Fun in the Sun...

Okay, so I've been in Orlando all week. But it's not been all that much fun... I've been reading pages and pages and pages and trying to keep another work ball up in the air back in Chicagoland at the same time. I'll be here for another six days, and then I can come home to Jeff and Mifune, whom I miss an awful lot. And, of course, my lovely new guitar, which I also miss!

I would be lying if I said that I didn't appreciate the warmer weather here. It's been quite lovely, although there has been precious little time to enjoy the out of doors. Today Margo and I (the other editor who is down here for the duration of this assignment) went to the Harry P. Leu Gardens, a lovely botanical gardens in town. We had originally thought a nice afternoon at Sea World, which is within walking distance from our hotel, would be just the ticket... until we found out how expensive tickets actually were! Close to sixty bucks per! And you can't expense a ticket to a theme park!

But the Leu Gardens were lush with camelias of every conceivable variety and citrus trees heavy with lemons and grapefruit. There was a historic home on the property, begun in 1888 and added onto over the next fifty years or so. Not a huge mansion, but rather a modest but well-appointed home that reflected the eras in which it was constructed and renovated. There was a butterfly garden, a floral clock, vegetable and herb gardens, and a rose garden that must be spectacular in season, but which was not in bloom yet. Rhododendrons were were blooming all over the place, though, making me yearn for the Blue Ridge in late spring. It was a nice way to spend an afternoon, if you couldn't spend it being amused by porpoises and orcas.

This hotel--a modest suite hotel--is completely adequate and until the weekend hit, it was very quiet and sedate. Now it has become a madhouse. This is the weekend of Megacon, apparently THE big comic book convention in the Southeast. So the hotel (and the sidewalks all up and down the nearby stretch of International Drive where the big convention hall is located) currently swarms with teens and twenty-somethings dressed in all their gothic and/or fave comix character splendor. It's very amusing, I must say, but some of the costumes are, well, more successful than others.

Tomorrow Margo and I are braving Fleaworld, the self-proclaimed largest flea market in the world. We will see. I only hope it is not the world's largest flea market selling nothing but tube sox, cheezy T-shirts, and T-fal cookware.

I will keep you posted!

Time to Plant!

Finally, we appear to have passed the point of frost warnings (although it WAS in the 40s last night and may be again tonight), and so I made my first foray into planting my balcony container garden this weekend.


First things first--we went to the Farmers' Market and I picked up a couple of nice, healthy basil plants. I'll probably get one or two more within the next few weeks.

Then I went out to the garden center, where they always have nice (but pricey) plants.


This haul plus the potting soil set me back more than $90!! And this is only enough to plant the balcony boxes and the two window boxes I put outside our west-facing sunroom casements!

You'll notice that there is a singular lack of yellow flowers. I used to buy marigolds to provide some sunny blooms, but they never do well in my boxes. They go nuts on the raised beds on the parkway in front of the building and in the little niches beside our walkway, but they hate my boxes! So I had hoped to find some yellow million bells to vary the color a bit, but no such luck!

Another missing element in this assortment of annuals is the infamous trailing accent plant. A few years ago, I found a bunch of nice creeping jenny plants. Yes, I know. Invasive weeds. Which is probably why they have disappeared from the market. But really, in second-floor balcony boxes they are lovely! Last year I substituted vinca, but I found them to be stringy and annoying. I thought maybe some sweet potato vines, but they were SO expensive at the garden center that I thought I would search them out at Lowes or Home Depot... but again, no such luck. They were all sold out. Sigh. At any rate, the million bells are great trailers and so are the scaevola I placed in the front of the boxes... I just like to have some foliage trailing as well as flowers. Maybe I'll find some in the next few weeks.



I planted them all, with the scaevola, million bells, and lobelia in front, some begonias in the middle, and these weird squiggly leafed coleus bringing up the back (they are supposed to grow to a foot tall). With the next paycheck I'll buy some more plants for all the pots I have tucked away on that balcony, and I'll uncover the lawn chairs so that I can sit and enjoy my little (well, miniscule) urban garden.