Updates to the Web Site - 2007
12/30/2007 - I developed www.centralfloridagarden.com with the intention of cataloging my gardening successes and failures. While I am not eager to reveal my many mistakes, I firmly believe that I need to be up front with visitors to this site so they can have an accurate understanding of the information I try to provide. To that end, I have started a new Plant Diary discussing our many travails with planting a Awabuki Viburnum Hedge in our backyard and the severe case of "Gardener's Hysteria" that resulted.
12/27/2007 - One of the fascinating aspects of my Butterfly Garden is the multiple rewards it offers. Putting aside the obvious benefits of beautiful flowers and gorgeous butterflies, I've found that several of the plants in the garden are eager to replicate themselves and save me the time and effort of adding plants to fill in the gaps. The Scarlet Sage is the most interesting. It produces seeds throughout the year and, despite the heavy pine bark mulch, the Sage has managed to spread throughout the garden. At this time of year the Butterfly Weed pods are opening up and sending out their feathery seeds to the four winds. I also discovered several runners popping out of the soil a few feet from the Passionflower, which does cause me a slight level of concern that the vine may become invasive. All of this seems to indicate that the garden has reached a happy state of balance.
I just can't pass up posting a picture of one of my Hibiscuses (Hibisci?) in full bloom:
12/15/2007 - I love the time just after sunrise when I can walk out on to the pool deck with a cup of coffee in my hand and look out across my backyard to the Butterfly Garden and the forest behind it. At this time of year the air is usually moist and cool and the forest subdued - a perfect time to stand peacefully and just take it all in. So yesterday morning I went out on the deck anticipating a few moments of peace, maybe even serenity. I first looked over to the planter of Basil that was waiting to be harvested and a small pot with an Amaryllis that hopefully will bloom around Christmas. The Nasturtiums that I planted along the border along the deck also seemed to be doing well. All was good.
And then I looked out across the backyard and saw to my horror that massive areas of the lawn were torn apart. The cause of the disaster was clear, one or more feral pigs had uprooted my lawn during the night looking for grubs in the soil. Enormous swaths of the lawn were over turned as if some crazed person had decided to hack my lawn to death with a rototiller. I had seen other lawns around the neighborhood during the past year with similar damage, but I just didn't think it would happen to me.
After I got over my initial shock, I spent the next hour trying to undo the damage by replacing the bits and pieces of turf. Despite my efforts, the lawn looked pathetic. And, with the grass going dormant this time of year, it's likely the yard will continue to look disheveled until April or May.
By the time I replaced the last piece of grass, I was seething. I had to find a way to ensure this wouldn't happen again. For the next several hours I surfed the Internet looking for a foolproof way of keeping wild boar off my property. I then scoured the lawn and garden departments at Lowe's and Home Depot looking for repellants. I even posted a question on Dave's Garden seeking advice. It was all for naught. The only recommended methods are hunting or trapping the wild pigs or constructing costly fences (preferably electrified). Even these solutions are not fully effective, since wild pigs reproduce quickly and are determined foragers.
In the end I opted for temporary and likely ineffective solutions. I applied an insecticide to the lawn that kills grubs and installed an outdoor light that is motion activated to scare them off at night. I know they won't work, but I needed to do something to feel like I was in control. I don't want to spend thousands of dollars fencing off my backyard and I love the lawn too much to replace it with mulch or natural plantings. I know the lawn is not a good choice ecologically, but it is my one, small vice that I truly love.
Maybe the wild boars are merely agents of the state - that is the University of Florida IFAS County Extensions who advocate water wise gardening and the use of native plants. And maybe the wild boars will keep on coming until I come to my senses and start replacing the turf with a Florida Friendly Yard. Until then I will continue each morning to walk out to the edge of my deck and hope that we were not visited by boars in the night.
11/27/2007 - There are moments, after I've been working on the computer for hours on end, when I need to take a break and try something completely different. That is when I usually click on the Stumble! icon on my browser and see what pops up. StumbleUpon is an add-on to the FireFox browser (I prefer FireFox to the more kludgey Internet Explorer) that is a collection of Web sites recommended by StumbeUpon users. There are thousands of sites listed, so when you click on the Stumble! icon you are taken randomly to one of the sites. This morning I clicked on Stumble! and up popped a Plant Glossary maintained by vPlants: a Virtual Herbarium of the Chicago Region. The plates that illustrate the Glossary are fascinating and the site is an excellent, detailed and authoritative reference for plants in the Chicago region. It's sad that Florida does not maintain a similar database.
On a related topic, I was recently talking with a graduate student at the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the University of Florida and asked if she knew of any plans to update the IFAS plant database to make it more useable. It is a shame that the extensive plant data sheets that were prepared by the UF staff over the last two decades sit in disarray on the IFAS Web site. I also grumbled that there is no cohesive organization for the many IFAS pages that offer useful advice. She said that there was a project underway to reorganize the data, which gives me some hope. Similar projects have gone nowhere in the past, but hopefully this time someone will succeed and Florida will have an online reference equal to vPlants.
Ok, here is another unusual site from StumbleUpon - Exceptional Trees.
10/18/2007 - A few days ago I noticed my first Monarch Butterfly in the garden and wondered if it was due to an annual migration or the recent blooming of the Milkweed and Lantana plants. I posed the question on the Humming Bird and Butterfly Gardening Forum of Dave's Garden. None of the people who responded were able to definitively answer why the Monarch had suddenly appeared, but one contributor pointed me to monarchwatch.org where I found the following fascinating statement:
"In all the world, no butterflies migrate like the Monarchs of North America. They travel much farther than all other tropical butterflies, up to three thousand miles. They are the only butterflies to make such a long, two way migration every year. Amazingly, they fly in masses to the same winter roosts, often to the exact same trees. Their migration is more the type we expect from birds or whales. However, unlike birds and whales, individuals only make the round-trip once. It is their children's grandchildren that return south the following fall."
If God is in the details, then what better place to start looking for him than in the little Monarch flying about the garden?
By the way, it looks like I am not the first person to have that thought about butterflies. Click here.