You'll get cheap rent in Tampa.
Jim
What's In Your Garden, Part 4
:)))
What a lovely little slice of heaven that Fred lives in. Those palms are amazing. Thanks for posting your pictures Jim.
I'll respond to Jim's comments and pics from my other computer where I have some pics of when I started clearing this place. The bismark was one of the first things I planted. It was small just 4 years ago. You need to remember that we only spent 6 months out of the year here until this last year when we purchased the neighboring 5 acres and started clearing that. Before that all work was done on 2.5 acres of overgrown & natural vegetation. The initial time period was also heavy into constructing an 80lx60wx20h garage. The rear 30 feet are 2 floor private quarters. I was the architect and general contractor. I had to run the permits and deal with all the inspections, which is quite a job around here, and supervised the whole project. In between I bought a lot of zoysia sod out in the country using a trailer I had built just for this purpose. Now I'm reworking some of that sod to expand my planting areas. The stuff really needs full sun even thought they told me it was shade tolerant. My wife and I put down almost all of the sod over many months. A neighbor helped me some because I helped him with this sod.
What Jim didn't show you was the utter devastation the recent one night cold spell caused here. I don't know yet what is dead. Surely much will come back but I'll have a 6 months mess on my hands. But when everything is back, it'll be worth the aggrevation.
fred
Lovely gardens. I appreciate all the hard work you and your wife have done. Sorry about the weather damage. Great job on the garage/living qtrs. We got some snow/ice in this last storm. Up til now, we have usually been just south of the 'mess'. I've been wanting a layer of snow cover for insulation against the cold temps.
Very impressive, Fred. I did just the opposite on my 3.3 acres. I ripped sod over 3 summers to make a big garden.
Glad you have some snow cover, Jan.
Thanks, Kathy. You probably have too much snow cover up there, right? Most of it melted today, though. LOL
Road cover is the problem. The snow cover is fine. I like a foot or two all winter. Then when subzero temps come, there is no damage at all. I grew up in NJ and I had never heard of snow cover all winter till I got here.
You northern folks are strange I tell you. :>)
Jim
You wish for lots of weird stuff when it helps your garden be fabulous the next growing season!!! Lots of fun with winter sports here, too-if only I could skip the driving I'd be so happy "up north." Of course my dominant winter sport this winter is eating dark chocolate, lots of it. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!
Haha, Jim. Thanks for posting photos. Fred's place is something special. Looking forward to seeing and hearing more about the gathering. Oh, oh, I hear the weather man saying he'll talk to us about some snow as soon as he comes back. It's those little things that make us southerners so happy. It's just not fair that we have temps below freezing almost every night and no snow.
Kathy, I know that story and it's stuck to me.
Laurel
Guffaw! (love that word) It's sticking to me as we "speak" Laurel. (listen for the beached whale noises.)
My garden yesterday. It was bright and sunny today but there was 2 inches of ice on my windshield, windows etc. this AM.
Anyone had power problems? I saw there were over a million people who lost power in this last storm. Hope everyone, and their plants, are okay. That's more snow than I've seen in my life!
Jan, we have the same problem with those very low temps and no insulation.
We have been very lucky and not lost any power so far. I might buy a generator for next year though. People lost power for 6 days only a mile away in December. Not sure where the outages are. Maybe south of here where there was only sleet and ice. We mostly had snow with some freezing rain late last night.
This message was edited Jan 29, 2009 9:13 PM
Well, it is certainly nice to scroll up in this thread and see beautiful Gardens - although I am sorry to see/hear about the frost damage.
Yesterday was simply miserable here, the white and then icy stuff switched over to rain by afternoon, but I was happy to get some rain water collection going on in the garage. I am glad we had invested in a generator, it means we won't lose power....
Kathy,
"Of course my dominant winter sport this winter is eating dark chocolate" . I LIKE THAT!!!!
I had just finished a dark choc. truffle when I got onto this site, then LMBO when I read that.
Fred, were you able to assess the damage?
Jan, LMBO? So computer lingo challenged here. "Layering My Botanical Orchids"? "Listening More Before Ordering"? "Lusting Many Beautiful Orchds"? Help.
Very partial to Joseph Schmidt truffles. Haven't even had dinner yet though. We made gumbo and pizza in the wood oven. That goes, right? Lots of veggies.
MMMM. We had gumbo this week too. Chocolate and gumbo seems an unlikely coupling.....
Laurel, love all your LMBOisms, but I was thinking -laughing my butt off. It was such a co-inky-dink that dark chocolate was being mentioned and I had just stuffed one in my mouth.
Dinner sounded great, by the way.
Jim,
in th enclosed picture from March 2004 you can see the right front of the house where the jungle is being cleared. The Queen palm right in front of the door was just about dead. It is now a majestic healthy looking tree. As you can see there was some cleared area all around the house but that was about it. I'll look for a picture of the Bismark which I planted between the house and the Queen.
Tomorrow I'm going to try to replicate this picture as of now.
fred
OOOPs, that was the wrong picture but note the anemic queen palm on the left.
This message was edited Jan 29, 2009 10:32 PM
here's the pic I meant to send
By August 2004 the old lawn has sprouted from the rains and I plant a small Bismark. We had just returned from our summer travels. So the tree you saw is 4.5 years later.
Fred, it's really nice to see the old pics when you've just seen what it looks like today. Very interesting.
Jim
We are over 300 posts and it is time for part 5, We are going to http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/948037/
Come along y'all.
Jim