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.