Clouds

Anyone spending a lot of time outdoors starts to appreciate clouds. Here's a neighborhood sunset photo; the other is looking across Florida Bay from the Overseas Highway.


There's a Cloud Appreciation Society in the UK (and members worldwide) with a photo gallery of spectacular cloud formations. (What is a "fallstreak hole?")









The CAS made news last week by petitioning for a new category of cloud: Asperatus. The BBC explains it with a slide show here.

I read the CAS "manifesto" and decided to join:

WE BELIEVE that clouds are unjustly maligned and that life would be immeasurably poorer without them.

We think that they are Nature’s poetry, and the most egalitarian of her displays, since everyone can have a fantastic view of them.

We pledge to fight ‘blue-sky thinking’ wherever we find it. Life would be dull if we had to look up at cloudless monotony day after day.

We seek to remind people that clouds are expressions of the atmosphere’s moods, and can be read like those ofa person’s countenance.

Clouds are so commonplace that their beauty is often overlooked. They are for dreamers and their contemplation benefits the soul. Indeed, all who consider the shapes they see in them will save on psychoanalysis bills.

And so we say to all who’ll listen: Look up, marvel at the ephemeral beauty, and live life with your head in the clouds!

Tomato-derived supplement staves off heart disease

Here's another reason to grow your own toms: eat enough of them and your heart will thank you.

That's not really news; what is, is that a company in the UK, a spin off from Cambridge University, has launched a nonprescription product containing lycopene in a more easily digested formula.

The BBC has a report.

Mangoes galore!

Back in November, I could smell the mango blossom from the platform of the South Miami Metrorail station. I find it a disagreeable scent, but I'm happy to put up with it because of the end product.

To notice the fragrance from the platform was one indication that the trees had gone into overdrive, and sure enough, everywhere you went they were covered in the rather dull Christmas tree-like flower spikes.

Then we had a very cold spell, and it threatened the harvest. Maybe we didn't get all that the fall promised, but I'm not complaining. I've even been picking ripe mangoes from the swale, where owners can't be bothered to reclaim them.

This is just a small backyard tree, and you can reach the top with a step stool, but it's laden. The fruit are ridiculously large. Lucky homeowner!

Scarlet and gray

The rainy weather affords some dramatic contrast. In this case, the brilliant red against a dark stormy sky was stunning.

I need to learn how to use my camera properly, because the automatic setting didn't really do it justice. You'll just have to take my word for it, but keep your eyes open for your own examples.

Gardening reduces crime?

"Compared with what I used to be like - getting into trouble with the police, drinking and drugs - gardening helps me relax and chill out, this has given me something to be proud of." A comment from Luke Farley, a homeless volunteer working with the Eden Project's exhibit at the Chelsea Flower Show. Courtesy of the BBC.

I understand the sentiment.

Flower fragrances

I've often wondered why similar flower fragrances crop up in entirely unrelated species. Confederate jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides) is in bloom now and its perfume is the same as sweet William (Dianthus barbatus) and some petunias.

Unintentionally, I seem to have wound up with a lot of fragrant plants; perhaps that's because the tropics offer such an enormous variety. Of course, I have a gardenia. I also have lady of the night (Brunfelsia nitida), Dracaena fragrans 'Massangeana,' four o'clock (Mirabilis jalapa), frangipani (Plumeria sp.), various true jasmines, confederate jasmine and more.

Anyway, I asked my friend Scott, a neighborhood botanist and gardener, about the similarity of fragrances and he said that it's determined by the type of pollinator. Scented white flowers, for instance, are usually pollinated at night by moths. I had been wondering if there was a limited number of scents available to the plant world, but he said that there were thousands of compounds that plants use. (Ranging from the divine to the disgusting.)

I reckon nothing beats a damask rose, an Arabian jasmine (Jasminum sambac) or orange blossom for fragrance. Sadly, their essential oils are too expensive to use with abandon.

And some fragrances are simply overpowering. The night scented/blooming jasmine (Cestrum nocturnum) is an example and I can't tolerate being close to it; I like it about two blocks away. Even the good old gardenia doesn't seem to know when enough is enough.

Click beetles

Yay! I saw the first ones of the year, this evening; they were flashing away in the back garden. That's my top reason for liking May, which otherwise reminds me that the summer's intense heat and high humidity is getting nearer.

There were a couple of screech owls on the wires when I took the dogs for a walk and I wonder if owls hunt them.

Wikipedia has a good image of a click beetle.

Jacaranda

Here's another flowering tree that's doing well this season. The usual kind, Jacaranda mimosifolia, doesn't really like this climate; it's too humid and not cool enough in the winters. In 1982, when we lived on Maui, up in Kula on Haleakala, the drive up the mountain took us past a row of glorious jacarandas, but I've heard that the best place to see them is Cape Town.

Still, this winter's cold weather seems to have been sufficient to kick South Florida's jacarandas into high gear; my neighbor's is fabulous.

A better species for our climate is Jacaranda cuspidifolia, which produces bigger flower spikes. I had one, but Hurricane Katrina took it out. These pictures, taken a couple of weeks ago, are of the one at Fairchild.

A stunning cassia

This eye candy is Cassia bakeriana, and it's causing quite a stir in the neighborhood. The individual blooms are large and they have the same coloring as apple blossom -- as two neighbors have already noted.

She's a fast grower; I only planted her three years ago, and it's getting on for 20'. I suspect it won't do well in a hurricane.

Still, we can enjoy her while she lasts.

Impermanence

The tabebuias flower in the spring.

D.C. has its cherry blossoms; the tabs are South Florida's response.

I grew three yellow tabs (Tabebuia caraiba) from seed. They did well, putting on a respectable show, but now, thanks to one tropical storm or another, only one remains. You can see it in front of the pink tab (T. heptaphylla).

The pink tabs are glorious this year, which may be because it was a cold (relatively) and very dry winter.

This one only put on her best display once since we've lived here - 14 years, I think. She was stunning. A few months later, she was also felled by a hurricane. A live oak now grows in her place, nourished by Maggie, our much loved chocolate lab, who is buried beneath it.

Nothing in a garden is static, which is its joy and its sadness.

Growing veggies

Dan told me he caught some nitwit on one of the cable news programs talking about the benefits of locally grown produce. Apparently she said that, "some people are even growing their own. But you don't have to be that extreme." And this is several weeks after Michelle Obama started her organic veggie garden at the White House.

I have three collards, bought as small plants from Home Depot, growing in a big clay pot. Dan cooked a bunch last night, with a ham bone, for the first time. They were really good. I was a bit dubious because they are a cold season plant, but I'm glad to say I was wrong. We'll have to see how long they last into the summer. (He also made cornbread and deep fried some catfish; it was a feast!)

In late October, I started lots of tomato seeds (a mix of hybrids and heirlooms) and was surprised that almost all germinated, resulting in an excess. I gave half away to friends. I've had mixed results, and I really don't understand why some varieties do well one year and fail the next.

I also bought a young lemon pear from Home Depot when I bought the collards, and it seems to be the only heirloom that has done well this year. My black Russian has flowers that are dying and has produce four toms so far, three of which were eaten by something else. My green grapes have been a disaster, and my Brandywine is going gangbusters, but has produced very few flowers, despite lots of tomato food.

The only ones that have done well, other than the lemon pear, are sugary and black cherry. All three are cherry sized.

I mostly grow them in sterilized seven gallon pots, but I planted a few in the ground at the side of the house. They are pathetic, but I'm wondering if a neighbor's dog is using them as a place to pee.

Anyway, it's going to be too hot for the fruit to set soon. I'd like to get one Brandywine and one black Russian out of the effort before that happens.

Mysterious coconut palm

This ragged-fronded palm has always looked like this. I have no idea whether it's subspecies, a variety, or what. It's a few blocks from my house and I cycle past it most mornings en route to work.

If anyone can tell me anything, please do.

Twitterpating (All's fair in love and war)

I was never overly fond of Bambi, but I love that word.

Twitterpating is in full swing, which any gardener will know. I have four bird feeders of varying sizes around the garden and right now it doesn't take long for them to empty. My favorite is attached to the kitchen window and you can hear a bird landing on it from another room. If you stand still in the kitchen, you get a lovely close up of blue jays, cardinals, redwing blackbirds (mostly the females, which are very dull), and doves.

A few years ago, Dan and I watched a pair of male redwings, in full breeding plumage, get into a fight to the death. Eventually, they locked wings above the canal and plunged straight down. The poet spoke the truth about Nature Red in Tooth and Claw because one bird held the other under water until it drowned. He flew off, triumphant, while the body of the other surfaced and floated away.

Scavenging

At the weekend, I get on my bike and take the dogs (one at a time) for a run. Most weeks, some yard crew has thrown out good plant material that I'll come back for in the car if I can't get it into the basket. Sundays are good for finding plants that zealous homeowners have discarded.

This weekend I found:

• Several large clumps of heliconia rhizomes. I have no idea what species, but that's part of the fun. (Gardens are never static, and moving things around is just what you have to do.)
• The rhizome for a burgundy-leaved calocasia. Or maybe it's an alocasia; I get them mixed up. Anyway, it's an elephant ear.
• Canes from a pink-flowered (cane) begonia.
• Cuttings from a pretty coleus.
• A large bromeliad, just finishing flowering but with pups already appearing. (I find lots of bromeliads.) I don't know what this one is, but I'll post a photo soon.

All in all, it was a good weekend's haul.

Struggling in the tropics

I spend a huge amount of time in the garden. It's a strange climate because you can grow things familiar to those who have temperate gardens, but at the same time I have coconuts and mangos. The most difficult thing to deal with is the soil; it's highly alkaline and there's only a couple of inches before you hit limestone. It can take a long time to dig a small hole, even with a pick axe.

Trees, too, struggle to gain a foothold.