot, husband put it together right away. We're supposed to go down into the forties in a couple nights, so my orchids have to come in. Home Depot had the lowest price, 39. for the four shelf, and 59. for the 72" five shelf. Wheels are extra, but I don't need wheels.

Last Saturday I brought all my plants in that need to go in mulched in the tenders that are already in the ground then planted all the rest of the Roses that needed to go in we had three days of freezing in the morning no Frost because there's no humidity here.

Looks like we may be in for a very dry winter

Yes, La Nina is going to give us a drier, warmer winter. We're hurting bad for rain. I have a bunch of plants in pots that were slated to go in ground this fall but they still sit in the pots. I can't possibly put them in the parched earth and all of them were going in places the hoses can't reach.

Mom just noticed the bougainvillea is blooming and was saying how it hadn't bloomed in so long. I replied, "That's because it stopped raining!" Tampa hasn't gotten any rain in a long time, but Lutz had one morning where we got a good drizzle about a month ago. Dad and my brother just got back from hunting in Perry, FL and they said it was about the driest they'd ever seen. My brother didn't even put his boots on, just wore his hiking shoes.