Welcome to my zone 9 garden. My roots are deeply planted in the sandy soil of sub-tropical central Florida, where the summers are long and hot, but the rest of the year is paradise!

Thursday, December 11, 2014

In Search of Red

Because it's the holiday season, I planted a few containers with some red annuals for a bit of color in my hum-drum backyard. Lucky for me, hummers are attracted to red and it didn't take long for one to show up!   A week after seeing the Mockingbird in my fountain, I was standing at the back door looking out over the backyard, as I so often do, and thinking about which plants to plant where when unexpectedly, the hummer appeared just a few feet in front of me. I let out a gasp and watched as he darted from one red flower to another.

At first he visited this container of red million bells . . . 

before darting on to these red striped petunias. He then headed for a pot of red poinsettias before changing his mind, and ...

deciding to check out the spike of African blue basil flowers.

When he left the patio he darted all over the backyard in search of more red. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything else of interest, so he headed over to the neighbor's house for a visit. A few days later I moved the red pentas that were planted on the side of the house to the backyard in hopes of enticing this little fella to come more often. Now, I'm going to head to the nursery and pick up a firespike plant or two.

So happy to see the little critters showing up one by one!

4 comments:

FlowerLady Lorraine said...

Hi Susan ~ I keep watching for hummers, but haven't seen any yet.

I love your red million bells. I had that once in yellow.

I have a baby African blue basil and am looking forward to watching it grow then bloom.

This is the start of the best time for gardening down here although it has been cold the past two mornings and tonight it is supposed to get even colder.

Happy Gardening and Happy Holidays to you ~ FlowerLady

Anonymous said...

Hey, wait a minute . . . it took me years to attract hummingbirds! Somebody's got the magic touch (or great gardening neighbors - LOL).

Leslie said...

I'm the same way--I always feel a lot of responsibility to the hummingbirds! I love fire spike--it's such a great plant. And your container with the striped petunias is so pretty!

Susan said...

Hi Leslie...So nice to hear from you. I keep wanting to leave comments on your blog posts but am unable to. I thoroughly enjoy each post!

Hi Eli...Luckily for me my neighbors do have lots of hummer-loving plants in their backyards (which back up to me). So I am blessed that the little guy decided to see what lies beyond the fence.

Hi Lorraine...This is definitely the best time of the year. We've had quite a bit of consistently chilly weather up my way. No frost or freezes ... yet ...., but many days only in the 60's. Very strange for Florida.

Merry Christmas to all 3 of you!

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