My Florida Tropical Garden

August is typically the hottest month of the year in Florida. You can definitly feel the heat and humidity as soon as you step outside. Here's a few pictures from around the garden.

The first picture below is a Passion Flower, passiflora caerulea. This is a host plant for the Gulf Fritillary butterfly (second picture). I have a couple Gulf Frit caterpillars that I'm rearing inside, so I'll have to post another update soon with pictures of them.




Below is my Golden Shrimp plant, Pachystachys lutea.



I started this Ornamental Pepper from seed in March 2010. It's very easy to grow and it's neat watching the little peppers change colors as they mature.



And finially, here's an updated photo of my Plumeria I started from seed in August 2009. It hasn't bloomed yet, and probably won't for another year or two. It take 2-3 years from seed to bloom I believe. The Plumeria are native to Mexico and Central America. It is commonly seen in Hawaii for it's beautiful flower landscape.

We arrived home from vacation on the evening of July 31. What a long drive from Indiana to Florida, at least the kids did well on the roadtrip. When we left, I had to bring 2 Monarch chrysalis that haven't emerged yet. The two female monarchs emerged just fine and were later released in Indiana at my grandparents house. They were immediately attracted to her large purple coneflowers, and one stayed on the flowers for several hours. The photo below was taken from my iphone.



At a rest area along the way in Georgia, we stopped for lunch and found this huge gardner spider in the trees. I've never seen a gardner spider this big, it had to be around 3 inches long.



Here's a photo of my grandmas' eggplant growing nicely from a topsy turvey.



While visiting one of the grandparents in Indiana, a stray kitten came running to us wanting all sorts of attention. My sister (who is a sucker for homeless cats lol) brought it home with her of course. For being an outdoor cat, the kitten was litter trained quickly and slept most of the way home in the car. The kitten was appropriately named Indy.