Hello.
I wanted to get a quick post off to all of you. At the moment, I am sitting in my shuttered house in Fort Lauderdale. The first squall of Hurricane Irma has just arrived.
As you can see, Joe and I have secured the house as best we could. The yard and garden are packed up and stored away. We have our supplies and we’re ready for a long night.
There’s a famous scene from the classic Dustin Hoffman film The Graduate. It’s also one of the most quoted moments in the film, and often makes the list of most-quotable lines in all of film history.
Hoffman portrays Benjamin, a recent college graduate without any direction. At a party, a family friend with career advice approaches him.
There was talk in the garden center, recently — a really juicy piece of gossip personally told to me by a customer. Now, I’m not one to gossip, but this is too huge to keep to myself . . .
Iguanas do not eat Desert Rose!
My garden doesn’t need me.
Oh, it uses me — for watering and weeding and such — but it really doesn’t need me.
When it comes to my lawn, I’m pretty much a live and let live kind of guy. If it’s green, it stays — and for decades my policy has worked.
I haven’t had to use poisons. Insects and wildlife seem to appreciate the blend of greens and flowering weeds. Most importantly, it’s the one aspect of gardening and home ownership that has remained stress-free.
I refuse to be a suburban slave to my lawn — at least that’s what I said until dollarweed entered my life.
The odd thing about Christmas in South Florida is that it never actually feels like Christmas in the northern sense of the word. Yes, there are decorations and holiday parties, but it’s kind of hard to dream about a white Christmas in a land where it will always be just that — a dream.
The winter solstice, though, is universal.
This post was planned months ago. The local garden club had scheduled its plant and craft sale for November, and as secretary, there’s a bit of pressure to contribute plants.
My initial thought was to document my clipping and dividing, rooting and potting — all very Martha-like, with photos and plant details.
At least that was my plan in September.
Our royal palm came down the other day — not by wind or disease, but by choice and chainsaw. It had simply become too worrisome, too big for its britches, too big for our own good.
On a recent visit to Tampa/St. Pete, as Joe and I ventured away from the metropolitan area, I was reminded of Robert Frost’s famous poem, “The Road Not Taken” — specifically the closing lines:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Nitty Gritty Dirt Man 