The first two are some succulents that we got at the local garden shop. I have an awful memory, as my early onset dementia has set in. Ok, so I don't have an official diagnosis, but I can tell. Anyway, I wanted some hanging ferns, but TFP wasn't totally into the idea, so we compromised and had it his way by getting these succulents instead.
This pitcher plant was my impulse buy. I don't know if it gets to eat many flies, but it's a cool Dracula plant. I need to get a bigger basket for it.
Here's our citronella plant. I had to buy a pot for it, which was weird to me, because at our home in Fort Lauderdale, we inherited so many planters from the previous owner that we never had to buy one. I just got a clay pot and painted it with leftover paint from our shed.
Here's our other deck plants. These are little desert rose plants that TFP bought online. They didn't do anything for the longest time because the weather wasn't quite warm enough when we first planted them.
This little aloe and the pot it's in came from Fort Lauderdale. When I drove over, I put a couple plants in the front foot well. This was an aloe pup which came from a very large plant. We had started with our first aloe when we lived in Hollywood, Florida. It was a little smaller than this size. We kept it in the shaded lanai, so it didn't really grow. Then when we moved, we left it out front in a sunny spot, and it grew exponentially. We had to replant it twice in a year. Then, when we moved to the Fort Lauderdale house, it grew even more. We also inherited two other large aloe plants. They all grew & I separated the pups into several smaller planters to give them their own space. This guy sat in the house for a couple months because it was so cold outside when we first moved. I put him out prematurely, and for a month or two, it looked like he was just about dead. And then it warmed up, and slowly, he came back to life. Now, he's growing and happy again.
The bigger pot by the steps has 2 cayenne plants and a cantaloupe plant. As you can kinda see, the cantaloupe is a bully, outgrowing the pepper plants and taking up a lot of space. But it can go vertical at least. The cantaloupe grew from some seeds that I just threw out when I cut up a melon. I hope we get melons from this, because I want to know if they will be a little spicy!
Here is our front porch planter. Once again, the cantaloupe is dominating. But in the midst of it is a mango sapling, a tamarind sapling, and a few itty bitty lychee plants. These were all from just being thrown into the dirt and giving them some water.
This is our The Fuzz planter by our front door. When our beloved cat, The Fuzz, was sick, we bought her a basil plant to chew on. When she passed away, TFP put her basil plant in this pot. It eventually died, but we bought another basil plant to put in in. When we moved here, I brought it, and the basil died. So I replaced it will catnip for the outdoor kitties to enjoy. I don't think they are actually eating it at all, but it's there for them.
This is a lychee plant that I brought from Fort Lauderdale. This one too almost died when I put it outside. But after a while it found it's will to live. Lucky little thing. Too bad we all can't be that resilient.
So that's the lychee in the foreground, then the "garden", then the banana trees that we bought from the garden center. Then there are a few more little lychee saplings that I planted after I bought lychees from Amazon. And in the far back right is another little mango sapling.
Here's the mango. I know these fruit trees will probably never bear fruit, but it's fun to plant them.
The closer banana tree is a regular dwarf banana tree, the farther one is a red dwarf banana. The red one had some kinda little critters eating the leaves at night. I googled it, and I read that they hide at the base between the fronds during the day. So you're supposed to hose out between the layers to get them out. I did this several times in a few days, and it seemed to work. There are little newts that live in the trees, but they seemed fine.
You probably can't tell the difference from plant to plant, but these are lychees that grew from lychees that I got less than 2 months ago.
So in the foreground are all purchased plants. There's lemongrass. This has probably tripled in size. I had tried to bring a lemongrass plant from Florida, but it died. 😢 ☠️ .
Moving on, there's sunflowers, a flowering plant with purple flowers, and grapefruit mint.
The back part of the garden has pineapple tops that are very slowly growing, more cayenne peppers, tomatoes that aren't doing much, Thai basil, cucumbers, more cantaloupe that are much slower to grow because they are in more direct sunlight, and then a lot of black eyed peas. The plant in the middle of the photo climbing up is one of the black eyed pea plants. I wrapped some twine around the fence boards for the vines to cling to. The black eyed peas were just grown from dried beans from Whole Foods. They are doing so well, but it's funny, because are we going to harvest 6 bean pods and cook them? I guess they would feed a mouse?
