Collards in my garden.

Monstera deliciosa, garden, Roscoe

We are blessed, with our climate here in North Florida, to be able to grow, in our gardens, plants that most people have to bring indoors up north. This is one of the largest members of the philodendron family, and I have two huge ones near the water. This one is six feet (two meters) tall and twice as big around.

Elephant ear leaf, Garden

Our first rain in at least 6 weeks!

Magnolia leaf, garden

More frost damaged elephant ears

 Four more views of frost damaged Elephant ear leaves.

Near frost, Garden, Roscoe

Tropical plants are amazing. Through very high heat (100f/37.8c) and either drought or days of soaking rain, these elephant ears (colocasia) don't even flinch. They just get bigger and spread underground. But let there be one night of temperatures between 35f/1.7c and 40f/4.4c and they just turn brown and die back to the ground. They'll be back.

Last fig leaf, garden, Roscoe

It fell about two minutes after this.

Autumn leaf, driveway, Roscoe

Elephant ears, ICW, Roscoe

Since returning from Provence a lot of my time has gone to taking my garden back from nature. When you are gone 8 weeks in mid-summer, and there is abundant rain, you come back to jungle. I have been clearing and replacing plants with smaller and slower growing herbs and ornamentals. Elephant ears are a lovely accent plant. Their leaves are about a foot in length when you plant them. Soon they get much bigger. The largest of theses leaves is about a yard (1 meter) in length and the plant has a ten foot (3 meter) spread. All of this would be ducky except that, once established, elephant ears spread rampantly. So, a lot of pulling and dumping.  I hope to get back to posting more as Autumn slows the garden down.

Magnolia leaf, Roscoe

Leaf, Roscoe

Ah, Florida, land of opposites. Our trees, for the most part, lose their leaves quietly, without the colorful display, in December and January. Then, in February, the swamp maples put forth bright red seed pods that look like Fall colors. Then the regular trees start, in March, to bud out and are soon covered in that lovely Spring green. Once that is done, the magnolias, trees that apparently evolved before bees, start to shed their large leathery leaves, by the thousands. I have 6 magnolias on my little lot and Magnolia season has started, as evidenced by this early arrival. So we now have an real overlap where I spend part of the day planting new plants and veggies and another part raking these tough leaves and composting them. So we get Autumn and Spring at the same time. At least the bugs are still sleeping.

Ginkgo leaves,trug, garden, Roscoe

I have a big, red, plastic garden trug that I use to carry yard waste around to various compost piles or the road, where it is picked up on a weekly basis and recycled. After the Autumn cleanup it sat in the back and slowly collected rainwater. Then the leaves started falling. So, I got lucky.

Leaves, garden, roscoe

The Japanese maple and the ginkgo both shed at the same time to weeks ago.

Color leaf, Driveway, Roscoe

Leaves, driveway, Roscoe

I was out in my driveway, taking pictures of leaves on the ground. They were ok but there was too much clutter under them. Finally a light went on and I came inside and got a piece of 8 1/2 x 11 paper and went back out. It was lovely soft light and I took an hour's worth of portraits of leaves and other backyard stuff. So you may see a lot of these in the next few days.

Leaf, driveway, home. PVB

Autumn always has me looking down. We do have some trees that shed their leaves. The rest lose between 30% and 70% depending on the tree. I find that I see the structure of the leaf much better when it has lost it's color and has dried out a bit.

Leaf, Jax Beach

Another conversion with MacPhun software's Tonality app. The split tone filter is great fun.

Spider lily, St. Augustine

I always thought that these lilies were so named because of the flowers. They are usually planted in large groups. When I saw this freestanding one I realized that the whole plant resembles a spider.

Yellows, Millbrae

Philodendron monstera leaves, Roscoe

I have just gotten a Sony RX100 III camera. It is a tiny camera with a 1" sensor of 20mp. A 1' sensor is about 1/4 the size of a full frame DSLR. It has a wonderful pop-up electric viewfinder and a Zeiss zoom, the equivalent of a 24mm-70mm lens on a full frame camera. I love it. It is easy to carry around, fitting into big pockets or lightly around my neck. It returns files that are clear, sharp and easy to work with in Photoshop. It's a keeper.