Polar Vortex

Brrr....

Got down to 7° here, and all the schools closed...

Record setting cold, and y'all can keep it.... I garden here to get away from those winter freezes.

Picture of needle ice

The frost flowers on the  verbesina virginica  grew (larger) with two consecutive days of below freezing.
Interestingly, the yellow verbesina doesn't develop these.

One more pic of frost. I can appreciate the beauty in this stuff, as long as I don't see much of it...

That nasty cold ruined my flowers.... This hellebore was gorgeous... now just brown.

Also ruined the camellia blooms...

As far as our winter edibles... The raccoons have been keeping the beds dug up, I'm not having any luck (so far) getting cool season edibles to grow... never mind the record cold... 

Happy Christmas!

Christmas day dawned cold!

The frost blooms on the verbesina look like ribbon candy...

In spite of the chill in the air... there is a bit of colour in the garden...

The camellias look nice...

The hellebores are starting to bloom...

The seed heads provide plenty of winter interest....

Ageratina altissima

Bluestem

eupatorium?

Agalinis purpurea

cudweed (gnaphalium sp.)

The wild holly berries look nice... (Ilex opaca)

mahonia

And... finally, ice crystals from the rain bucket.

After the freeze

The mercury dropped to 21 degrees Thursday morning
 breaking the previous record of 25 degrees set on Nov. 14, 1968.

Frost bloom on the salvia

Remenants of the summer garden.

Colour on the oak leaf hydrangea

Brugs laid to waste...

Well... I can still use the pepperz...

There's still seeds to collect...
(chenopodium giganteum, crotalaria spectabilis, and sesbania herbacea)

The sassafras have great colouration... Should probably collect some leaves (for recipe seasoning) before they all drop...

Goodbye Summer

A final visit from the Florida state butterfly (zebra longwing) to the tithonia rotundifolia.

A last flush of bloom from the Brugmansias

And tibouchina urvilleana

Time to collect seeds, like these few collected from the Vernonia angustifolia.

The weatherman is predicting low 20's for tonight...

Brrrr!

Indian Summer

Don't usually see butterflies paying attention to the brugmansias...

It's some dry... but these things keep blooming.

The diclipta suberecta seems late in blooming this year.

I have a terrific june picture here (from 2012)

Solanum pseudocapsicum

This plant (jerusalem cherry) looks like a pepper plant, and this guy even tasted the fruit 

Supposed to be poisonous... Not a good idea to go around sampling stuff that hasn't been positively identified... but I'm just as guilty...

For instance... this licorice goldenrod, I was chewing up the leaves, and making tea... for years before I thought of searching edibility... It's safe... But... I just got lucky... 

The Florida anise bush  commonly used in landscaping smells like anise... tastes like anise,  isn't supposed to be safe to even taste!

This is a  pepper... I pot up one or two of these plants for my kitchen once the weather turns "cold"... Cold is a relative term... A Yankee might scoff at what I consider cold... but the pepper plant dies... 

Or dies back at least... and that is plenty cold for me... Back in February, I posted a pic of one of these plants that had survived our winter... and was coming back from last year's roots!

Cooking sage and daisy mums

Camellia sasanqua from seed planted last winter.

If it ever starts raining I'm going to move these mulberry seedlings into my yard.

Still have lots of butterflies... I still have zebra longwings too, but I can't seem to catch them with the camera.

A fellow blogger sent some everglades tomato seed at the end of August... I potted these up when the weather report called for a freeze... Luckily... I didn't lose anything but my late-planted watermelons... But it got within 1 degree of the record cold for our area... I kept a fire going in the fireplace that day (Oct 26).

Hyacinth beans

Winter interest... (Pycnanthemum sp.)

Little blue stem

Hardy orange (Poncirus trifoliata)

Kicking myself... Cooked up some stewed pears, and wanted citrus to add to the mix... totally forgot about these...