Gardens make me happy

I like a garden that blends together with plants leaning close like friends sharing secrets showering the ground with their soft petal whispers.

 

I like a garden where leaves, branches, flowers and fragrances mix and mesh into a single mass of bucolic bliss. I appreciate the confluence of different sizes, textures, shapes and colors. Incongruous though it seems, harmony can evolve from dissonant species.

Plants in all shapes, sizes, colors and scents just outside our porch door

I like a garden full of surprises. Unexpected statues peek through leaves. Shells and stones trigger memories. Plaques bearing meaningful words sit on tables while wind chimes and mobiles sway in the breeze.

Statues and plant stands and an old teapot turned flowerpot

I like a garden where whimsical wonder is more important than perfection, where weeds exist but haven’t taken control.

A pair of old boots find new life in the garden

I like a garden with places to rest. Chairs and benches, stools and tables provide cozy spots to observe and reflect.

A place to rest in the bamboo grove

I like a garden abuzz with action. Birds and bees fly about. Butterflies flutter. Snakes slither through foliage. Anoles posture from their plant stand posts. From the tiniest insect to broad spider webs, something is always going on in a garden.

Gray hairstreak butterfly on basil flowers

I like a garden alive with activity yet peaceful and calm, a floral sanctuary. I like a garden that’s a world apart. 

Hummingbird sipping nectar from firespike blossoms

My gardens – and I have many (too many to take care of my husband might say) – are all works in progress. This morning as I stood looking out the bedroom window, I realized how similar my garden style is to the way I live the non-horticultural parts of my life.

Like my diverse range of plants, I have many interests. I could never be a person devoted to one passion anymore than I could plant a garden of a single color. I knew a person a long time ago who had many different plants but all of one hue. It was an all-white garden. Hers was lovely, but it could never be mine. My garden, like my life, is rich in variety.

Although an all white garden is pretty, I'd always be tempted to add a splash of other colors to the mix

 

Like scattered seeds that grow tall and broad, my thoughts tend to ramble and pop up unexpectedly. Yet, with a little attention – a sprinkling of focus - they come together in harmonious union.

If my garden has weeds, so does my house. My home is tidy but far from squeaky clean. Just as I can tolerate a few weeds in the garden, I don’t mind some smudges on windows or a bit of crunch underfoot. When things get too bad, I settle in for an intense session. Be it vacuuming, window washing or pulling out stubborn weeds, there’s satisfaction gleaned from getting work done.

My husband’s gardens are different than mine. His are utilitarian with edible crops filling containers on waist-high tables for easy access. He plants his rows straight and focuses on production. He tends his no-nonsense garden with dogged determination. He doesn’t need benches or whimsical doodads. His priorities center on achieving healthy specimens.

My husband's gardens have straight lines of container plants placed at a uniform height.  It's practical and productive and designed much differently than my more fanciful flowerbeds.  

 

Different though they are, we both love our gardens. More importantly, we appreciate each other’s approach to gardening and life. It doesn’t matter whether a garden has straight rows or curved beds, vegetables or flowers. It doesn’t matter if it is well tended or wild. What does matter is that the work we do yields a satisfying harvest, a crop of contentment, a bouquet of pleasure.

Tropical sage...a wise addition to the Southern garden

Tropical sage, a popular Southern plant

SIMPLY LIVING

February 25, 2013

I’m waiting for hummingbirds to discover my tropical sage plants. 

Last fall, my daughter removed a large patch of the pretty, scarlet-colored flowers from one of her garden beds but before tossing the lot into her compost pile, she put a couple aside for me.  I accepted her gift gratefully and placed the small starts in my kitchen garden where I hoped their bright red blooms would attract butterflies, bees and especially hummingbirds.  Since I spend considerable time in the kitchen preparing food and cleaning up afterwards, I like to reward myself with pretty views to gaze out upon from the kitchen window.  

In the months since, the flower stalks have grown tall and the plants have sprawled broadly.  Unlike Amber’s yard where garden space is limited, I have plenty of room for plants to expand – if they’re the right plants.  Rather than installing more exotics that look lovely but turn out to be incredibly hard to control or eradicate, I’m on the lookout for Florida-friendly additions that provide beauty and attract wildlife without the need for much attention.  Tropical sage fits the bill.  I haven’t noticed any hummers yet but I’m sure their arrival is just a matter of time.

Although its botanic name is Salvia coccinea, tropical sage is a popular southern plant with many monikers.  Common names include Texas sage, scarlet sage, blood sage, hummingbird sage and red salvia.  Salvias are the largest genus of the mint family and tropical sage (like all mints) has square stems, aromatic leaves and small flowers displayed in a whorl around upright stems.  The tubular red flowers, which attract so much attention from nectar-seeking wildlife, are about an inch long and perfectly shaped to accommodate a hummingbird’s long, pointy bill.  

I’ve planted my tropical sage in a flowerbed where I’m also growing a purple sage, orange cosmos and a few red, pink and white pentas.  Over time, I’ve enhanced the soil in that garden with compost, peat and lavish amounts of grass clipping mulch.  While tropical sage abides such soil amendments, it can also prosper in less enhanced settings.  As long as it gets a few hours of shade every day, it will grow in dry, sandy spots as well as rich loam. 

The blooms, which continue year round except during freezes, are more profuse if the plants receive at least some irrigation.  However, even when ignored completely, tropical sage will survive.  It just won’t thrive like it will when given a little attention.

From a lazy gardener’s point of view (mine!), one of tropical sage’s many assets is its ability to self-seed.  With her limited garden space, my daughter doesn’t find this characteristic as endearing as I do.  In her yard, salvia coccinea volunteers kept popping up and taking over spots where she would have preferred to grow vegetables and other herbs.  Although Amber appreciated seeing all the fluttering wildlife the plants attracted, the self-seeding Florida wildflowers simply took up too much valuable real estate. 

Unlike Amber, I’m ready for Florida-friendly, wildlife-attracting, low-maintenance plants like tropical sage to overtake garden space.  I wouldn’t mind in the least if the two plants my daughter gave me blazed a scarlet path beyond the garden and into other planting beds.  I wouldn’t even object if they continued spreading their way around the lake.  

One of these days, a hummingbird will discover the tubular red blooms in my kitchen garden.  When it does, the tiny bird will be happy to have found a new source of life-sustaining nectar.  I’ll be happy too because we’ll both be nourished - one by nectar, the other by fluttering moments of beauty.  

A pretty little weed

Oxalis debilis is an attractive weed with pretty pink flowers, shamrock-shaped leaves and a compact mounded form

Simply Living
December 10, 2012

There are certain non-native plants (aka escaped exotics/weeds) that I’m rather fond of despite their purported invasiveness.  Among them, pink sorrel (Oxalis debilis) stands out, literally as well as figuratively. 

Without any assist from us, this low-growing, no-fuss perennial appears in our flowerbeds.  All year round – except during winter freezes - clusters of pretty, pink flowers top the green, shamrock-shaped leaves.

Little pink flowers bloom practically year-round

 

Although the plant spreads through underground rhizomes, I haven’t found pink sorrel to be particularly invasive.  That’s probably because it seems to have a decided preference for the enriched soil of garden beds and container plants.  I’ve walked all over our property but have never seen pink sorrel growing anywhere except areas where the soil has previously been augmented.  In such settings however, especially if they are sunny, I usually find multiple mounds of unplanted beauty.

Oxalis debilis is one of 900 members of Oxilidaceae, the wood sorrel family.  Although native to South America, wood sorrel plants exist in all but the coldest locations around the world.  There are some 30 varieties in the United States with six in Florida. 

All wood sorrels are edible, but they do contain oxalic acid, a chemical compound present in spinach, kale, beets, parsley and a number of other foods.  If eaten to excess, oxalic acid is toxic and can lead to kidney problems but it would be highly unlikely for that to happen with pink sorrel.  The leaves of this perennial plant are small and have a sour lemony flavor.  A few added to a salad might result in an interesting flavor but eating an entire bowlful would provide more tartness than most people would find palatable.

While I appreciate pink sorrel’s edible quality, that’s not the reason I’m so fond of the plant.  I like this self-propagating wildflower because it’s so pretty.  The green foliage forms rounded mounds that can reach up to eight inches tall with a foot-wide diameter and the small five-petal flowers that grow in clusters atop thin stems look like small pink stars.  In the evening and during periods of drought, the blooms close up.  The leaves do too.  When closed, the shamrock-shaped leaves look like tiny versions of those fortuneteller games I used to make out of folded paper when I was a kid.

Although pink sorrel grows wild in temperate garden beds, I like the plant best as a container plant in individual pots or mixed groupings.  I keep a couple containers of sorrel on the porch-side patio but people who live in colder climates often grow it indoors solely as a houseplant.  That’s what my daughter does.  Whenever I visit Jenny in her Massachusetts home, I admire the lush mound of Oxalis triangularis that sits on a table by a window in her living room.  Triangularis is a purple-leafed relative to Oxalis debilis that also produces pink blooms.

Oxalis triangularis has large purple leaves and pink-white flowers.  In this picture, it is growing in a container alongside a variegated spider plant

The Florida Exotic Pest Plant Council (www.fleppc.org) does not include pink sorrel as either a Category I or a Category II invasive plant but because it is a non-native plant with the ability to aggressively self-propagate, native plant advocates don’t encourage its use in the landscape.  The Florida Native Plant Society (www.fnps.org) lists only one variety of wood sorrel, Oxalis comiculate (better known as common yellow wood sorrel) as a Florida native.  However, from my experience, I’ve found the native oxalis tends to pop up in lawns, sidewalk cracks and between steppingstones.  Common yellow wood sorrel is also less showy and more difficult to eradicate than non-native pink sorrel.

Oxalis comiculate is a native plant with tiny yellow flowers and small leaves.  

Deciding what plants to incorporate into your landscape and which ones to discourage can be confusing, especially if one of your objectives is to work in harmony with the environment.  For me, the decision often comes down to which plants offer the most advantages to the home gardener for the least amount of time, effort and resources.  Pink sorrel fulfills those guidelines by being a disease-and-pest-resistant, drought-tolerant plant that doesn’t require irrigation or toxic sprays in order to thrive.  Its small flowers bloom practically year-round and it has lovely foliage to boot.  Even better, I don’t even have to plant it because this low-growing wildflower plants itself! 

Pink sorrel is an escaped exotic but that doesn’t make it a bad plant.  It’s a weed, albeit a pretty one, and while I’m not about to fill my garden with it, a few judiciously selected plants can add a bit of landscape beauty with minimal work.   

A cheery Florida native

Cheerful flowers that resemble black-eyed-Susan blooms cover a sprawling mass of Helianthus debilis

Simply Living
March 26, 2012

My daughter Amber brought me a gift — a rooted cutting of beach sunflower from her garden. Amber knows I'm partial to daisy-like flowers and beach sunflower (Helianthus debilis) fits the bill.

The 2-inch wide blooms of this cheerful looking Florida native are bright yellow with reddish-brown centers. Like many members of the Asteraceae family (the largest family of flowering plants in the world), beach sunflower has heart-shaped leaves with rough, hairy undersides. Although related to the tall sunflowers that adorn many gardens, this drought-tolerant groundcover stretches outward instead of upward.

Easily propagated from seeds, divisions or cuttings, beach sunflower does best when placed in sunny locations with sandy, well-drained soil. A single rooted cutting like Amber gave me, can span an 8-foot-by-8-foot area in one summer.

That's what happened at my daughter's house.

Last year, Amber planted a small sprig of Helianthus debilis in her front yard. She placed it beneath a palm tree in unimproved soil. The only irrigation the plant received was an occasional blast from the garden hose.
Despite the lack of attention (or maybe because of it!), the cutting thrived. After only a few months of hot weather, Amber's solitary plant had multiplied to such an extent it encircled the palm tree and was inching outward toward the driveway.

I find such aggressive behavior coupled with a need for minimal attention appealing in a plant, especially if that plant is a Florida native flower with a face that reminds me of a black-eyed-Susan.

"Take some cuttings," my son-in-law said one day when my visit included my usual raves about beach sunflower's beauty. "I just finished trimming a bunch of it growing into the lawn."

Beach sunflower will do that. Also known as dune sunflower because of its ability to tolerate salt spray in seaside locations, Helianthus debilis is not the right plant for tight places. If the intention is to line a walkway with a low-maintenance plant or to edge a narrow space with cheery color, don't plant this sprawling sun lover. In no time at all your initial planting will overflow its intended location and turn into a maintenance headache.

That seems to be what happened along a segment of the West Orange Trail.

A small patch of Florida native plants once grew in a garden bed located where the bicycle trail intersects Mohawk Street in Clermont.  That particular stretch parallels Washington Street, a road I frequent. Whenever my route took me down the two-lane, I paid special attention to the blooms that dressed up the macadam.

Week by week, I noticed as the plants grew broader, inching their way outward onto the pavement. Every now and then, someone would trim back the rambling growth, but inevitably the plant simply rebounded.
Then one day, as I drove down Washington Street, the triangular-shaped garden bed was bare. I was disappointed, but I can't say I was surprised. Despite being a drought-tolerant, disease-free native, beach sunflower's sprawling nature wasn't right for such a restricted location.

I don't have that problem where I live. Surrounded as we are by so much acreage, there are countless spaces for sprawling plants to grow. Unfortunately, years ago we made the mistake of filling many of our steep inclines and difficult-to-mow places with wedelia — a groundcover that is also in the Asteraceae family.

Like beach sunflower, wedelia is a low-growing, hardy perennial with long-lasting daisy-like blooms that spreads aggressively. Unlike its cousin, wedelia is not native to the Sunshine State. Florida Exotic Pest Plant Council lists it as a Category II invasive species because it forms dense thickets that crowd out other species.

I wish I had known about beach sunflower before planting wedelia so extensively. Not only do I find its flowerheads more attractive than those of wedelia, I'd also feel better if I knew my landscape included more native plants instead of invasive exotics.

But dwelling on "could-of-should-of's" is nonproductive. The important thing is to focus on the future.

Thanks to Amber's thoughtful gift, I have the start of a new direction in groundcover plantings. While removing all the wedelia is impractical, I can anticipate the day when butterfly-attracting stands of beach sunflowers will augment the landscape. Someday, the cheery blooms of beach sunflower will be sprawling over the ground, down embankments and filling in the dry, bare places where other flowers refuse to grow.

From one to many — that's my plan — but, this time, with a more appropriate plant.

Vines are...divine!

Blue sky vine beautifies a chain link fence

Simply Living
December 12, 2011

I love vines.

I love their tenacity and reckless abandon. I love the way they march onward and upward despite minimal care and attention.

I find their variations in fragrance, color and delicate beauty appealing. I see vines growing in wild places or in other people's yards, and I want them. They captivate and entice me.

Fortunately, I'm learning to resist.

Vines have a way of taking over. It's in their nature. If you are prepared and willing to put the time and effort into reining them in, then cultivating vines is a worthy occupation. They can look lovely crawling over an arbor, trellis or pergola, and they work well at hiding an unattractive wall or object. Vines add beauty to a hanging basket and do a good job as a ground cover. However, if you are unable to regularly monitor and control their growth, a pretty little vine can turn into a pretty big problem.

I've made the mistake of planting vines and watching them grow out of control on numerous occasions. I've done it with wild morning glory, purple and white wisteria, passionflower, cypress vine and Dutchman's pipevine. In each case, what started as a snip — a tiny cutting gleaned from a larger plant — turned into a rambling monster over the course of a summer.

Part of the problem is that vines know no bounds. When you plant a broccoli seedling or an impatiens plant, it grows bigger and broader but never wanders. It stays put — a concept that doesn't mesh with the word "vine."

A vine's essence is to grow up, stretch out, sprawl sideways. It does whatever it can to extend its range as far away from the initial root as possible. Some vines do their climbing with help from tendrils, while others twine or use aerial rootlets. Whatever the method, the result is expansive growth far beyond where the plant was originally established.

Pruning is necessary to keep vines in check.

When it comes to vines, I also require a certain amount of restraint. I need to prune back my predilection to cultivate more vines than I have time or energy to control.

Recently, I've found myself coveting a blue sky vine that grows along the entry fence to a home on one of the back roads I frequent. Every time I drive by, I feel a yearning. I want that vine! Its flowers are such a beautiful shade of blue. It looks so pretty along the fence.

If I stopped and asked, I'm sure the homeowners wouldn't object to my taking a clipping, snipping off a little segment to plant at my own home. But if I got a clipping, what then? Once it was rooted, where would I place it? Would it grow out of control as so many other vines have done? Would it become a problem?

It probably would.

Before I add any new vines to the landscape, I need a plan, a place for them to grow and a means to control them when — not if — they start to grow out of bounds.

I have a solution, at least in my mind.

I envision a series of arbors in a long row. The arbors would form a tunnel that I could walk through and on each one, a different vine would climb and twine. The arbors would be separate so that the plants couldn't intermingle. Mowing the ground between them would keep them contained.

I love vines but I'm trying hard to resist the urge to add more to the landscape. Someday I might get a snip of that lovely blue sky vine but I've promised myself it won't be until all the necessary infrastructure is in place and I have the time and inclination to keep the vine in check.

Firespike adds festive touch to garden

A cloudless sulfur butterfly sips nectar from a firespike bloom

Simply Living
December 5, 2011

During December when brown leathery sycamore leaves are covering the ground and orange tangerines dangle from citrus trees like ornaments, the waxy red blooms of firespike add a festive glow to the garden.

Firespike, botanically known as Odontonema strictum, is an herbaceous perennial with foot-long spikes of showy flowers extending out of glossy foliage. Standing about 6 feet tall in shrubby clumps, this South American native is a wonderful addition to the landscape because it doubles both as an easy-to-grow bush and a wildlife magnet to butterflies and hummingbirds.

I can't remember when I first discovered the firespike plant or where my original cutting came from but this late-summer-through-winter bloomer has been adding color to my garden palette for years. Because it is so tall, firespike does best as a background plant where it can stretch upward without overshadowing shorter plants.

On several occasions, I've made the mistake of placing it in the wrong spot but I've managed to dig up and move plants without problems. That's because firespike is resilient. This drought-tolerant perennial will happily grow in sunny as well as shady locations and is easily propagated by divisions, cuttings or sometimes even by sticking a clipped off branch into the ground.

One has to wonder if a plant this easy to propagate is invasive. Fortunately, the answer is 'No.' Although it readily reseeds, sprouts don't emerge far from the mother plant so it doesn't spread out of control. New shoots merely increase the bush's girth.

Firespike's waxy red blooms, born in clusters along foot-long stems, make great cut flowers. They look especially nice in bouquets with Mexican sunflowers, another late-season blossom. I'm not alone in finding firespike attractive. Many species of butterflies like them as well. Cloudless sulfur butterflies are especially fond of this winter source of nectar. On a sunny day, several of the white-to-pale-yellow flutterers hover around a bush as if awaiting entry to a popular eatery.

Hummingbirds come to dine, too. Individual flowers have thin tubes with fluted rims that seem ready made to accommodate a hummingbird's bill. The blooms are also a brilliant candy-cane red, a color hummers find most attractive.

If you're thinking firespike sounds like the perfect plant, you're not far off. In addition to its tolerance of either shade or sunlight, firespike accepts a variety of soil conditions. It does well in sandy, loamy or even clay soil and doesn't suffer when pruned back during the growing season.

However, like most things that seem too good to be true, firespike has an imperfection: It can't tolerate cold. For the past three winters, freezing temperatures have killed back the top growth on every one of my bushes. Although the roots don't die and the plants rebound the next year, their sensitivity to cold leaves me, well, in the cold.

A single failing, however, can't spoil my enjoyment of this seasonal beauty. If firespike makes December a bit more festive and then fades away when freezing weather hits, so be it. Sometimes it's the tiny flaws that make us appreciate beauty, and the inevitable fade only makes the present more special.

Cottony groundsel blooms of winter are Florida's snowflakes

Grounsel Tree up close

and from a distance

 
Simply Living

(First appeared in Orlando Sentinel November 28, 2010)

When seen from afar, the soft, white blooms on groundsel trees resemble rounded mounds of snow.

Over the past few weeks, as I've been driving through Central Florida, I've noticed a preponderance of white, fluffy shrubs along the roadsides.

Standing between 5 and 12 feet tall, and about half as broad, these November beauties tend to cluster in lowland sites. They often appear along drainage ditches, which is probably why they tend to line many country roads.

Although their botanical name is Baccharis halimifolia, these plants have many nicknames. They're known as groundsel trees, salt-marsh elders, waterbrushes, silverlings or sea myrtles. I like to call them "snow mound bushes" because, when seen from afar, the soft, white blooms on the female plants remind me of rounded mounds of snow.

For most of the year, these Florida wildflowers go unnoticed. The bushes, with their upright growth and rough bark, blend into the background along fresh and saltwater marshes, lakesides and fields.

They are rather scrubby looking, with no particularly distinguishing characteristics. Then comes November, and the female plants burst into bloom. Overnight, an ugly duckling becomes a beautiful swan. The cottony flowers are everywhere.

It is because of those fluffy blooms that the plant is so widely dispersed. The wind picks up the pappi, the bristles surrounding the featherweight seeds, and scatters them about. Over the years, many of those airborne bristles must have landed on our property because numerous "snow mound bushes" thrive along the edge of our lake and marshland.

Recently, when I was gathering flowers for a bouquet, I snipped off a few of the plant's thinner branches. That day, of all the flowers I picked and arranged in a vase, the white groundsel tree blooms lasted the longest. They looked fresh long after the other flowers had faded.

Even though its blooms work well as cut flowers and the plant itself provides excellent cover for wildlife and nectar for butterflies, the groundsel tree is not a commonly used landscape plant.

Most nurseries don't even carry it. The best way to add a groundsel tree to the yard is to visit a native-plant nursery or propagate it yourself from a cutting.

Once established, it lasts a long time, providing seasonal beauty for up to 50 years. However, you don't have to add this winter-blooming shrub to your landscape to appreciate its loveliness. You can do as I often do: admire it from the front seat of a car. You can even pull off to the side of the road and snip a few of the blooms for a bouquet of your own. The flowers will survive the drive home and make an attractive display when placed in a vase.

Wildflowers have a way of appearing when least expected. Just when cool weather has dulled the sheen on most blooms, a splash of brightness takes front stage. That's how it is with the groundsel tree.

The "snow mound bush" is one of those wonderful wildflowers that we tend to take for granted until they burst into bloom. When the bush finally does flower, the white blossoms covering the upright branches jazz up an otherwise subdued landscape. Snowflakes may not fall in Central Florida, but thanks to the groundsel tree, our roadsides are blanketed with snowlike mounds of botanical beauty all winter long.

Passionflower is useful as well as beautiful

Sprawling plant provides fruit and juice while attracting wildlife

(First appeared in Orlando Sentinel May 31, 2010)

May has been a warm, wet month — perfect weather for one of Florida's most versatile plants, Passiflora incarnate.

Commonly called passionflower, maypop or apricot vine, this Florida native is completely edible – leaves, roots, flowers and egg-shaped fruit. The plant has a number of medicinal properties and herbal qualities, including calming nerves and acting as a natural sedative. The Food and Drug Administration includes passionflower on its GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) list, and in Germany it has been officially approved to combat "nervous unrest" since 1985.

But that's not why I like the passionflower. I like this plant because it's pretty and attracts wildlife.

Passionflowers provide nectar to bees, hummingbirds, hummingbird moths and quite a few butterflies. It also acts as a larva host to the Gulf fritillary, variegated fritillary and zebra longwing butterflies. The most common passionflower — and the one growing wild where I live — is light purple with a yellow-green center.

This low-growing, sprawling plant has an extensive root system. In sandy, dry woods and fields, passionflowers tend to behave themselves. Occasionally they will stretch up a tree trunk or climb through shrubby branches, but most of the time the flowering vine creeps along the forest floor, dotting the pine needle and leaf litter with its fancy, round blossoms. On our property, hundreds of individual plants emerged in May when rain came down and temperatures rose.

Wild passionflowers become more wayward when introduced to the home landscape. When I lived in Kissimmee, I intentionally transplanted a single wild passionflower vine into an irrigated garden bed filled with enriched soil. My hope was that the pretty, purple-flowered vine would climb a trellis set against the house to provide a colorful display.

Reminder to self: Be careful what you wish for. The vine climbed the trellis, then proceeded to twirl its tenacious tendrils around the exterior siding as it crept up the wall, over windows and onto the roof.

I no longer attempt to domesticate Passiflora incarnate, enjoying it instead in its natural state as an undergrowth plant in forests and open fields. The face of a passionflower bloom is intricate and lovely. The round, flat flower resembles an eye. Blossoms are about 3 inches wide, with a thin, wavy layer of fringe atop broader, two-tone purple petals. In the center, showy yellow stamens surround a pale green pistil. Although blooms last only a day, new flowers appear daily.

Because individual blossoms have such a short life, these pretty wildflowers aren't the best choice for bouquets. They are, however, functional plants worthy of admiration. Native Americans made a poultice of passionflower roots to relieve inflammations, earaches, boils and cuts, while in Central America, the Incas brewed leaves for tonic and applied crushed leaves to bruises.

In the United States today, the most commonly used part of the passionflower plant is not its leaves or roots but its fruit. The size and shape of a duck egg, the green fruit turns yellow as it matures. Break open a ripe passion fruit and inside are gooey sacks of sweet-tartness. Much to Ralph's amazement and, dare I say, disgust (he doesn't like the taste at all), I like to suck the syrup out of passionfruit while we're taking walks around the lake.

These days, passion fruit juice is all the rage. Welch's is one of many companies that have tapped into consumer demand for this rich, flavorful source of potassium and vitamins A and C. Those same nutrients also make it an important component in cosmetic products such as shampoo, lotions and creams.

I'm always glad when wildflowers receive the attention they deserve. The passionflower may be a lowly plant, but this determined vine has crept its way out of the fields and woods and into our everyday lives.

Surprisingly, tree-trimming didn't bug me

Simply Living

(First appeared in Orlando Sentinel February 15, 2010)

The utility company just finished cutting down dozens of our trees. The trees, mostly slash pines and oaks, had grown tall enough to interfere with overhead power lines. The power company removed them to prevent damage to wires in future storms.

Even though two crews of tree trimmers cut down almost a hundred trees, I had no problem with the project. I didn't object to their presence other than insisting that the workers, most of whom were smokers, not drop cigarette butts while they were on our property. More surprisingly, I wasn't sad to see so many trees felled.

I wasn't always so unemotional on the subject of trees.

When we moved to our property in 1992, trees were a rarity. On the entire 50 acres, there were only two huge oaks, four broad pines and a small stand of slender willows. The land was open, exposed and raw.

Although the property was beautiful in its emptiness, our vision was to create a forest, to return the land to the woodland that longtime residents told us it used to be.

During those early years, we attempted to reforest the land ourselves. Our first effort was to hand-plant 4,000 pine trees — back-breaking work that turned out to be a waste of energy. The 6- to 8-inch saplings needed a better start than could be provided by a bunch of amateurs armed with nothing more than a spade, a shovel, a desire to save money and a willingness to work.

We realized our mistake as we sadly watched most of the green sprouts shrivel up and turn brown. Determined not to make the same mistake twice, we hired a professional tree planter. Driving in straight rows across the open land with a machine designed for the task, the tree man managed to install 11,000 pines in less time than it had taken my husband and I and our children to plant the previous 4,000. More important, unlike us, he knew what he was doing. The majority of his saplings lived, growing over the course of 18 years into the forest we envisioned.

I've spent many hours observing my surroundings, focusing much of my attention on the growth patterns of trees. I learned that willows are not to be depended upon. Strong winds repeatedly broke willow branches and bent and uprooted their trunks. Maple trees can withstand weeks of wet feet, but pines planted too close to the lake have died when they've stood too long in water that has risen to abnormally high levels. I've come to realize how much hardier slash pines are than sand pines, and that all pine trees have roots that are easy to trip over because they grow so close to the surface.

I've come to appreciate the inadvertent efforts of wildlife in helping me reforest. I've watched chokecherries and wild persimmon trees appear out of nowhere, the result of seeds dropped by birds and scattered by wildlife. Pine cones are another source of volunteer plants. The seeds of future conifers are nestled within the sappy confines of these brown containers, waiting until conditions are right for them to break forth and take root.

And then there are bamboos. If we knew as much in 1992 as we do now about these beautiful, fast-growing, low-maintenance giant grasses, I doubt we would have planted as many pines.

One of the main things I've learned from observing my surroundings is how quickly the landscape can change. In the beginning, when trees were scarce, the thought of cutting down even one sapling was unimaginable. Now, a tree-cutting crew can spend 10 days on the property slicing down one 35-foot tall leaf-bearer after another, and I hardly blink an eye. Time has buffered my emotions. I've gained patience and faith in nature itself to do what it does best — reproduce, grow and reseed the land.

It also helps that we insisted the power company leave all the wood chips left over from its tree-clearing operation. We may have lost close to 100 trees, but we gained a lot of compost, and it's out of that compost that new trees will grow.