Miraculous Recovery

To those who visit here every-so-often, you may recall my past blog entry (3/31/09) regarding a planter filled with frost damaged lantana. We have tackled the task of clipping, trimming and cleaning out all the dead branches and twigs. Afterwards I looked like I had been in a cat fight, though lantana does not have thorns it does have very dense and branching growth, once dry and hard this growth can be incredibly sharp. Having learned that, should I need to do this again next year, I will wear protective long sleeves and gardening gloves.
It has only been a couple of weeks since John and I cleaned out all the dead growth but you can see how resilient the Gold Mound Lantana is...it seems to grow like a weed, very rapidly !
Spent most of yesterday tending to some of our garden’s needs and didn’t get much accomplished with things on my computer. Am still in a fog about Twitter, can’t seem to find my way around, guess I need a tutorial to show me how to post links to photos, how to change my home page background and how to draw followers...guess what I really need is to be 18 or 20 years old again ! : )
If anyone is interested I am at twitter : http://twitter.com/dimessina
Though I’m not into the quick snippets of conversations, micro posts and links I have my fingers crossed that, with luck, I’ll learn and catch on.

Photos are of our driveway planter, hard to believe that just a couple of weeks ago we thought this lush green lantana was dead...killed by several nights of freezing temps. But now it is even covered in sunny, golden-yellow blossoms...butterflies should not be far behind.

Forget about Spring, it’s sprung right into summer and is a very warm 85 degrees outside, of course this is Florida, just south of Tampa/St. Pete, so this should be no surprise.

Had a colder, longer winter this year and our yard suffered from freeze damage.
Fairly sure that our tropical Wax Jambu didn’t make it as it is now little more than a twig with a few blackened leaves. However some of the plants that I thought were certainly dead have started to come back. John and I now have the daunting job of pruning away all the dead twigs and branches.

Above is our driveway planter with the freeze damaged Lantana, the small magnolia tree did very well through the freeze but probably could use a dose of fertilizer. Below one can see the promise of lush new growth beneath the gray, dry twigs. Just have lots of trimming to do...also need to tackle the weeds that are popping up in our crushed shell drive.