Autumn is Here

The Catbird is back for the winter.  I love hearing his goofy calls.  He visits the birdbath every day.

The little Blue-Grey Gnatcatcher is so adorable!  He's just a little bitty guy and boy is he busy.  It's a definite challenge for me to capture him on camera.

They make the cutest little cheep-cheep noises too.  

The little downy woodpecker likes to visit around dusk and makes a big rat-a-tat-tat for such a little guy.  He's one of at least three species of woodpecker that we have in the yard.  (Actually, this is a female)

The Gulf Fritillary is the most frequent butterfly visitor to the yard this fall.

I just got my vegetable seeds started on November 1st.  I'm about a month behind, and I'm going to blame that on Hurricane Irma.  I haven't grown veggies since I was a kid in Wisconsin.  In other words, I really don't know what I'm doing.  

This is a week later.  I'm concerned they're getting a bit too spindly.  We'll see.  I'm attempting to grow heirloom tomatoes, cucumbers, bush beans, poblano and banana peppers.  Oh, and carrots.  I haven't sowed the carrots yet, so I'd better do that pretty soon.  Wish me luck! 🌱🍅🌿

After the Storm

Well, we pretty much took a direct hit.  

Obliterated the fence.  Although it was rather flimsy, so I'm not surprised.

Snapped the pine trees right off.  

I could smell the intense scent of pine there was so much breakage in the area.  It's now faded.

It stripped the pines of their needles and branches.

And now the woods seem battered and naked.

I had a favorite tree behind the mailbox.

He's not looking so good now, poor guy.

Happy to report my other fave made it okay though.

I really do like all the trees, but the above two I just mentioned happen to call to me a little louder than the rest :)

I've got absolutely nothing left blooming except this rogue Jatropha volunteer.  The three big Jatrophas on the side of the house are so tortured looking, I couldn't even take a photo of them.  They're going to need a lot of love...along with everything else.

We were extremely lucky.  We made it through okay.  And the house was hardly touched.  Local damage is pretty severe.  We didn't have power for a week afterwards.  I'm still dehydrated even though we had plenty of water.  We do have a small generator, but we didn't have gas to run it until three days afterwards and when we did get it going a fan just didn't make it in the 94 degree weather.  This is our third hurricane and we thought we were prepared.  Ha!  Irma was a bad, bad thing.

I'm very happy to find that all of my regular bird and squirrel families that visit are accounted for and seem to be in good health!   Be well!  ☮

A Few Blog Changes

I picked this cute little dwarf zinnia bouquet from my garden this morning.  And thought this rose mug that I found at the thrift store made a pretty vase.

  I'm also trying to give my blog a bit of a facelift.  The previous black background was rather severe...so I might be trying different colors from time to time.  I think I'm liking the green, being a garden blog and all :)

Welcome to July everybody - wow, that was fast!   ☼☮☼

It's the Rainy Season

Hello everybody!  Well, not much is going on here in the garden.  What's new, haha!  I've been repotting a few things that were pot bound like this little oncidium.

Some of my herbs are doing well in the rainy season, like this beautiful chives plant.

And I've had several basil harvests.

Which of course turned into pesto - yay!

Speaking of food, I dried some corn for the birds and squirrels.  It isn't as pretty as the kind that you get from the store, but it's a lot cheaper and it wasn't hard to do.  Just search drying corn for squirrels online and it will come up.

I've been meaning to add an Instagram button on the sidebar to connect to my IG account @swflgardener, but just haven't got around to it.

If you're on IG, I'd love to hear from you and I'd love for you to follow along.

If you don't have an Instagram account, you can search my name (Lynn McIntosh) and swflgardener online and these pages will come up that I've posted here, plus a bunch more.

Not that I'm doing anything exciting over there, but I do tend to post there every day.

I'm also on Twitter, but haven't been posting much this year.  Same with Facebook.  I just thought I'd mention the IG account where I post much more frequently.

I've never planted dwarf zinnias before.  I thought they'd be as small as the package said.  Nope!  Oh, well, they're getting ready to bloom and be pretty, so I've no complaints.  Be Happy!  Peace all ☮✌💚

Another New Friend Visits

Oh, what a handsome Devil!  I'm so very excited to have this Big Cypress Fox Squirrel visit the yard!  I'm still jumping up and down with glee.

I've never seen one before and I'm so happy to get a few photos.  The Big Cypress Fox Squirrel is only found in southwestern Florida - Hendry, Lee, Collier and northern Monroe counties, and maybe a part of Miami-Dade county.  And it's protected as a threatened species.  (There are other fox squirrel subspecies in Florida, the Sherman's Fox Squirrel and the Carolina Fox Squirrel)

I think his coloring is beautiful.  Love the white ears, nose and "hands".

Uh oh, he's on to me...

Just look at how big he is.  He's HU-GE!

(And yes, I know this birdfeeder is in a bad place, next to a tree *sigh* and we also lost the baffle.  Not that it'd do any good when they can just hop on over from the tree, haha!)

And just let me point out that tail ↑

It's spectacular!

Fun Facts:  They can be up to 27" in length and weigh up to three pounds.  Breeding season is coming up again, so I'm hoping he'll stick around and bring his mate.  

Regular Squirrely, he's so cute.  He says "Hey lady - I faithfully visit every day" and I say "Thank you, my friend - I love you too" 💖💖💖

More Visitors!

Oh, I love it when I get animal visitors to the yard!  This Gopher Tortoise is an especially welcome friend.  Now, I didn't flip it over to see if it was a him or a her, so I'll just call this one a "him".  

He didn't really move much, so I only photographed the one pose, but here he is a little bit closer.  If you ever come across one of these, please don't try to put it toward water.  These are land tortoises and they live in the scrubby, dry areas like the pine flatwoods.  Anyway, they rarely drink water, getting their water needs from plants.  I sometimes see them on the road somewhere and I do try to put them on the other side of the road in the direction they were heading.  And with the crazy traffic in south Florida, that is a considerable feat!  So, please - you, know - be careful out there!  

This is a shot of the Gopher Tortoise that visited my yard where we used to live.  He was eating lunch, but looked like he stuck his tongue out at me! 

While I was getting the Tortoise pics out of my reptile file, I came across this sweet little anole and just thought I'd add it here, since this is a short post.  He was so itty, bitty hopping through the grass.  I love his "smile"!  And while I'm not happy that he's one of the invasive brown ones, I still have to smile at his expression.

Found this cute little ladybug visitor on one of the red salvias.  I always welcome these beneficial friends to the yard.

 I hope you're out enjoying this glorious spring weather!  

Love, Light and Peace ☮

Just Like the White Winged Dove

You know I've got that Stevie Nicks song in my head!  We've been seeing this lone white winged dove in the backyard lately.  Every time I see it - BAM - Stevie pops in.  Luckily, I happen to like that song.  Here's the first verse, so you can sing along too:

     Just like the white winged dove
     Sings a song
     Sounds like she's singing
     Ooo, ooo, ooo
     Just like the white winged dove
     Sings a song
     Sounds like she's singing
     Ooo, baby, ooo said ooo

Heheheh, sorry about that.  This guy - what a goof!  

This phal is in the process of opening.  Yay!

Sweet little red vinca.  Can you tell I don't have a lot going on in the garden...

Well, I hope you didn't miss the full moon a couple of nights ago.  It was spectacular!  No worries though, you can catch next months full moon on May 10th.  And it's the Flower moon!  See you there!