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| Swamp Sunflower, framed by my porch columns. This native plant is lighting up our rural roadsides this fall. I think they had a good summer with the ABUNDANT rainfall. For most of the year, they are a small rosette of leaves, quietly hanging out at ground level. |
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| Sometime, usually near the end of the summer, they kick it up and shoot for the sky. I have plants in my garden that I know are close to ten feet tall. The native bees, wasps, and beetles seem to really appreciate the nectar and pollen of Swamp Sunflower ... the blossoms were buzzing with natives, but not a single European honey bee this Saturday. |
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| I have to show this fall color. For the first time, I have pineapples ripening on pineapple plants that I started from decapitated store bought pineapples. I think keeping the young plants out at Cedar Key (where the Gulf moderates the micro climate and temperatures are typically 10-15 degrees warmer than at PFHQ a few miles inland.) Currently I have 3 softball sized, ripening pineapples in pots. I'm pretty stoked about that. |
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| Then, there is this bit of fall color ... peppers, onions, mushrooms, peanuts, and lean pork cooked in a rough version of Kung Pao. Eat your colors people. |
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| Here are those crazy, zany Swamp Sunflowers lording it over my mostly fallow garden. |
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| ... and here they are in the jumbleyjuxtaposeyness that we call a flower bed here at PFHQ. |
7 comments:
You grew pineapples. You actually grew pineapples. I am simply stunned. I do not know what to say. I have started those silly tops half a dozen times and never even got them to root. I have a pretty green thumb, but I bow to the master. lol
It is really great to see the fall transition there. And, wonderful new mantra: Eat Your Colors.
Funny, I was just doing some research on pineapples since Nina asked me when they were in season. I was pretty ignorant about how they grew, and if they could even be grown in Florida. Congratulations on nursing them to almost-maturity! I was pretty stoked about harvesting my first almost full size eggplant today.
Eat your colors indeed! Stuffing myself with sweet snack peppers from the garden, the last tomatoes. I love your jumbly sunflower garden and the happy colors on the house. Please send kung pao pork.
oh and huge kudos on growing your own pineapples. I was scandalized to learn that, in Honduras, the plants are allowed to produce one pineapple, then ripped up and composted. Also, the fields are dotted with bright blue bags which are put on the developing fruit. When I asked why, I was told that's because pineapples are their most heavily sprayed crop, and the bag keeps the poison off the fruit. Yucccch! Grow your own!! and I'd bet that plant will keep making little pineapples, too.
Nice stuff. We managed to grow a pineapple to near maturity up here in northwest Georgia once.
Here in coastal Virginia my mother-in-law was entertained by her fruiting pineapple top. One afternoon she spotted a squirrel making off with it.
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