Plant Sale this weekend.

It's really too much! The two Jasmine trees are just LOADED! Frangipani also going to town (in a stationary way...). The Jasmines are not only blooming to the max, but letting the petals drift down. The best kind of (Florida) snow! Picked some flowers to give. Come and get some at plant sale this weekend.

(oh yea: had to be told to post this!):
110 Zephyr Rd. Venice 34293

Our Gardens Sybil and J. Venice Florida

Our Gardens Sybil and J. Venice, Florida January 2000

Smiling Sybil welcomed us as we poured out of the van and stood taking in the lush, sculptured front yard. A lovely semicircle of hibiscus bordered the driveway. Sybil and J. planted everything we saw growing in that front yard. When they moved here from Manhattan about five years ago, it was all grass, oaks and palms.

The garden today looks as if this is how it's always been. In our first minutes together, Sybil generously offered cuttings, seeds, anything we might be interested in. We started our tour in the front yard, where "wild'; orchids, Epidendrum radicans, blew reddish-orangeish.

There was a Jacaranda (purple flowers so extraordinary that streets, towns, neighborhoods are named for them), and orchid trees grown from seeds. Around the side of the house, we came upon a Neem tree. Jamaican-lilted Sybil shared that in Sri Lanka they believe vapors of this plant have healing properties.

Do the math: Sybil's Caribbean roots + Sybil's and J.'s membership in the Fruit and Nut Society = Slow Going: Unusual and yummy edibles wherever we wandered on this acre-size lot. I'd still be grazing if I hadn't been nudged occasionally. A pretty vine ran around amongst the greenery. Vegetarian bowling balls? No! They're Jamaican pumpkins. I lugged home a couple of hunks, as part of the Fabulous Parting Gifts. Time has passed. I'm updating this article years later… those lovely pumpkins scattered themselves through my garden for years, coming back and back. I had parties, served pumpkin soup. Then the plants and fruits stopped coming and the seeds I had grew old and now I'm bereft of pumpkins… Anyway, there were peach trees, fig and blooming ginger. There was the banana grove, of course, and scallions, lemon grass, persimmon, kumquat and Jamaican spinach. There was a strawberry tree... which smells like its namesake and forks over red berries.

Sybil's husband J. - That's how he spells it. I've gathered those cast off letters to spell MY name… - joined us as we rambled. Asked if he gardens with Sybil, he answered tactfully and tenderly, "Oh, we do different things.. .I'm only the engineer. She's the agronomist." He's a retired engineer, mentions he's gotten her to come in from the shed for a phone call by using cans and string. He calls her My Love. We saw his influence in the fabulous shade house where part of the orchid collection resides. More of the orchid collection surrounded the screened-in pool. Sybil and J.'s place proudly wears a "Florida Yards and Neighborhoods" sign. This is a program originally started to protect our waters, but has grown to recognize sites meeting certain basic ecologically correct (and I have to say totally PICKY) criteria. (Did you guess? I don't have the sign at my garden…) If you notice this sign in front of a home, you know there must be some interesting gardening going on there. In fact, if you notice a GARDEN - just anywhere you notice gardening going on - you can safely assume that there will be imagination and passion, experimentation and FUN in the vicinity, as well. I say, feel free to drop in. Just look at J. and Sybil's! I'm sure you'll be welcomed.

Contact Andye at 941-497-5282 if you have a garden you would like to share with our readers.

Snail flinging.

Dewy morning. Saw one snail next to the toppled pepper plant, so knew there'd be more. Donned my Michael Jackson uni-glove, got my brass collecting pot and picked the suckers off by the dozens. Then to the driveway, where I dumped the pot from my height. whap, whap, whappp... Pretty yucky, but better than the salt/melty wicked witch protocol. The lie to the broken-hearted/disgusted grandbabes: This is where they come to get their new shells, (kind of a slimey Macy's).

This May day in my Florida garden.

Looks like it may be stormy later, but right now, the air is electric. Just saw a pair of cardinals (Mr. and Mrs. C). He was the reddest red I've ever seen. The old ricrac cactus I moved to the back yard under the oaks is about to bloom, too. Guess it WAS getting too much sun. This is a picture of when it bloomed years ago.

If Molly didn't have my camera somewhere in Europe, I'd have to show you the frangipani/ plumeria/ Hawaiin lei flower tree outside my bedroom window. It's just blooming its fool head off. The air is literally perfumed! It's almost dizzying! (My father used to say, don't ever let them give you anesthesia, because they won't be able to tell the difference - so dizzy might be subjective here...).