Tropicals & Tender Perennials: May Flowers, 1 by plantladylin

plantladylin wrote:
Hi Eileen. Oh, please show us some pictures of your Hoya blooms! I have an obovata that I received in a trade last year and can't wait for it to eventually grace me with flowers. I also have a small cutting of the variegated kerri, but it's so small that it's going to be a long, long time before it grows up enough to bloom.

All the squirrels in my yard are my fault because I feed the birds, which means I feed the squirrels too! At one time I had about 20 feeders out, I'm now down to about 7 or 8 seed feeders, 3 suet feeders and 3 hummingbird feeders. I put out bird seed but I also have a large terra cotta plant tray on the front wall where I put raisins and dried berries for the Mocking Birds who have been feeding babies the past couple of months. The Blue Jays and Woodpeckers like raisins too and I think the darn squirrels will eat anything! My backyard neighbor has a lot of Loquat/Japanese Plum trees in her yard and when they are full of fruit the squirrels hang out over there ... another month and maybe they will stay in her yard, LOL. I don't hang my orchids out in the trees anymore because the squirrels tore them up awhile back, some orchids even went missing from the baskets. There are probably some lovely decorated nests in some of those trees!

I try to just put enough food out so there won't be any left at night to attract unwanted critters like mice and rats! A few times I have forgotten to check the tray on the front porch before dark to make sure it's empty. Haven't had mice or rats but there's a large Raccoon who comes by @ 2:00 a.m. or so and sits up on the brick wall and has himself a feast! I've seen him on a few occasions, I need to take the screen out of the kitchen window so maybe I can get a picture of him some night, hard to get a good shot through the screen at night even though our outside lights are on all night.

My flash didn't go off, but this is H. shepherdii, blooming it's little head off, and it smells soooo good!