Gardens Attract The Best Visitors

Gardens bring rewards in addition to beautiful  blooms, fresh food, and a healthier body.  As we provide shelter and nourishment for birds and butterflies, we receive the joy of viewing some of nature's loveliest creations close up.  The garden is never more alive and enchanting than when you step into it and see butterflies dancing across the top of blooms.  My Pagoda Flowers have been luring Zebra Longwing butterflies in for weeks.

Pagoda Flowers also entice our smallest feathered friends...a female Ruby-throated Hummingbird.

My bed of Zinnias is where the butterflies are always cavorting.  I can see about half this border from my kitchen window and it's lovely to watch them fluttering from flower to flower.  A Gulf Fritillary...

This Buckeye butterfly is one of the first I've seen this season...

And these little guys, I don't know that I've ever seen them before.  A pair of tiny Fiery Skippers.

This next photo is also a Skipper, Horace's Duskywing.

There have been a lot of Spicebush Swallowtails in the garden also, but they are probably the most nervous butterflies I've ever seen.  This one finally sat for half a second...

Male, Ruby-throated Hummingbird on magenta  'Wendy's Wish' Salvia.

A 'mama' Eastern Bluebird nesting for the second time this season.

Another female Ruby-throated Hummingbird dining on a Hardy Red Gloxinia.  I've been spreading this plant around my shade gardens as it just has the look of  what a hummingbird would want.

Everything is still blooming with wild abandon, although our full sun, rainless days are rushing the blooms toward decline quicker than I would like.  Daylilies, agapanthus, and roses...

Gaura doesn't mind the heat, it sheds it's blooms at the end of each day and begins anew each morning.

Sunny in the morning...

The only shady spot in my front gardens in the afternoon.

I hope you're all having a great weekend...happy gardening.

Late Spring Garden ~ Central Florida

Hell-o to all!  Spring has been altogether lovely this year in Central Florida.  We've had a mix of true spring-like weather, along with some typical, sultry Florida days.  My plan today was to do a post about all my different hydrangeas, but I got side tracked.  I started a new flower bed last fall, which consisted mainly of moving a lot of pots out of one area.  My goal was to have an orange and blue bed, with Pagoda Flowers, Mexican Firebush, and Hydrangeas.  Looking from my new bed to my older Hydrangeas...this is the effect I'm looking for.

Pagoda flowers and hydrangeas...

I'm starting to achieve it on a very small scale with Mexican Firebush and hydrangeas.

The hydrangeas are not quite a year old,  they're the ones I started from cuttings last June.

The 'mother' plants.

The new bed has a long way to go, but I'm a patient gardener.

Anyway, I started following around a beautiful Tiger Swallowtail butterfly this morning, and realized I have better things to post about than Hydrangeas in shade gardens...so on to something new.  Shade gardens will keep, but right now spring has presented me with a lavish display of beautiful blooms to share, and they won't last forever.  Agapanthus could only get better by being adorned by a lovely visitor.

One of the two 'Red Leaf Plum' trees we planted last fall.  My front gardens were lacking in plants with height after we lost our Dogwoods, so these will serve that purpose without getting too large. 

A look at a slice of the garden behind the front fence.  Notice the height of the Agapanthus in the foreground...they're amazing this year.

I don't know if you can see it, but my white Crinum is blooming.

Trapped behind rose canes.

Another visitor to the garden, a Great Crested Flycatcher, who is nesting in a birdhouse out back.

Red 'Challenger', and yellow 'Lemon' daylilies.  Oranges to follow soon.

'Challenger'

Looking back toward the house, to the rose garden...

Zinnias, by the front walkway, with Coneflowers grown from seed.  Waiting (patiently) for the Purple Coneflowers to bloom.

Thryallis is just beginning to bloom, and anything yellow is most welcome now.

Thank you all for visiting my garden.  Please come again.

Best Of Both Worlds

If weather was something you could eat, Florida has prepared us a feast!  It's been cool enough in the mornings to enjoy my coffee outside on the porch, yet, warming quickly to shorts and flip-flop temperatures.  I can barely stand to stay indoors in this gorgeous weather.
We fished yesterday for a little while, no catching, just fishing.  The small lake we live on has not cooled enough for the speckled perch (crappie to some), to begin biting very well.  We did enjoy our boat ride though.  I took a picture of what looks like the last water lily of the season...

Reflection...

We also saw a group of Ibis enjoying the day...

Back on dry land, there's a lot of color still happening in the gardens.  My first Japonica Camellia bloom, 'Laura Walker'.

  

My hedgerow of Sasanqua Camellias were planted three years ago.  They were tiny, maybe a foot tall, so even though they're still small, they have grown quite fast for camellias.

'Cotton Candy'

'Snow-on-the-Mountain'

'Stephanie Golden'

Roses are responding to this wonderful fall weather also.  Out on the front fence, 'Louis Philippe' is still blooming.

My two 'Red Cascades' are in bloom also, although, almost barren of leaves.

My pink, 'unidentified' OGR , is also in flower...

'Belinda's Dream' rose is the only hybrid tea rose that I would ever buy again.  She's truly an outstanding rose in my garden, completely carefree.  This is the only hybrid tea rose that I've grown that doesn't get black spot.  In Florida, that's quite remarkable. 

The 'Black- Eyed Susan' vine, growing by our entry, still says summer.

I've posted pictures of this hibiscus many times, but it's changed colors for the fall.  It used to be bright yellow, now more orange.

Clerodendrum 'paniculatum', or pagoda flower, is still blooming also...

 Clerodendrum 'ugandense', or butterfly bush...

Clerodenrums are certainly a diverse group of plants, as this vine also belongs to that genus.  Clerodendrum 'thomsoniae'...

I also grow the red and white bleeding heart vine, but I prefer this color.  I have it running along fences and trellised.

Long after the red flower drops off, the purple calyxes remain, making for a long show of color.

You know me by now, I can't close without a couple photos of the shade gardens.

Thank you for visiting.  I hope you all have a perfect weekend.