Good morning bloggers.
I returned last week from a 3 week vacation...My garden looks like the good, the bad and the ugly. The kid I usually have water my plants while I am gone, went on vacation the same time I did. He does a great job.
My husband got confused and thought I arranged with the neighbor girl to water the whole time we would be gone... So for 5 days I had no one to water my potted plants..Mother nature did not help either, as I dont think we had much rain the 3 weeks I was gone. For the last week of my vacation, the other neighbor kid did her job, but I think some plants were lost beyond salvation by the time she started watering.
Summer gardening in south Florida, is pretty much, not very exciting. I had pulled out some annual plants before I left. I purposely did not start any seeds, before I left, I was trying to keep the watering chores down to a bare minimum of time. My crepe myrtles must have looked great while I was gone, as there is now just big seed heads left and not many pretty blossoms.
The zinnias I had started this spring were toast when I got home. But some giant zinnias that were medium seedlings when I left are now 3 ft tall plants, with big, beautiful, flower heads on them.
I have some surprise, volunteer tomato plants, I will just wait to see if they do anything in this heat besides burn up...I hope they are are either plum or roma tomatoes I had this spring, the maters were yummy.
My desert rose was in full bloom when I got back. I had some orchids that bloomed, and the hoya's and the dicsus cactus held their own...they only like weekly sips of water and they were just fine.
I made the made the mistake of buying a red, hanging begonia before I left...I know, what was I thinking! It was on life support when I returned, a good soak of water and it is slowing coming back.
I spent the 3 weeks high in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. Great weather prevailed after the first few "toasty" day's after my arrival.. I love all the planters of flowers in the town. When I originally volunteered to write a diary I was planning on doing the giant hanging baskets of Breckenridge. Well, when I finally got around to taking some photos, they did not turn out so well. Seems I had the camera set for shutter speeds and not aperture, like I normally do...Or just maybe I was not getting enough oxygen to my brain..So I had to scrap that idea, as the photos were not very good and I was leaving later that evening.
I did have a few photos come out fairly decent. These pictures are from my favorite old fashioned garden in town. I had a zoom lens on the camera so I was not able to get a picture of the garden.
Some of my favorite flowers, columbines, poppies and peonies.
Garden barely survived and what did is like an overgrown jungle. I came home to a green swimming pool... not very enticing. A dog with brown dog ticks, really not good. And this angel in my angel garden, lost his head and foot somehow while I was away..Pesky raccoon I am sure.
What happens in your garden while you are away?
PS: this formatting a lot of photos in a diary with the new photo embed system is a PITA...since the data for the embed photo goes to to the top of the diary, you gotta cut and paste all the time! I uploaded my photos with no description on them...big mistake when trying to figure out what the photo is from just the image numbers only...Live and learn. Anybody figure out a go-around somehow or how to change the size of the photo?