Taking on a bromeliad

Today I decided to take on the Aechmea Blanchetiana bromeliad, (not sure if this is the correct name) this bromeliad is in the front of the house, and is overgrown crowding the beautiful crown of thorns.

I was dreading this job. The spikes on this bromeliad are painful and I have the scars to prove it.

I will be dividing all these pops.

Now you can see the crown of thorns.

Would you pay $5 for these bromeliads if you find them in a garage sale?
My wife is planning a garage sale later this month and I am thinking of having a bromeliad sale. Should I ask for more???

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Sweet Goldenrod vs Ragweed

Sweet Goldenrod (Solidago odora) isn't your common goldenrod. This one has a sweet anise-like flavor. The leaves as well as the flowers make a very pleasant, fragrant tea. It grows in part to full sun in sandy soil along the edges of pine groves and roadsides in northern Arkansas (and is found from Florida up the Eastern U.S. to Nova Scotia; It is also the state flower of Delaware). Mine has been in bloom in the garden for several weeks and attracts several kinds of butterflies as well as bees. (The honey from sweet goldenrod should be fantastic!)

Goldenrod has gotten a bad rap over the years. Because this plant is in bloom when the fall allergy season starts, pharmaceutical companies (or rather, their PR firms) have photographed fields of goldenrod, inferring your fall allergies come from goldenrod. It's been proven to be false advertising, but since goldenrod has no lobbyists, it continues.

Goldenrod has large-sized pollen, whereas ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia) has tiny, dust-like pollen that is easily lapped up in a breeze. Ragweed is the culprit, it's just not as colorful to photograph for a t.v. ad. There are 17 varieties of ragweed in North America.

It's not easy to tell the difference between "regular" goldenrod and sweet goldenrod by looking unless you're a plant geek. The sure way to know, is break off a leaf and smell it. If it has an anise or licorice fragrance, taste it. The flowers taste better than the leaves, but both are pleasant flavored. To make tea, slightly crush up 4 or 5 leaves, or a teaspoon of fresh or dried flowers. Pour a cup of boiling water over and cover with a lid and let steep for 5 minutes to extract the flavor. Sweeten with honey. It's a good bedtime tea, relaxing.

Sweet Goldenrod Cookies
3 cups sifted flour (I use unbleached all-purpose)
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup white sugar
1 cup room temp. butter
1 egg, messed up, or beaten
3 Tbsp. half-and-half
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 Tbsp. Sweet Goldenrod flowers (fresh or dry)

Combine flour, baking powder and salt in food processor and pulse-blend once. Add the remaining ingredients and pulse blend for 15 or 20 seconds, until blended.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
Chill dough for 30 minutes in refrigerator, then drop by tablespoons onto an oiled cookie sheet. Bake until lightly browned, about 6-7 minutes.

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40 Thousand Pumpkins

My little pumpkin patch here at Long Creek Herb Farm didn't produce anything this year. Between the squash bugs and the 6 weeks of drought, the vines just gave up. But look what you can do if you have 40,000 pumpkins to play with. This is what I saw being constructed when I was at the Dallas Botanic Garden a few weeks ago.
Jimmy Turner, our kind host for the Botanic Garden at the Garden Writers of America conference, sent these photos along (and some pix are mine, as well).

This is the entry way into an impressive pumpkin village, which includes a pumpkin gazebo, a pumpkin house, kids games and more pumpkins than you could ever imagine.

The pumpkin hut, below, was still covered with planters filled with vines that had covered the entire walls on all sides when I last visited. (Vertical gardening is big this year, possibly a response to people who have a small place to garden; going up, on walls, takes the place of traditional horizontal planting). Here it is before, followed by how it looks now. Notice the planters covering the walls with the vines growing out of each one.

 Same building, different view, after being taken over by the pumpkins.

Here, going just for design, the various colors are arranged to surprise the eyes. And it is truly an amazing surprise, seeing all of those punkin's there in one place.

But the biggest and best structure is the pumpkin gazebo, in my opinion.

I couldn't help but wonder, who gets the pumpkins after the exhibit? Do they go to a homeless shelter for pies? Hog ranch for hog feed? Maybe they have a big compost pile at the Botanic Garden. I'll ask. Or if you're curious where all the pumpkins go after they're done with them, ask Jimmy Turner, I'm sure he has the answer.

While posting this, I had cookies baking in the oven. This is a favorite recipe a friend gave me decades ago. I'm guessing it may have originated in the old Moosewood cookbook, but I'm not certain. These are substantial relatively healthy cookies, simple, not too sweet and pretty much no-fail.

Clean out the Pantry Cookies

2 cups flour
2 cups rolled oats (quick or regular)
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup butter, melted
2 eggs

Mix ingredients in the order they're listed. Then add any of the following, up to 1/2 cup of each:
Grape-Nuts, raisins, sunflower seeds, cornflakes, Raisin-Bran, coconut, peanut butter, chocolate chips.
If, after adding from the above, the mixture is too dry, add another egg and mix again

Drop by teaspoonful onto an oiled cookie sheet and bake in a 350 degree F. oven for 10-12 minutes. I like my cookies larger, so I use about 1/4 cup per cookie and bake them about 14 minutes. Today I also added Craisins, pecans, coconut and sesame seed.Wonder how some pumpkin in the cookies would be?

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Fall is in the air

Today I worked on the road-visiting clients, I drove over 300 miles between Miami to West Palm Beach; by the end of the day I was exhausted. The thought of going biking was not very appealing.

The weather was so nice that I couldn’t resist a long bike ride; it truly felt like fall. The temperature was in the low seventies with a nice breeze blowing from the Everglades.

There is nothing like an intense exercise outside in pleasant weather, it takes away all the stresses of the day.

Ibises or as they are known around here “Florida pigeons”

This lonely Great Egret was looking for diner.

Another spectacular Florida sunset.

Today was the official start of the dry season, according to an article in the local newspaper. Scientists predict a particularly dry season this year, I hope the plentiful rainy season will get us through the winter. The year around water restrictions are in effect.

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My daily ritual

Every working day I have a morning ritual, my alarm is set for a 5:20 AM wakeup time, I usually do 40 minutes of yoga and then my wife and I take our dog Rosie for a morning walk.
After walking the dog, I get ready for work and have a quick breakfast. Recently before heading out I take 10 minutes to walk around the garden with my camera. This time of the morning the garden is timing with life, the sun is coming up and the lighting is perfect for pictures.

I find that these 10 minutes do more to keep my sanity during my one hour commute to work, than anything else I do all day.

Pictures from this morning.

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Change of plans

My first order of business this morning was to plant my Orange Geiger tree, the one I got at a tree give-a-way last week. I had a spot all set in the front garden, but it didn’t feel right, it looked a bit crowded. I decided to plant the Geiger tree in the courtyard outside my dining room. When it is mature, I will be able to see the beautiful orange flowers from inside the house.

I did some work in the courtyard--trimmed the bougainvillea, the fire dragon, and the ti bushes. I layed some mulch and pressure-cleaned the bricks.

Let me take you on a tour of the courtyard.

View from inside the house.

In this corner, I keep my collection of bonsai and succulents.

The fire dragon looks better during late spring and early summer. I rescued this yucca from a neighbor’s garbage can.

The St. Francis statute was a gift for my wife. St. Francis is her favorite saint and very appropriate for a garden. We Catholics know him as the patron saint of animals and the environment. The Saint Francis prayer is a favorite of mine.

This is the view of the backyard through the Mexican fire bush vine. Replacing the trellis where the vine is growing on is a future project.

The Dracaena Marginata plant was here when I purchased the house. It's not a favorite of mine but I left it there as a reminder of what was here before. Growing inside is a blue porterflower plant. I also added the Spanish moss to hide the lanky branches.

My dog Rosie supervised my work.

HAPPY LABOR DAY, ALL! I will be working in the garden preparing the vegetable beds.

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Vegetable garden ready for planting

This morning I got my vegetable bed ready for planting.

I added two full wheelbarrows of home grown black gold compost, and additional soil.

For now I’ll let it cook under the newspaper for month and start planting in early October.

This key lime tree was not doing well in a shady area of the garden; I am hoping this new location will do the trick (that’s the beauty of growing trees in containers)

Finished in time before the rain came down in buckets.

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