Dragon's Orchid Garden

Spring in Florida is marked by rampant growth in our garden. Everything is popping up or in bud or coming back from what we thought was dead after several hard freezes this winter. The only thing we need now is rain. It has been dry for almost 3 weeks. Rain is due to move in sometime after midnight tonight and I am very happy about that. I miss the sound of it. Wayne and I have had the urge to change things. Renewing the outdoor living room by putting down a rug, new cushions for the rocking chairs and a "grass" (recycled plastic bag) umbrella for the picnic table. Wayne was so enthused by the urge for change that he moved all of the furniture in our bedroom while I was at work last Saturday. When I came home, he seemed a little sheepish. Why? He thought I wouldn't like it. What's not to like about a guy who moves furniture so he can banish dust bunnies that aggravate his significant other's allergies? The bed is now east/west in the room instead of ...

It's finally warm weather and we're cleaning up the yard.  There are a gazillion oak leaves and 500 bazillion acorns everywhere. From Blogger Pictures It seems there is a tool for picking up all of those acorns.  I knew someone must have invented a nut-picker-upper .  The folks at the local home improvement store had never heard of such a thing.  "Sounds like a good idea", they said.  Our acorns are small, and the description on Amazon doesn't say exactly what size nuts it picks up.  We may continue to rake and shovel them. Of course, the leaves go into the compost bin.  Acorns will sprout and grow, so we can't put those in the compost . We've had a compost bin for years. We keep adding kitchen scraps to it and leaves and turning it and at one time it was 1/2 full, and now it's just a couple of inches of not really great stuff to use on the garden. We discovered that we are doing a couple of things incorrectly. The bin was a bit large for t...