Some Plants That I Love

Begonia

This orchid is a clone to one my Mother In Law had 40 years ago. Most of my (women) in-laws have some of this same plant. We grow them in honor of Vera. It blooms orange.

The green berries on this prickly Florida Holly will be red in a couple of months.

Magnolia

That beautifully contorted small tree is a wild blueberry. In early spring it is covered in tiny white flowers that look like bitty little fairy bells, all over. Then it is covered in lovely little blueberries. The leaves can be dried an made into a mellow tea with a wonderful purple-blue color. The wood from dead fall is very hard and seems to last forever. They welcome small boys to climb.

Somebody has a nice house under this Palmetto. I ignore it so that my husband won’t notice and destroy it. Palmettoes are a scrub palm. He doesn’t like them either and removes them with his tractor, I have a few, including this one, that are “mine”. They should need absolutely no care, but every year they become smaller and less, instead of bigger and more. My husband says it is the his dog who is doing the pruning.

This wild grapevine may be dead or dyeing. I didn’t check to see if my husband had severed it with his tractor. Corky hates all “damned vines” and has most big ones eradicated, Florida Crackers call these grapes Scuppernongs. They are delicious. I have some young vines trained along a back fence so that when they get enough sun to ripen , I can reach the grapes that the birds and other critters don’t get.