Selling Plants at the local Flea Market

I was in need of The Next Big Thing. You know how things get sometimes… I was too sad to lift my head up, brought to my knees (very bad posture.) But gardening saved me once again, to the point that I had loads of plants needing to get gone. I found my way to a local flea market here in Venice, putting money down to reserve a booth space. There was a brandy new one they had just bricked and awninged tucked outside next to a main entrance.




Pay attention to the innocent-looking air conditioner lurking shark-like at the rear of the picture.

My first weekend at the flea, I brought the houseplants and cuttings I had been planning to sell at an unfortunate business venture wherein friendship and faith took a dive. (Have I mentioned the Jersey Connection yet?) I did okay and made my booth fee back. I was so happy to be in my little booth. My January birthday happened that weekend. Life got good again.


Buddy, a retired nurseryman who spent all day every day at this (weekends-only) market, looking after things, saw the germ, the gem, the seeds contained in that first weekend. He knew how to make that tiny space WORK. And I knew enough to listen to good advice.


The following week Bud built up the booth. He brought in his own umbrella’d picnic tables. He hung lattice and shelves. We went and scoped out the competition: GIANT STORES (you know who they are). He told me what plants to order and from whom. When the plants came, he watered them and tried to teach me how to keep things flowering and looking good in the dusty, windy conditions at the flea market.

I added the unusual/weird plants I love so much: The odd succulents, the houseplants-gone-wild, I was now growing in the ground… I bought small ones and grew ‘em into great big ones. I had Coleus to fear! The new varieties grow in sun and shade. They do grow well in the ground here in Florida, but nurture one in a great big pot and Whoa Baby! As my daughter says, “It’s GI-NORMOUS!”

I stocked Australian tree ferns (Sphaeropteris cooperi) and Desert Rose, (Adenium obesa). I had the paddle plants (those flat-leaved succulent Kalanchoe thyrsifolia) that proved to be a best-seller.

As well as harboring our year-round residents, Venice and Englewood, Florida play host to escapees from the north from October through Easter. Buddy knew they’d want color for their winter homes. We stocked the little booth with hundreds of geraniums and hanging baskets. Like Kevin Costner, we built it and they came. And they could not resist trying to take a bit of heaven back home, packing plants up in luggage, trunks and campers to be watered nursed and prayed along until the danger of frost passed in New York, Michigan, Maryland.

I gave "pregnant onions" (Ornithogalum longibracteatum) away to kids who expressed any interest at all. I know those plants are pregnant with possibility (lots of baby bulblets growing under oniony skin) and the kids will have the beginnings of garden fever.

I had robust rosemary plants in one-gallon pots I was able to sell for $3. I told my customers about the two four-foot lollipop-shaped fragrant rosemary shrubs growing at the entrance to my house. (This sounds a little formal. Believe me, its not.)

My home garden was earning its keep. If anything self-seeded at home, I dug it, potted it, and eventually brought it in to my booth. One week it was sunflowers nodding under the umbrellas and Mexican blanket flower (Gaillardia) literally volunteered their way into pots and on out into the world. I noticed Cosmos had seeded itself in the really rough gravel of the parking lot adjacent to my booth. Florida, Baby!

But.
When summer came the owners of the market turned on the air conditioner in their office which was on the other side of the wall we shared. They were inside, air conditioned. The exhaust from their AC piped right into my booth outside making being in that booth a death-defying act. Then they began the paving of the new parking lot adjacent to said booth, the area roped off with yellow hazard ribbon. Couldn't get near the stinkin' booth. During my enforced retirement, my daughter was shopping there and heard them selling my plants, advertising the great bargains over the loudspeakers.
Leave us say, (yes, still from New Jersey), that the police were involved. They stood guard as my daughters and I reclaimed my plants. I'm banned from the flea market.

So, I'm working from home again. Insert picture of Mackauley Culken here - I type and watch the birds in the bird bath and the passion vine climbing at breakneck speed up a trellis (and a rose vine) outside my window.

I dash outside for breaks and get in some swing-time. On weekends I’m pushing the petals from my really fantastic home garden at occasional plant sales. I lay in wait, needing and wanting some company, writing here to all of my new imaginary friends. I'm spreading the word that gardening can get very exciting here in the Land of the Flowers. Oh, and call me if you wanna buy some plants!

The Butterfly Effect

I have spent some quality summer hours sitting with butterflies. I've occasionally been told I'm for the birds, but I've always loved the butterflies. What's not to like?

As a Master Gardener (now lapsed) I was "helping" Claire Herzog in her horticulture classes at Laurel Nokomis School. Unfortunately, I discovered the butterfly box in her classroom and I was a goner. While lessons went on over the weeks, I lingered near the box, watching as Monarch caterpillars munched on milkweed, climbed to the top of the box, spelled the letter "J" and eventually became chrysalises. (The word should be chrysalides, but lets let it die its awkward death.)

I've learned recently that the various stages of those creepy/too-beautiful caterpillars are called instars. How fabulous a word is that? Not awkward at all.
I was present at various "releases" of newly-hatched and properly- warmed butterflies as they were sent off (sometimes reluctantly) into the world.

One summer I was able to bear witness to a chrysalis being spun and a butterfly being born. The chrysalis - (I'd've called it a cocoon when I was a kid) - was a shimmering light green. The really magical markings were a tiny golden chain of metallic-seeming dots at its neck. The tiniest of Crown Jewels. (Grandbabe Taylor has provided me with the information that this is the "zipper".)(Forget about jewels, please!)

Weeks went by but the time came when the tiny green pouch gradually darkened, and somehow became transparent, the dark wings visible, but not quite. I was filled with awe at the IMMENSE struggle it seemed to take at either end of this cycle. Let me use the words "convulsing" and "great exertion." Being "in labor" might apply here. And it wasn't easy for the butterfly either!

I was surprised to see M. Butterfly emerge HEAD FIRST, doing some kind of Chubby - Checker-Twist, hanging-dangling on while the rest of her damp self kind of slipped out - followed by more hanging around and uncrumpling and eventual soaring into the day.

On a more recent summer day, I had a butterfly land on my knee. Another day, one flew by so closely that I could feel the "wind" and the warmth of its flight. Would it be too much of a leap to wonder if this was my same observed hatchling - or her heir?


So moving! How much more could I take? Rapture and passion are fine, but I'm exhausted. Eventually, I suppose, I will have to stop the weeping and sighing.

Johnny "Papaya" and the Lovely Natividad

originally in Florida Gardening Magazine. October/November 2000


Getting out of my car in John Bums' driveway, I had to squeeze past a grapefruit tree, heavy with fruit. I can always tell when I'm approaching John's house, his being the only garden on the block that comes out to the road to meet me. John is also there to meet me, a friendly welcome, and we're off on a tour of a little wedge of rain forest cut out of...NO!...restored or retrieved from the middle of an otherwise ordinary Florida neighborhood.

You might be familiar with Johnny "Papaya" Bums, a contributor to Florida Gardening magazine and other periodicals, and a celebrated character in the Sarasota gardening scene. Originally from Alabama, John utilizes some colorful phrasing. At one point he tells me about a taste so good "your tongue will slap your brains out." Seriously into good nutrition and a healthy lifestyle, he says that sickness comes from malnutrition and mal- nutrition is a result of ignorance. John and Natividad have lived on this property for 23 years. A disabled WWII Navy veteran, John was a teacher of science and 6th grade. He has been in the Master Gardener program since 1989.

John and Naddie grow most of what they eat on this half-acre, wedge-shaped city lot. They boost the fertility of their part of the earth as well as the quality of their own health by growing with Fertrell, compost, and other organic additives. John is rightfully proud that they have no mower, no grass. He says he waits to be sued for nonsupport by his doctors.




We cut through the house before checking out the "papaya plantation" that wraps itself around the house: the beautiful to the pond, new bedroom John and Natividad recently added, the kitchen (2 or 3 juicing machines, bread maker, might as well be the rain forest. bowls of home-grown persimmons...), back to the enclosed pond, also a new addition. Fish glimmer by. John and Natividad raise everything for food, (eating the fish she doesn't name). These fish eat sweet potato leaves, bok choi, and just about anything else thrown to them. John tells me about his pair of foot-long Basilisk lizards, native to Costa Rica, that walk on their hind legs. This is not your typical ol' fishin' hole. During our tour, I keep finding my way to the pond, on the lookout for these miraculous critters.



Outside, we step into what might as well be the rain forest. There must be 100 papaya trees and dozens of varieties of banana trees in this rain forest. John sells the organically grown produce and soil amendments to neighbors, making his reputation over the years by word of mouth. Always concerned with the quality of the fruit he sells, John has "decorated" the papayas with rat traps baited with prunes to guard against those unsightly random bites.

There are winged beans and avocados. There is garlic growing in pots and shallots growing in a small plot, started from a grocery buy years ago. Bitter melon (Momordica charantia) twirls around a fence.


As I was getting into the car to leave, the grapefruit tree bid me farewell, letting loose a grapefruit -a little like the hurling apple trees in the Wizard of Oz, but more congenial, not so much telling me to be on my way, but to remember to eat what is here for the taking, unprocessed, ready to go. So I took the projectile home, ate it, and the bump on my head healed so much the faster.

Walking around this little bit of Eden, where most everything is grown in recognition that life can only be as good as the food we consume, I'm filled with reverence for the knowledge and concern of my fellow gardeners. There is so much to learn from you all, and I'm so much the better for knowing you. Thanks John and Naddie!

Rose Apples June 2, 2009

Rose Apples.

A nice stage name. And delicious. I've had the tree, bought from Kevin, the Master Gardener years ago as a babe. (Me AND the seedling). The plant which didn't do a whole lot of anything for YEARS, had occasional near-death experiences as I considered what else I could do with it's allotted plot. A decade went by and it finally grew to a tree. And it bloomed. Glorious mysterious fancy, fancy white blooms

Then the fruits. Indescribable. Let me describe them to you: (I know…) But here's what they're like: Apricot-sized. A bigger than you'd think hard round seed in the middle. At first, just to get familiar with this strange new fruit, cut it gingerly around the equator. Take out the seed. Sit down and rest from the ROSEY ROSEY smell. Taste it. Go ON. It's kind of appley in texture, or like honeydew melon when it's not quite ready. But, believe me, whether the fruit is a little greenish, or yellow, or blushing pinkish yellowish - it IS ready. If you could bite a rose without getting a mouthful of petals (or worse), it would taste like this. Your brain, nose and heart say you've eaten a rose. They must share some chemicals, these fruits and roses. Okay. I've revealed enough of my ignorance. But it's so other/this-wordly! It's so different but familiar.

I've announced my engagement to this tree. It's a perfect love. Start shopping for a dress. Gather them by the arm-full. (Better yet, carry a basket…) They can be sliced and eaten just plain, put in salads… I've had them cut up in my oatmeal. A gentleman came by the other day and recognized the tree, also called a Rose Apple in Jamaica. He said they make jelly out of it, or just eat them out of hand while playing by the rivers where the trees grow wild.

The Rose Apple seems to have been fruiting for about a month now. I'll try to notice when it stops. (I wrote this yesterday, went to get some today to bring to the vegetable stand, and there were only about 5 within reach. The season is over!) But next year, if you come by, and Rose Apple has fruit, you WILL be force-fed a piece of heaven.

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).