South Front Door

At our church you can drive up to the door. We want to make it easy for you to come in.

Ready For The Holidays

This is the front porch of Coral Gables Merrick House. The house is now a museum, and it keeps up with the neighborhood.

Goodbye To The Musseanda Flowers

These plants start to bloom in late May and go to December. Last year the flowers lasted to December 16th. Yesterday they looked great but the temperature was down to 58f with wind. Today it's calm and 51f. That's cool enough to make the flowers to all drop. If it goes down to 40f the leaves will drop.

B. Little Stars

This is the mother plant that LAN showed yesterday.

Doing It Again

The Golden Shower blooms in spring. Now in the fall it's blooming, but now the green leaves hide most of the flowers.

The Front Door

Our church has many doors, this is the most formal of all the doors.

A Porch From The 40s

No air conditioning needed.

Pseudophoenix sargentii

"Buccaneer palm," "Sargent's cherry palm" are two more names for this palm. Take your pick, all are correct. They are the signature plants for this garden. This Florida native is almost extinct in nature but a fair number are growing in local gardens. The leaf has a blue cast, and bright red seeds that look like cherries. Here is some information about the palm.

Once A Garage

The glass doors on the garage makes me think that it's not used for a car.

Friends Of Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden

The garden is filled with palms and shrubs that you can only see in Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden. This is one of the few true botanical gardens in a private garden.

First A Two Car Garage Then A.....

It started as a two car garage with a maids room. Now it looks like a carriage house. The home is not much bigger then the garage. The brown lines in front the building are flower stems from a sausage tree. If you follow the finger of the water mark you will see two buds in front of the window (enlarge the picture).

Stinkhorn (Clathrus ruber)

This is not the only stinkhorn fungus, but it's the one that we have. Strangely it wasn't stinky today.

Eye Candy For Orchid Lovers

A View For The Driveway

This hedge has gotten out of hand and the city cited them for having a hedge that was higher then allowed. There are two driveways to the right of the hedge that can now see in both directions. The remaining hedge is still too big and it dwarfs the house.

Privacy Hedge vs City Laws

By law this hedge most be no more then 4 feet tall next to a drive. Every one has to have a view. But it doesn't make for a beautiful hedge. This ficus hedge problem will get much worse. There is an exotic white fly that just came to south Florida in the last 2 years. The fly can kill this hedge within a year or two, unless expensive and dangerous chemicals are regularly sprayed on the hedge.

More Orchids On A Tree

Our neighbor was given this orchid, the kind that you buy at the grocery store. When the plant finished flowering the neighbor tied it to a tree. Now the plant blooms better then the ones that I have in the greenhouse. Location, location, location!

Orchids Growing On Palms

The tree on the right is just a stump. It was a palm and it will not sprout back but it does make a nice home for the orchids.

Cattleya Hailstorm Just A Potted Plant

This orchid is in a very large pot and it sits on the ground because its too big to hang. Each of the 6 stems have up to 16 flowers per stem.

A Croton With Fall Colors

It looks like it's ready for Halloween, but it looks that way all year.

A House That Grows

This house has had 3 up grades in the last 20 years. The house is now so big it's funny. But it is still very good looking.

Just A Garden Plant

This orchid (Sobralia decora) grows in the ground and looks like any shrub in the garden. That is when it's not in flower. But the flowers have started to open for the season. There were 16 flowers open the other day and the old shrub is now a Cinderella. The flower lasts for only one day but new flowers open off and on for 4 months.

Is Bigger Better

Two years ago there was a perfectly fine house on this property. It had lots of windows that could open and they were often open to enjoy the real air. Now in the new house the windows are always closed and the air condition machine keeps the air perfect. The new pool is much deeper then the old one. I don't know about others but I do my lap swimming on the top 3 feet of water. Maybe they do a lot of diving. We try to live in a green environment, but the new homes don't.

Not for Eating

We have many different mushrooms, but not enough to learn which can be eaten. So, we just look at them and walk away.

The Famous Black Orchid.

In the 40's Brenda Starr was always looking for the black orchid. Orchid growers obliged the cartoon star and called a number of orchid species 'the black orchid'. I have grown this orchid since 1949. Most orchid growers still call this the black orchid. My orchid blooms all year long and has done this for nearly 60 years.

The Late Crop Is Coming In

The early tree started in June and finished 2 weeks ago. This is a late variety avocado that we are eating now and expect to have good fruit through February. Two large branches broke due to the heavy crop. I could not get up to thin out the crop and the branches are too high to prop up. Nine months of fresh avocados sounds good to me. The squirrels eat there fair share. I don't mind squirrels eating them, because they eat the entire fruit (no waste).

From The 20s

Almost all of these homes had three bedrooms and one bath. No one seemed bothered with waiting in line to brush their teeth.

Coelogyne pandurata

This green orchid is normally a spring/summer bloomer. This year is the first time that we had a fall bloom.

The orchid growers think the color in the lip is black, thus a black orchid.

An Albino Banana

This is the coveted variegated Ae Ae banana. You can see some of the small plants have the normal green and white mixture. But one is pure white. The albino well thrive only if it is connected to a normal variegated banana. Usually I would remove it when it is no more then one foot tall. But this one shows some very small green lines in the stem. I have given it a special fertilizer that might aid in producing more green.
The Ae Ae page on my site is the most viewed page in the entire site.
The next most viewed page is about 'My Ae Aes Brother'.

Kimo The Plumaria

Not common, but it sure is nice.

The Lines That I Seldom See

Now when I smile those lines are really happy. I have been working in the garden since I was 5 years old. And every summer I would get at least one real bad sunburn. By now I've burned off all of the tender skin and I don't burn any more. Let the lines show.

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