Julie Garden Blogging

Welcome to Julie Garden Blogging

a rose by any other name…….

My Gloriosa Orchid Vine

Living here in Florida allows us the luxury of enjoying outside beauty all year long. Our winter’s are usually pretty mild and we always seem to have something in bloom throughout the entire year.

I do love my herb garden.

I wanted to start this garden post as a record of what life is like in our own backyard, as well as front yard. There is always something going on.

My Greek Oregano

My Gorgeous Mint

Sage, Chives, and Parsley

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Tulips Outside on our Lanai

I did not grow these but I do enjoy adding things of beauty to my home, inside and outside, where I can enjoy them.

The wooden shoes I found at a thrift store for about $2.00. I think they look lovely outside. (p.s. Gordon has learned to stop asking stupid questions like, “Why are you buying wooden shoes?”)

Tulips and Easter Eggs

The prettiest time of year in our backyard is spring.

I just had to include one of my first dolls I was ever given.

She is a little Dutch girl and I even still have her little wooden shoes.

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Mystery Bulbs

We came across an old pot with some bulbs in it but we couldn’t remember what they were so we planted them. Months later, beauty emerges! What a happy surprise!

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Gordon Made a Friend

He was doing some work on our lanai when it jumped onto his arm.

Don’t ever be afraid of these wonderful creatures. They mean no harm.

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My Snake Hose

I found this at Home Depot and I knew that I had to have it!

It sprays this excellent mist that is perfect for my herb garden, or ME when I am outside working and hot as heck!

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My roses look like they are trying to escape through the gate door.

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I Do Love Pink

My Pink Gerber Daisies

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I do Love the Sticky Frogs

Whether it be something growing and blooming, or life with our own critters that we share our property with, or visiting animals that swoop down from the sky, or crawl underneath our fence, or use the tree branches to go from one backyard to another in my neighborhood………

Katydid on our Lanai Screen

There is always something interesting and educational.

I hope you think so too.

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www.BareFootInFloridaWithJulie.com

I Always Have The Prettiest Carts When Flower Shopping

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Hydrangeas by the Bench

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Ginger Growing in our Backyard

The plant produces a beautiful orchid like flower.

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The Note My Husband Left Me One Morning

I woke up to find this one morning.

What I find amusing about it is that he drew me a map to the curry plants in our backyard. As if I didn’t know where they are located. Huh? He’s an idiot! 🙂

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Orange Heliconia and White Curcuma

These shoots are the “before” of the Curcuma.

They turn into one of the most beautiful of flowers. 🙂

Finally! End of May early June blooms.

I adore all my little lizards in my yard.

Prettiest Pot in our Backyard

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A Moth to a Flower

Very Ghostly

I took this ghostly photo with my camera that had fogged over due to the extreme heat.

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Always for the birds……

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Orchids

I like to replace the stakes that come with orchids with Asian cooking chopsticks.

They are longer than regular chopsticks and can be very colorful and decorative.

Cooking Chopsticks

I also love bringing in nature from our backyard, or the beach, or something that I buy, and use it to create a beautiful nature setting.

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Just Some of our Beautiful Flowers in our Backyard

Roses just don’t grow very well here in Florida. No idea why, really. So we usually buy them for specific purposes. We will then plant them into our yard with an occasional bloom here and there throughout the years. But the rose bushes never really thrive.

Our Hibiscus do Very Well

This is one flower that does very well here in Florida. This flower reminds us a great deal of our many years in Hawaii. Hibiscus is an important flower in the Hawaiian culture.

Pink and Bamboo, and our Thriving Mint

The name of the flower to the left, top, eludes me right now, I’ll get back to it. But I do have to say that this mint in the pot, top right, had all died off in the winter, and then when spring appeared, viola! Loot at it! Sometimes I think it’s a good idea to leave a potted plant alone and let it do it’s thing.

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The Goriosa Orchid Vine

The gloriosa orchid vine needs shade and something to latch onto. It loves bushes and can wrap themselves around that bush and it make it so beautiful. We have these in our front and back yards.

They do well on trellis’s and even fences. I do love it when we have many in bloom.

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Roses and Flower Shopping for our Easter

I absolutely LOVE shopping for flowers and plants!

But this time I was particularly looking for roses. White, Pink and Red. Usually, most of the time they don’t look very well when you go to buy them. I was very lucky to find these. Roses just don’t do well here in Florida. I have no Earthly idea why?

Pink, White, and more Pink

I love the pink outline on these white roses, above.

These are my new favorites, Lollipops!

Everything goes in the backyard, or front, and hopefully with a little love and care they will thrive and continue.

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Love My Pink Roses

Just a few of my roses with the rosemary.

Pink, Pink, and Feet

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Everything here blooms in my herb garden.

Pink Bougainvillea

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Front Yard Wild Flowers

Sometimes the prettiest flowers are the simplest ones. Here are some wildflowers growing in our front yard. Simple, not showy.

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The Ibis Have Come to Visit

I sit with my desk facing the backyard so that I don’t miss a thing! These ibis flew into feed on the bugs in the yard but when I went outside to photograph them, they flew away.

Well, they are always welcome to come back. 🙂

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Looks Like Our Plumeria is Finally Blooming

We didn’t see our first blooms until about 4 years after planting this in our backyard. Finally bloomed! I don’t think that nature can be rushed. Just like me, they bloom in their own good time. 🙂

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Backyard Potting Bench and Water Barrel

The photos above were taken around Easter when we had so many things in bloom.

I’m not always posing in a dress with a petticoat. Sometimes we actually do work out here. 🙂

Spring is the prettiest time of year here.

We keep a water barrel in our backyard to collect rain water and we use it to water some of our plants. Just trying to save some money, and a little wear and tear on our environment.

Gordon and I spend a lot of time outside in our yard. We love doing landscaping projects and creating beauty with lots of plants and flowers. Here I am doing some plantings in one of the retaining walls that Gordon has built.

Here I planted foxtail ferns around our oak tree.

Don’t they look beautiful?

Wood chips added to the bed are healthy for the soil and are aesthetically pleasing.

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Every spring we turn our fountain over to the frogs that lay their eggs in it.

They hatch and turn into tadpoles. We feed them lettuce so that they won’t cannibalize each other. When they are grown they will be frogs and they will eat the bugs and mosquitoes that carry diseases in our backyard. They are very welcome to live in our backyard. They contribute to our health and survival.

I do admit that I would love my beautiful fountain back, but I am willing to sacrifice for “tadpole kind.”

I’ll get the fountain back in the summer. But until then, it’s all worth it!

Here the tadpoles are going through a terrible storm. The water is filling up and spilling over the fountain. I just hope the tadpoles don’t spill over either.

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This has been a very busy tadpole season. The frogs have pretty much laid their eggs in every single body of water in our backyard.

My Makeshift Birdbath

Our Tadpole Salad

If you are thinking that is too much lettuce, you would be wrong! They will gobble that up in no time.

I LOVE these photos of the tadpoles because I am getting them with their legs growing and how they come up for air.

In the photo at right, some of the tadpoles are starting to look like frogs.

I love the cute little legs here!

They are even in an abandoned planter on the side of our house.

Welcome, future frogs of America!

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One of our Little Froggy Friends

(Probably the mother to our fountain tadpoles.)

One night I couldn’t sleep so I got out of bed and went into the living room to get online and do a little bit of work on our website. So as I am working I suddenly hear this thump on the glass doors. (My desk faces outside so that I can see all the Florida wildlife that pays us a visit.)

All of a sudden I see this cute frog walking up the glass doors around my lamp. I was thrilled, at first, but then I realized that he wasn’t outside crawling up the glass door, he was INSIDE!

I tried to catch him but he was hopping around from the glass doors, to my tissue basket, to hiding inside the curtains. You can see him peeking out in the photo above.

I knew I needed help catching him so I ran in the bedroom screaming for Gordon!! He woke up yelling and throwing punches around the room thinking there was an intruder in the house. (It was 3:00 a.m.) We’re laughing about it now. 🙂

Isn’t he Cute?

Gordon caught him with a towel and put him outside.

Frogs are more important than people realize so treat them with respect.

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Lizard Egg

While I was digging around inside of the retaining wall I came across a lizard egg. I put it back where it belonged so that a nice little lizard would hatch and live happily in our backyard. They eat the bugs and keep that population down. They are necessary and very welcome in our yard.

Don’t fear them, they are important so respect them and enjoy them. We have some lizards in our backyard that don’t run away when we come near because they know we won’t hurt them. I like that.

Our Lovely Sago Palm

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Wasp Nest

When you do see wasp nest’s in around your house you do need to use a wasp spray and kill them. This nest is dormant. It is a good idea to have a few cans of wasp spray in order to kill them when you see them. The spray will shoot out a stream to about 20 feet, that way you can keep your distance.

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Hydrangea’s and the PH Soil Balance

See the odd color of my hydrangea’s above? They were originally pink when I planted them.

The PH balance in the soil will determine what color they turn out. Even when you plant them and they are one color, they can change to another color.

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Florida Softshell Turtle

I was so excited to see this cute guy in my backyard as I was sitting at my desk working on my website at the time. I quickly grabbed my camera and ran out in the backyard. He then retreated into his shell. So I backed off and went inside.

It was at that point that I saw this incredible neck extend from the shell. Wow! Look!

So happy to have this backyard visitor. You are welcome to come back any time.

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A Backyard Visitor w/ Egg Sack in Tow

I haven’t quite identified the mother but we did locate her to another part of the yard where we weren’t working.

Hope everything worked out for this little lady.

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Look What the Sun Illuminated?

Do you see it? I didn’t, until the sun shown through.

My desk faces the backyard, intentionally, so that I won’t miss a thing when we get a new visitor. I was so excited to see this because I didn’t even know it was there until the sun unveiled it to me. What a lovely morning, ‘hello.’

It looks like an old record, doesn’t it?

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Where the Fairy’s Live

Our Backyard Elk Horn

This is where the squirrel’s give birth. We can hear them chirping from inside of it. It’s actually very sweet.

I added the fairy doors just for decoration. Our only upkeep on this is to water it with the hose when it’s not getting enough water from the rain.

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Backyard Turkey Vultures

One day I spotted several of these turkey vultures in my backyard, and the three adjoining backyards, in my neighborhood.

The roof they are on is a neighbor’s. There must have been about 15 – 20 at any given time.

Some of the vultures were on roofs, others were circling overhead, and some were in our neighboring trees.

They are huge birds with a wing span of around 63 – 72 inches wide.

They hung around for two days. I knew something had died in a neighbor’s yard, but I didn’t know what.

When I took my cute little pugs out for a bathroom break a few of them flew over into our yard. These turkey vultures are larger than my dogs we needless to say, they had a quick bathroom break.

At any given time there were about 20 of them in our trees as well as our neighbors.

They do have a majestic quality to them. They also play a very relevant role in our eco-system. I peeked over my neighbor’s fence and spotted a skull and a spine. A dead animal. Maybe a cat, or a racoon. The turkey vultures picked that carcass clean for two whole days. They cleaned up death, making our yards sanitary again. Although we may not like them, they were necessary. In their own way they helped us.

The turkey vultures cleaned up a mess so that we didn’t have to, or rather, so my neighbor’s didn’t have to.

Notice the “V” in their wings while in flight? I think that is the coolest part of them.

I’m glad they are around when life needs them to clean up a mess.

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Gordon and I do a lot of shopping at Home Depot and Lowe’s. Great places to buy your herbs, flowers, plants…..

Our cart is always the prettiest one when we do our shopping.

It also smells so good inside the car on the way home. Especially the herbs.

Now This is a Happy Car

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My Rosa-Senesis

I recognized the leaves when I originally bought it as they’re weren’t any blooms on the plant at the time. Sometimes it’s good to know your flora and fauna so that you can spot something beautiful, knowing it will bloom into something grand, without initially seeing it in full bloom. I recognized this hibiscus from it’s leaves.

All Planted and Pretty

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A Pot of Bromeliads in our Yard

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Christmas Cactus in Bloom for the Holidays

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Another Backyard Snake

Southern Ring Neck Snake

Growing up in the south snakes are a part of our lives. So, when we go outside we are very aware of our surroundings. At least we should be. I do tend to watch where I step, especially if I have to get into our landscaping. I want to make sure that I don’t step on a snake. Some of our southern snakes can be very aggressive and chase you down. As in the various rattlers, copperheads, cotton mouth’s…..

One day I went outside in Rome, Georgia and my step-father was in his vegetable garden. Not 5 feet away from him was a 6 foot rat snake. He wasn’t the least bit worried as he knew that snake was good for his garden and he didn’t chase it away or harm it. And that snake in return didn’t go near him. Snakes do play an important role in life, most people just don’t realize it.

But, this snake appeared when I was moving a pot to another location. I wasn’t worried. I just went and grabbed the camera in order to record this great sight.

The snake has an orange ring around his neck. He is a variety that I have seen quite a bit in our backyard and they are not poisonous.

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