Hurricane Irene came and left...

Hurricane Irene roared over us in NC and caused a lot of damage. When I came out the morning of Saturday, I filmed this:



And then I did an update video:

A tree fell on our lines.

A better shot.

Fence was pushed over.

It had enough of the winds and keeled over.

Came out Sunday morning (28th) and looked around. The butterflies and hummingbirds were out in full force. I made a fresh batch of nectar on the grill's burner and snapped this picture of a butterfly making do with a couple of flowers from the Salvia Coccinea

(I went into more detail on my other blog: Hurricane Irene paid a visit.)

Prickly Pear Growth

May 17, 2011 - Prickly Pear Cactus

August 23, 2011 - Prickly Pear Cactus

You know, it really stuns me how fast this prickly pear cactus grew. It was struggling in this small terra cotta pot and the main pad died down (that shrivelly gray mass that all the pads are on) so I finally had enough and decided to stick it in a pot that was clearly too big for it. My reasoning was that I didn't want to repot it any time soon - if ever. I was also hoping it would just die off and I can toss it away and move on.

That didn't happen. Instead it's been growing by leaps and bounds these past three months. I can't believe it. It won't take long before it's too big for THIS pot and I am definitely way too afraid to try and repot it in a larger pot.

I do want to experiment with a pad though. I'm thinking that next spring I'll stick a pad in a fresh pot, let it grow, and then leave it out all winter to see if it'll overwinter like my eastern prickly pear does every winter.

Schlumbergera Seedlings update & Stapeliad

Stapelia Gigantea bud growing longer...

Schlumbergera Seedlings

I don't like the idea of posting pictures of my schlumbergera seedlings. I guess I'm so discouraged when it comes to them. With the utter total failure of the first pot earlier this year, I've sort of adopted the attitude that as long as I don't develop an attachment, it won't be no skin off my nose when they keep dying. With that in mind, I decided to finally add a smidgen of miracle gro fertilizer to the spray bottle. I figured if this small amount still burns them, oh well. At least I tried.

I can't help but feel some sort of excitement in the back of my mind that there's still a good amount that's still growing. With first leaves popping out of some while random others just keel over... It's survival of the fittest even though I'm trying to find advice online.

I posted on a forum that was meant for growing schlumbergera from seedling. After explaining that my first pot attempt was potting soil and this current attempt is peat moss, I was told that next time I should add perlite and vermiculite to break it up a bit. There's also suggestion of maybe buying a cheap grow light. With how long it's taking these to grow, I'm worried they won't make it in the greenhouse over winter. Maybe I could set up some small grow light in the laundry room and bring the seedlings in to keep them safe. It's something to think about.

Stapelia Gigantea

Stapelia Gigantea Flower Bud

You know, it's kind of neat to see it sending out a bud. My experience with this plant has been pretty much a roller coaster. After receiving the plant in a rather soggy pot last year - it was given to me with black rot already having set in. Pretty soon the entire plant just died. I realized that after everything was slowly dying away, there were these little 'clippings' that had been tossed into the pot and was pretty green. I potted those up in different soil.

Then they grew a little bit. Then they got stung in the greenhouse over winter. I thought the plant was pretty much going to die after it got stung but to my surprise, once spring came, it set out to grow new 'arms'. Now to see it have a flower bud, I'm really pleased. Had it died after being stung from the cold, I might've written this plant off for good.

Amaryllis progress and chili peppers

Amaryllis Seedlings

It's hard to believe I got more seedlings coming up. It's very very addicting. I should probably quit planting them because I probably will have too many to know what to do with! I'm still hitting them with a very weak fertilizer mix every time I water them because I want them to bulk up as fast as they possibly can before winter comes.

Chili Peppers

 I believe these are ghost chili peppers. They sprouted from some peppers that fell back into the pot last year. I didn't think the seeds could overwinter but apparently they can! So the plants popped back up and there's some new peppers.

Chili Pepper Bloom

Odd Bug? - Solved: Wheel Bug

As I was watering the plants, I came across this unusual bug clutching a bee. I want to say that it looks like a preying mantis and stink bug mixed together. Anyone recognize it?

UPDATE:
Mystery solved. It's a Wheel Bug (Arilus cristatus). I went to take better pictures but the winds kept moving the plant around so all I got were fuzzy pictures. I also accidentally scared it into dropping its meal and it took off. Once the winds calmed, I managed to get a better side profile picture of it.

Venus Fly Trap, Gladiolus, Phlox

New template design. Like it? Heh! I was told that the template I had on here was years old and that I should hit the template library for a fresh design. Now it's got that Google +1 that's sweeping the internet by storm.

Venus Fly Trap

My VFT is doing good. You can see a couple traps have dead bugs in them so they're slowly thriving. It's impossible to tell from this angle but this pot sits on top of a saucer that has rainwater in it.

Gladiolus

 I thought I had a gladiolus that was red with yellow 'throats'. This one is more on the pinkish/purplish side.

Butterfly in Phlox

In the humid morning when the sun comes out and there's no wind, there's this strong heady smell that surrounds this huge batch of White Phlox. I took a few pictures of this butterfly and this one came out the clearest.

Bees on Sunflowers

 Bees on Sunflowers. Pretty neat, huh?

Here's the full picture. You can see my stake on the left is struggling like heck to support the sunflower. It was straight up at one point but has fallen over ever since and the stake hasn't been able to keep it upright since. If it wasn't for the bees on the little flowers, I think this would've been cut down at some point! Is this an unusual sunflower with so many little heads on it?

Tomatoes

My vegetable pots pretty much shriveled up at this point. I think I have some unidentified vegetable vines still growing but no idea what they are. The female flowers die off even though there's plenty of male flowers.

The tomatoes that I planted just for the heck of it are still going strong.

These are the Tiny Tim tomato plants. I tried tying them up but the plant sort of bent over seeing as how they were unable to support the tomatoes.

That big weird streaky red tomato on the bottom right is from a grape tomato plant. It was growing in a pot that had the husky cherry tomato plants. Kind of odd!

Amaryllis Seeds growing...

So... hot... 

Anyhow, a quick capture of my five flower boxes of amaryllis seedlings. Just stick a bunch of seeds in some pots or flower boxes and after a couple weeks, they should start growing.

For personal records:
The two red boxes and the tan box - Red Mother/Red Father.
Two green boxes - Red Mother/PinkWhite Father.

I was also asked about my other flower boxes.... A bit embarrassed to post a picture.

I know, I know. Shame on me! It amazes me how persistent the weeds are. I spend all spring and early summer constantly plucking everything out. Once the temperatures get too hot for me to stick around too long, the weeds take off like wildfire. There's four flower boxes pictured there if you can't tell from all the weeds. ... heh.