While I was Away

While I love David and the life we have cruising, I also love plants.  I have made our yard in Fort Walton Beach a place of refuge for critters of all kinds and the sun areas are for pollinators in particular.  I love making things grow and fit into an overall plan.  None of the pictures of the finished yard were saved but it was great.  All the spring flowering bushes were through flowering so it was a good time to make sure they were all fed.  I also have a large tropical area with ferns, philodendrons, fatsia, forsythia, impatiens and lots of caladiums.  They are all now fed too.  The hydrangeas are getting ready to bloom as well as several types of euphorbia, native honeysuckle, golden dewdrop, firespike, milkweed, shrimp plant, pentas and other things.  Whew, and that is just the back yard!  In all, every inch along the fence line is a bed of some sort, about 1/2 of the back yard is in plantings.  About 1/4 of the front is so that means lots of cleaning out, feeding, shaping, planting and mulching.  I was tired but thrilled!  My friends have promised to send me pictures as the season progresses of all the plants getting ready to bloom. 

One sad part of landscape maintenance is having to say good-bye to plants you love,
Our river birch gives us such great shade in the summer and a nice addition to our winter
view with it's bare branches in a mostly evergreen yard.  It was a 2-trunk type and 1/2 of it
died.  The arborist who took it down could see no sign of disease or infestation so hopefully
we won't lose the other leg.

They did a great job and now we won't have to worry about a huge branch falling
on the house or the shed.

I had to severely prune a very old gardenia.  I am hopeful that
it will rejuvenate the bush but if not, it will have to go next Spring.
This is what my first day of efforts looked like. Before I went back
to St. Augustine, I took out over 50 bags of debris and branches.