Leaving Florida

While it seems like having two houses is just wonderful, it is not the easiest thing in the world!  Leaving a Florida house for a few months  especially in the summer is worrisome. The house itself is not the difficult part; it's the yard! Will the weeds be 6 feet high when I return? Will all the plantings be terribly overgrown? The solution is to do severe pruning just before you leave and then hope for the best.  Sore back and many blisters later - the outside is ready for me to leave! Still have some trees that need work, but tree man is coming back while I am gone.

Most back-breaking was cutting back the front grasses. Has to be done by hand, one plant at a time. You can now actually see the whole front walkway again!  The "tree people" were there when I was working on this and kept coming by while they were on break to tell me what good work I was doing.  Fortunately, not paying them by the hour.


My Lantana was just huge!  No one can believe how big it gets. I keep trimming it back, but seems to make it grow even bigger. This was trimmed just 2 weeks ago and already it's back to being bigger than it was when I trimmed it!  This time I did severe pruning.. We'll see how it makes out over the summer. These 3 plants were each about 3 inches across when I put them in last spring.

This is after trimming, though hard to see as the palm fronds on ground are still overwhelming too. The tree man will get them when he works on that palm.  This is just the front, had lots more to do. And while I was trying to get this all done and had the garage door open, two morning doves decided the top of my garage door opener was a good place to begin building a nest. Every time I walked into the garage, a bird was dive bombing me. I couldn't figure out what was going on at first. Then suddenly I saw the other one just sitting on top of the garage door opener and it dawned on me what was happening.. I had to chase that bird out with a broom and then cleaned off the little bit of the nest they has started. But they were persistent and kept coming back. So finally I had to keep the garage door closed while I worked outside. Made things more diffiult for sure- tracking dirt through the house to get to the garage just meant I had one more thing to do before I left.. 

But arrived on Sunday and enjoying being here.. Already played golf one day and took a mile walk with Max, John and Jimmy (they wore their hiking packs)