Dragon's Orchid Garden

Yard sales are the ultimate places to find great stuff for your outdoor living room. Last Saturday, Wayne did his usual run up to Lutz (gotta love the "feeling" and "image" of openness...and gratuitous use of quotation marks). He scored at a yard sale where the sellers were changing their decorating theme. Apparently, the previous theme was rustic hunting lodge. He bought a glass top table with antler base, a faux deer skull with a big rack, bookends with what looks like antelope horns, and two antler shelves. This stuff is not made from real dead animals, much to my relief. It's resin or plastic. It does look really good on the patio, I have to admit. Thank you, honey, for not bringing home a real taxidermy moose head. From Garden From Garden From Garden

Set a spell.  Take a load off.  Grab a chair .  Sure, you can just plunk yourself down on the grass (if you want to be eaten by ants...this is Florida).  A garden is more than plants and flowers.  It's a place to rest and enjoy birdwatching, a conversation, a cold beer on a hot day.  It's my place to recharge my batteries every day when I come home for lunch. Seating in our backyard has evolved over the 18 years we've owned this house.  Wayne is an inveterate yard sale searcher.  He has a yen for chairs and a great eye for a bargain.  We have enough chairs in our house now to seat a full orchestra.  We have chairs of various types hanging from the rafters in the garage, waiting for new cane seats, or other repairs. Three of the four rocking chairs on the patio were purchased from yard sales.  Wayne bought the rush seat rocker from Cracker Barrel.  We had it in the house until Sasha discovered that it was just perfect for s...

Most of the plants in our garden are in  terracotta pots.  Potted plants can be moved around until they find their happy place.  We're still working on making planting beds which is a lot of work in this sandy Florida soil.  It's much easier to find a pot, fill it with medium and put the plant in it.  I used to mix my own planting mix using top soil, manure, some peat moss soaked in water and vermiculite, but now I'm lazy and just buy bagged potting mix for all but the orchids. My handy husband, Wayne, is a yard sale meyven and has, more than once, found a bonanza of clay pots at a sale.  We have them cleaned and stacked in a shed and under the orchid tables waiting for just the right plant. Recently, our favorite family run nursery, Duncheon's , ran a "buy one get one free" sale. Wayne went there every weekend for the month of the sale and picked up at least two beautiful pots each time, mostly glazed in cobalt blue, my favorite color.  Here are s...