Beginning of the rainy season

It is the beginning of the rainy season with us now.   It rains a lot lately, and the water forces animals away from their hiding places.

Here is one moved to the open ground to warm up and dry out.

 A close up...

Wild Life in Our Garden: Baby Raccoon

In an area to side of our house, at the base of a tall palm tree...

Poppy found this little furry ball.

  

I then realized a mother raccoon was living at the top of the palm tree.

  Poppy found another baby raccoon.

We kept them safe during the day and returned them to the mother raccoon after dark by leaving them at the base of the tree.

Wild Life in Our Garden: a rent free tenant

It is summer. In Florida that means thunder storms and heavy showers. One day, my husband let Poppy out after they got rained in for a whole afternoon. Poppy rushed to the back of the house. She sniffed around the orchid room, lifted her nose, and started barking at the side of the roof.

The orchid room is an enclosed area with trellis doors, walls and roof which was heavily covered with vines. My husband couldn’t see anything, so he went inside the orchid room and looked up. Would you believe it? A raccoon has decided the best place to keep dry from the rain was the side of our house.

Despite Poppy’s loud barks the raccoon refused to move and carried on napping. That night my husband put a trap out and the raccoon simply couldn’t refuse the fish dinner we put inside the trap.

Raccoons have very sharp claws and they could do serious damage to our property so we don’t like having them around. We don't mind other animals, they live in the yards and stay away from the house. Creatures like this baby opossum can be our rent free tenant. They are cute when they are little, aren’t they?

Little Furry Pine Cone

I was gardening in the front yard the other day. I was just about to pick up a small pine cone when I froze and stared…this little pine cone was furry? What on earth…?
I turned it over with a stick, still not sure what I was looking at.

Then I saw its face. It must have dropped down from the pine tree because of the cold weather overnight.

Not wanting Poppy to come into contact with the bat or me stepping on the little creature, I moved it to a palm tree by the roadside. It was hanging upside-down and it was not happy of being moved.

After a while, it settled down and slept the day away in the shade. Came night fall it was gone.

I have never seen a bat up close before. I am relieved to find out that this bat eats insects and bugs, and it is not a blood sucker.

Easy like Sunday morning

The clock has gone back an hour, but Poppy and I kept to our routine. We woke up early and sat outside in the backyard and enjoyed the morning sun.

This morning I had a cup of tea and the knitting with me and cast-on the front of the Ribby Yoke Jumper.
Quiet and peaceful, even the mosquitoes have left us alone. Moments like these, the lyrics of the Three Little Birds song always come to mind…“Rise up this mornin', Smiled with the risin' sun…

…Don't worry 'bout a thing, 'Cause every little thing gonna be all right."

Take it easy and have a great Sunday.

Smelly Pouches

There is a Chinese saying that when there is a 陰 yin there will be a 陽 yang: a negative will have a matching positive. So if the butterfly ginger is the positive gorgeous flower, is there a negative one? Oooo, yes!

We purchased our house from a landscape gardener; the gardener collected plants. Since Florida and its flora are new to us we decided to wait a couple of seasons before making any changes to our garden.

There was this big patch of low growing succulents near our front door. It wasn’t much to look at and nothing happened for two years. Then it surprised us by producing these big pouches.One day, when I walked pass the plants I could smell a whiff of stench. I didn’t know what it was and started to investigate. One of the pouches has opened up and it smelled so foul. It’s the smell of rotten meat. That wasn’t the worst part. The next day, I saw maggots wiggling in the centre of the opened pouch flower and a warty toad was sticking its long tongue out to feast on the larva. After that shocking sight I got rid of the smelly plants in record time.

The gardener kept a specimen of this plant in a flower pot far away from the house. I have left it alone. After 6 years it flowers for the first time and it is certainly unusual.

Butterfly Ginger

Our niece is coming over to stay with us for 3 weeks. We have a belief in our family that the best welcome you can give is to welcome friends and families to a clean house. I was just getting started in sorting out the guest bedroom when our top loading washer died in mid-cycle. So I was having a mini domestic crisis last week and have to delay posting till today.

You know they say that you can trace some of your adult behaviour back to your childhood. I think it was around the time of this picture was taken (I am the one on the right) my mother fenced off a small area of land for me to use as a little garden and my auntie taught me how to cast on and to knit. I grew all sorts of plants in my little plot: ginger, mint, lilies… what I remembered most was the scent of the plants and the perfumes from the flowers.

So when we moved to Florida and live in a house with a big yard, I wanted to grow ginger. The sub-tropical weather here often reminds me of Hong Kong.

I planted these butterfly ginger about two years ago, they flower for the first time…so pretty and the scent so beautiful. The flower shapes like a butterfly too.

Wild Life in Our Garden - Bird of Prey

Poppy is an excellent watch dog. Normally she is very quiet. If she barks it is for a reason. So one day last week I was working in my craft room and Poppy was snoozing away. I had such a fright when Poppy suddenly gave out a single loud bark.

Thinking that it must be the mailman I went outside with her to check it out. But instead of going to the gate, Poppy went right over to an area near the Chinese bamboo.
Usually it takes a few seconds for the mailman to drive down the lane in his delivery van. I waited, but no van. Puzzled, I asked Poppy “What is it?” In response Poppy did her nose thing, pointing high up at the tree as though to say “It’s up there!”

I looked, and I looked…then I saw the back of it.

I had a better view when I went around the other side of the tree…an owl. I didn’t know Florida has owls; and how on earth Poppy knew about it when she was fast asleep in my craft room? Poppy never ceases to amaze me.

Florida summer

Before we moved to the US, I would think of Florida in terms of the sun, sands and sea, Mickey Mouse and Disney World. Now that we are living here, I would add a few more words like rain, hurricanes, bugs and snakes to describe the Florida summer.

The official hurricane season runs from June to October. So far so good this year, no hurricane, just a few thunder storms and rain more or less every afternoon. We are managing with the bugs. Hubby sprayed the yards with bug killer a couple of times and we could go outside now without feeling we are the walking blood bank for the mosquitoes. But I am seeing more snakes this year. Two have actually come inside the garage and we have to use a broom to chase them out.

My husband and I were doing some gardening last weekend. I was weeding around the flower beds. Hubby was on the ladder trimming back the vine on the garage wall. He called me to go over and have a look. High up on the wall, there was a shed snake skin threading through the vine, all in one piece.
It was like not to be outdone by my husband, Poppy signalled me to take a look at the base of a hibiscus tree, there it was, another perfectly discarded snake skin winding through some lower branches.

I didn’t take photo of the shed snake skins but uploaded two earlier pictures I took of these snakes instead.

These are rat snakes, pretty harmless, nothing like the Burmese pythons that are taking over the Everglades. Florida government is having such a problem in eradicating these predators; this summer they introduced a new hunting season for pythons. It began about three weeks ago on Friday 17th July. A local newspaper reported that the hunters have captured and killed 6 pythons. 150,000 is estimated running loose on the glades, so just 149,994 to go now.

Wild Life in Our Garden – Squirrel Food

Squirrel – what do they eat?

Would your answer be...acorn? But the oak tree that has acorn does not grow here; it is too hot for them. We have many palm trees though and they are flowering now. This palm tree has already finished flowering and is producing big bunches of seeds. The seed turns red as it ripens and the squirrels here love them.

As usual Poppy was busy chasing squirrels this morning. In a hurry to get away from Poppy, the little squirrel dropped his breakfast. It’s the green one on the left. The middle one which has been completely hollowed out and the red one must have been last night’s dinner.

So, what do squirrel eat? Now, I would say that it all depends on where they live.

Wild Life in Our Garden - Soft Shell

It is getting hot with us now. Some areas of the lawn are drying out. We took a walk around the garden to check up on things and even though it was so hot, Poppy insisted on coming along.

We were walking pass the green bamboo when Poppy started barking. She was on her alert mode, telling us something’s up.
Hubby went to her to take a look. With Daddy by her side, Poppy was brave enough to have a close-up inspection.

We didn’t know what it was at first. Our neighbour told us it is a Florida Soft-Shell Turtle.

He is not very handsome, is he?

May Day

May Day - such a gorgeous day. The sky is a powder blue colour. The sun is shining bright. The palm fronds are swaying in the gentle breeze. The garden is in bloom.

Hubby has just returned home from his travel. Poppy is getting better from her hot spot problem. The knitting needles I ordered and have been waiting for so long are here; just few more rows then I will finish the little girl’s cardigan. It’s going to be a good day.

Wishing you a lovely weekend.

It's raining.

Yes! It is raining. But when it rains here in Florida, as my hubby would say “That’s proper rain.” It is pouring down and it has been chucking it down all night and all morning. So happy it is raining…the trees and shrubs need a good soaking after a long dry spell.

Spring

When you see the first snowdrop, you know winter is almost over. No dainty snowdrops in Florida, but I do know spring is here. The pine trees are sprouting new growth in earnest.
Baby mango fruits are forming thick and fast on the young mango tree.

The orchids are in full bloom, not as delicate as snowdrops but just as pretty.