Unzipped at last

"What on earth are those things?," B.J. asked at the back deck last month.

I swiveled around, and looked at the big spikes coming up out of the foxtail palms, and told her that with any luck they'd unzip themselves into new fronds while she and my mom were here.

No such luck, though this week they've started, dancing in the breezes.

[By the way, I've heard that some people in other parts of the country don't have sunshine and warm weather. My sincerest condolences. And you can make it up to us by gloating about your conditions next hurricane season.]

We have ignition

So much for the planned gardens, because now I think the credit should go less to Craig and more to Topsy.

Craig's forte is more greenscapes than blooms, so you might not blame him for some unfamiliarity with the way flowers work here. At least his plans looked really beautiful on paper.

This little heliconia variety, which makes me think of tongues of flame, went in place of the infected hibiscus on the south side of the gate. For height, we're letting the ixoras -- red and golden -- get as tall as they can (once we get the hibiscus mealybug under control).

Hangers-on

We've got two lovely little dendrobiums blooming their hearts out on the left corner of the pool, as you're looking at the fountain.

Actually, the mostly-white one isn't so little: It's up and out a good two feet from the palm trunk. (The glossy leaves you see behind and around it are from the allspice bush -- which itself is doing well, too.)

We tied both of them up last year with fishing line, and after a few fall-offs and blow-overs, they started taking great responsibility for their own security. And as a result, the web of roots you see in the closeup has wrapped the foxtail several times around.

The fantastic thing about orchids here: Last year we spritzed 'em regularly with liquefied worm poop and misted them religiously. This year, with absolutely no attention at all, they've taken off.

Perfect definition of benign neglect.

Flight path cleared

Sometimes plants take a little midwifing, and the big bird of paradise on the south end of our picket fence is a good case.

Flowerheads come up between the big fronds -- which are beautifully fanned, but tight. So the flowers kind of twist and sometimes get lost until they're almost played out.

This time the frond that would have been at the left of the picture was wind-shredded enough to saw off, letting those beautiful blue pods rise unhindered.

Just in time for Fantasy Fest.

Surviving the freeze

. . . Be- cause it only got down to about 70 here, a far cry from the frost and freeze warnings in Tennessee.

Still, 70 brings the sweaters, windbreakers and extra jackets out of the closet, when we're all used to the 90s at most and mid-80s at least.

The ixoras inside the front gate seemed to be thriving in one big floral cooler, much happier since we ripped out the diseased hibiscus. This bunch ought to pop in a week and be good for a month, at least.

Finally, but briefly, but sweetly

When the ground orchids on either side of our front steps started languishing last year, we hauled our butts out to Mama's, way up on Rockland Key, and got some Tahitian gardenias for the left side, and some bromeliads for the right. It took until this summer -- they had a few blooms when I was here -- for the gardenias to get down to the business of flowering, and they've been dribbling them out since.

The blossoms, maybe 2 inches across, only last a day or so, but you can smell them from the middle of the street.

TropiCarrots?

Our neighbors adjoining toward the corner don't really have a garden. What surrounds their tumbledown rear deck is more an accumulation of overgrown palms, invasive vines and brittle aralias.

. . . And the sansiveria that keeps creeping under the fence, into our ferns, into our walkway, under our feet. It would get smashed every other day during construction (as would some of the carpenters), and just as routinely sprout back up. Since then, I've hacked it back whenever it became a tripwire again, and this week I got serious.

Those roots are a good inch across, and if they ever make it under the house, they're going to make Jack and the Beanstalk look like a fairy tale.

Beacon in the night

Another direction

Just something to offset the symmetry of 09.09.09

I'm reminded of a confession Brendan Gill made about his education at The New Yorker.

Gill had been cultivating a "fancy" style, but editor Rogers Whitaker, "circling a long and elaborately balanced sentence of mine . . . had scribbled on the margin of the galley, 'If you tapped this sentence at one end, it would never stop rocking.' After that, I took care to be as little Gibbon- esque as possible."

Late bloomer

Perhaps I wasn't entirely fair the other day when I was so flat in saying the gardens had played out.

Robert was crafting a centerpiece for Saturday's little get-together -- Ben and Ken (and Toby), Ahmed and Greg, two of their friends from Atlanta, Jerry, Ward from Knoxville -- and came back from the cutting gardens just after dawn. . . .

With one of the most radiant dahlias I've ever seen.

Fern berries

As usual, we started with one foxtail fern years ago, sitting upright in a pot and putting out . . . foxtails.

Divide and conquer.

And now there are a couple in the sweet bay garden, still in regular pots. But also one hanging on the Bradford pear by the courtyard (it has at least a 3-foot drape) and another hanging high over the bench at the north end of the shuffleboard court (at least 4 feet).

And watered right, fed right, shaded right, they're putting out fruit.

Who knew?

From a distance

. . . Everything looks fine. But take a closer look, and the little marigolds are end-of-season parched, and everything in the beds has gone gangly.

In the pots, either the underplantings have crowded the bananas, or the bananas' babies have crowded the underplantings; in either case, they're both sickly, and the soil is so packed with roots that it's hard to hold water.

Around the corner, the herbs are OK, but the tomatoes just look worn down. They've done their job, and they're tired.

It's September, after all, and these things have been doing yeoman work since the first of May. Hydrangeas may be named "Endless Summer," but reality trumps hyperbole with every dwindling day.

Just about time to clear the slate, thank the annuals as we toss 'em and let the rest take a long winter's nap.

More macho

I mentioned having to hack back the macho ferns around the Key West pool.

Up north, we confine them to pots, so we can take them in for winter -- and they still get huge. The one behind the impatiens here under the sweetbay trees is at least 5 feet tall. (The impatiens aren't so small themselves; they're happy with a good feeding every three weeks. And that big old hanging Boston fern is so heavy we bend rebar to make the hooks.)

We brought two little machos to Tennessee a few years ago. Every winter, they overflowed the benches in the greenhouse, so we divided and repotted, divided and repotted. . . .

Stop us before we fern again.

Chimes!

We are down to a precious few cousins-once-removed who haven't had nuptial parties here, so it is with a particular sweetness that we learned that Cousin Sally's daughter, Mary, and her intended, Dale, have announced a wedding date for May. And have graced us with the chance to have their reception at our house. It is a woo beyond woo-HOO.

So when Dale and Mary and brother Michael, and their dad Mickey and his wife, Marie, came out to scout the house Sunday (though it will be far different in May) it was such a pleasure to show them the basics of the place.

Including these sweet-smelling brugmansias. If only the greenhouse will store them in condition to ring, a la Poe . . . .

Hear the mellow wedding bells
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!

From the molten-golden notes,
And all in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!

Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells
On the Future! how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

And heeeere's Lucy

By the dozens

The big plumerias we got from Jack's mom and sister -- in this case of course Ethel, the blond one -- put out dozens of blossoms a day. Each of the mother plants is 6 feet tall and 6 feet wide, after all, and that's a lot of bloom room.

Most of the flowers fall on the pool apron to dry and fly away. A few dozen blow into the pool itself, and look as if we planned them to be that pretty floating around before they're sucked ingloriously into the drains. But . . . plumerias, frangipanis, call them what you will. Sniff 'em. I call them spectacularly sweet.

One thirsty wall

Robert and Brenda did a great job of keeping our pots from parching while I was away -- especially these, on the summer house wall.

Given their morning sun blasts, and the heat of the brick behind them, and their relative dearth of moisture-holding soil, and the fact that the eaves shield them from rain . . . well, sometimes the impatiens need a good, cool drink twice a 90-degree day.

The plants appreciate the attention. Less so the mantis who scrambles out of the farthest pot along the wall every time I point the water wand in his direction.

At the center

Lower

Closer