but what a lovely 'blink'. Worth it for even a day or so.

You're right, Camp. I would still do all the work even though I knew for a fact it would be over in weeks. I usually have bloom from the end of February through May, occasionally June, but not this year. The heat has been deadly to both roses and annuals this year.

And here I thought it was only in California. Do you ever get rain later in the year, during the summer? That at least would revive the roses. We know that's not going to happen here. I hope you at least will get some. A lovely picture by the way, talk about lush!

It's beautiful, floridarose....a cottage garden in Florida. I think everyone would like a longer spring. We have short spring...almost too cool one day, and then with no warning it's 95 degrees and often worse. But it's always worth it to me. Diane

So pretty. Love the color combination of blues and pinks.

Could I ask where you are in Florida? Your garden is beautiful, but it surprises me. I'm sorry your spring was so brief.

Ingrid, thank you. We get most of my our rain during the summer, so I will get more rose blooms, but it will be too hot for most companion plants.

Diane, that's what has happened here for the last two years, and I'm afraid with global warming, this is going to happen every year from now on. What was worse about this year was we had a two-night hard freeze in February that I lost my main spring flush to.

Melissa, I'm in Polk County, central Florida. No one around here I know of plants the old fashioned plants that I plant. Everything has to be started from seed since none of them are available in local nurseries, not even Mom and Pop nurseries.

Thank you, everyone. I live in the boonies, so no one ever sees ny garden except when I post pics here--and me, of course.

So gorgeous, Janet. A beautiful garden made by a beautiful lady. It's definitely worth it.

Thanks, Kim. I hope to see some pics of your beautiful garden soon.

Such a beautiful combination of colors, I've only dreamed of having flowers that lovely together!

I had to look up Polk County, couldn't think where it was. I'm from Wakulla County myself, south of Tallahassee. Beautiful yard. I hope you get more flowers later on.

Thank you, Sara Ann. Melissa, we're mostly flat and orange groves, but I'm in the northeast part of the county barely just outside of all the Disney development. We're a little hillier, if that's a word, and more wooded, but I'm still surrounded by groves. I love your part of the state. I wish we had settled there, but I'm too old to move again. I hate the fallout from Disney.

Sorry it's taken me a while to get around to saying how much I've enjoyed gazing at your dreamily beautiful Spring garden. So lovely, but transitory, like a dream...

I wonder if there are any alliums that might do well in your conditions in Summer? or do nematodes/Summer rain damage them?

Do, please post more of your garden for us all to share, any time - personally, I don't mind seeing other people's gardens' less 'good bits', problem areas and failures too, as well as revelling in their photo-perfect days of glory. Like the inevitable aftermath of that wonderful Spring show... but maybe that's just me!

Comtesse :¬)

Comtesse, I love seeing everyone else's gardens too. As far as I'm concerned, there can't be too many garden pictures. Ingrid worries about posting too many pictures, but bring them on, I say. Allums don't do well here, but thank you for the suggestion. There are so many beautiful things I would love to grow, but the range stops at 8 for most of them. I love lilies, for instance, but few do well here.

What a lovely garden! I love your mixing annuals in with the roses!

I'm lucky to come from north Florida, and from an area that has a lot of public land. Central Florida used to be a beautiful place--my father grew up in Dunedin and my mother lived much of her childhood and youth in Deland--and I remember when there were a lot more orange groves there and a lot fewer people.

Here in Italy meanwhile everybody's moving into the towns and cities, and the hills and mountains continue to empty of human population, the vacuum being filled by wildlife. While life in the country is less convenient than in town, it's a lot more beautiful and interesting, and crowds don't seem to be an imminent problem, which after Florida is pleasant.

North Florida is a difficult place for plant selection because it has sharp frosts that tropicals can't handle, but is too hot and humid in summer, and has too little winter chill, for most temperate climate plants. There is a rather specialized range of plants that do well. My sisters are big on gingers, crinums, and succulents, among others.

When we first moved here, we never thought in our lifetime this area would develop like it has, which is why we picked here. Now, we're about to have a six-lane toll road go through 1/4 mile from us. We don't even have cable here we're so far out, but we're going to have a darn toll road.

We're in a cold pocket here, so I've given up on the tropicals everyone else has in this county. One of the reasons I got interested in roses was because I got tired of digging up and replacing everything that froze, and the things that didn't freeze totally took months to come back from the roots, so the garden was all brown and ugly until everything grew back. Now, with global warming, I'm not sure about how cold we're going to be. But you're right about the heat, even the roses are miserable during July and August.

You're lucky everyone is leaving for the cities. Here it's the opposite; everyone is moving to the country. When we first moved here, we could saddle our horses and ride all day, crossing an occasional paved road. We have to trailer off now to state parks to ride.

flrose I like your cottage garden look!

One of the reasons I got back into growing roses here is also due to not having to move them into the gh for the winter and having some color in the yard.

Many gingers can actually handle down to a zone 7b. They just look tropical but are really subtropical I would say. Many of the common butterfly gingers (hedychiums), peacock gingers, globbas (dancing ladies), and curcumas will go dormant in the winter and come back in the spring. I am in zone 9a NE FL and grow many gingers. It freezes here in the winter several times but doesn't usually last long or go much under 20F.

There are some truly tropical gingers though. Some of the colocasias (elephant ears) can take down to 0 F. They also look tropical.

I do grow lots of true tropicals here as well but have to stuff them in my makeshift gh for the winter. I only run my heater on the nights it goes under 32F. I have stuff in there that isn't supposed to go under 50F but does fine. I take my gh down in March-mid Nov. I usually have to cut back everything severely to get it back in there in the winter because it goes so crazy and gets huge in our climate. I need to move to a warmer part of FL before I get older because I can't see moving all that stuff then lol.

Thanks, Sultry. I have a few gingers including peacock and butterfly. The swamp down from my house is infested with peacock ginger and swamp roses. I always roll my car window down when I drive by because it smells so heavenly when they're in bloom. Our creek has the old common green elephant ears, and I'd love to find a way to get rid of them. They're taking over.

What do swamp roses look like? Sounds awesome!!

~sjn

Mmmm... do take a picture for us, FloridaRose, if they're still blooming?

That's very bad luck re the toll road. I'm always reminded of Joni Mitchell's haunting words 'They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot' whenever another living, breathing wonderland is ripped up to make way for urban sprawl and other marvels of civilisation, as if wild nature left to itself had no value. Just heartbreaking.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll just go and have a little weep...

Comtesse -;"¬o (= my personal interpretation of Picasso's 'Weeping Woman'...)

PS I don't suppose there'd be any chance of ever-so-slightly sabotaging that toll road with regular nocturnal scatterings of Cherokee Rose seeds would there? I'd rather enjoy seeing the cars trying to plough their way through the resulting jungle... :¬D :¬D

Oh - no, of course, they'd probably just bomb the entire neighbourhood with herbicides - nothing like the sweet smell of napalm in the morning...

There is a rose officially named Swamp Rose, but I just call this one swamp rose because it grows out there with the butterfly gingers--I mistakenly said Peacock gingers in my earlier post, but I meant butterfly. There used to be an old homestead right at the edge of the swamp, and I believe the rose just gradually moved itself out into the swamp from the homestead, and there it blooms with tiny pink flowers among the butterly gingers. It's very pretty, but it only blooms once, and it's already bloomed out due to the heat, so no pictures this year. It's in a lot of shade, so it's amazing it blooms at all between the shade and the wet feet.

I feel exactly as you do, Comtesse, about development. I'm afraid that pretty soon the entire state will be nothing but paved roads just so everyone can get where they're rushing to 15 minutes sooner. I would just as soon still be able to saddle up and ride wherever I wanted to go. I wish Disney had never come here. I cried many a sleepless night over that darn road and wrote many letters to no avail. If only that rose were able to block that road, I would be in heaven.