Dear Reader:

While watering the garden this morning I noticed that “Cleo” (nickname for clerodendrum) and her one beautiful bloom was almost full. I, also, noticed the contrast between light pink blooms and the darker pink pods not yet open…and I decided it was at its most beautiful right now with the contrast.

I told Vickie (who gave me the plant) to come over and feast her eyes on this gorgeous gift she gave me a couple of years ago. This is the first time it has bloomed. I originally set the pot by the moon flowers (side of my house) but it just wasn’t happy there. So I decided to put it on the Ya Ya bench under the shade of the old oak tree and she has found her home. Location, location, location is the secret to successful gardening.

Besides location, it is also nature’s timing at work that produces the final gorgeous outcome in a plant’s life. One can’t hurry the growth of a plant without risking ruining the final “opening night” (or day) with the highly anticipated bloom (s).

Some of you might have picked up that I haven’t mentioned “Big Red” lately. About two months ago I started noticing that the stems on the plant were turning brown and brittle….even though the leaves and even red blooms were still attached and alive. I tried all my tricks from before but nothing worked.

Finally I asked Chelsey over to look at “Big Red” and see what she thought was the problem. The conclusion: “Big Red” had grown so large with so many blooms all hanging down in front to the porch floor…that it had pulled the major root system out of the soil and it wasn’t getting nutrients to send to the stems.

We couldn’t see the problem initially because”Big Red” was so big and so heavily laden with leaves and blooms it covered up the problem for a long time. We knew we had to cut back drastically and “amputate” the dead stems while re-planting the original root system.

*(“Big Red” asked me not to take a photo and put in the blog, of the way it looks now, until it is feeling better…but I could put in an earlier one when it was still healthy and happy.)

Let’s just say that “Big Red” is a shadow of its former self. Chelsey did the “amputations” because I told her I was too close to the patient. Luke and I literally picked up the whole bench…turned the plant around so the back side could get the sun from under the Bradford Pear. It stayed there for a few weeks while recovering and then a couple of weeks ago we placed it back on the front porch….the place it loves most in the world.

So now we are just waiting….only time and nature will tell the outcome of my beloved “Big Red” who just had it’s tenth birthday on May 31. Because of it’s health condition…all the festivities I had planned were put on hold.

On a brighter note….Chelsey also took about eight or nine cuttings from the surgery and planted them in different containers hoping we could “clone” “Big Red.” At first several looked good but eventually just one out of all of them survived. Whew!

I will have to say I was pretty emotional when Luke and Chelsey brought “Little Red” over to show me last week. The leaves are starting to pop open on the small stem. It looks like “Little Red” is going to make it…our plan B. (I told Chelsey to please keep it and continue nursing it….I would be too anxious and afraid I would over water or something.)

So “Little Red” will continue to grow and get stronger while we hope “Big Red” will start to grow some new stems and make this toughest transition, back to good health, to date. 

I am talking to “Big Red” and encouraging it to fight hard to get its roots strong again…but besides water and occasionally a few sips of “blue soup” I am leaving the healing to nature. Mother Nature is best at that….

Oh my goodness….nature is really working overtime….I heard someone knocking at the door and it was Luke and Chelsey….one of their Barred Plymouth Rock chickens just laid an egg…a little one…but still an egg! Chelsey said to get ready….”EGGS ARE A’ COMING!”

I think the little rabbit I took a picture of a few days ago loves coming into my garden around sunset. He/she was out last evening when I was taking the pictures of Eva Cate’s tree with the solar light on it….she is very friendly and stopped long enough to pose for her picture before scurrying away.

More great news…the hummingbirds have arrived in double digits! (Maybe it is the lower dew point and humidity that brought them out!) At first I thought they was dragonflies coming over for a drink…and then it dawned on me….they were hummingbirds! I can sit in my recliner and watch the hummingbirds and all their funny antics from my Happy Room!

So until tomorrow…These days nature abounds… so even though I am very saddened at “Big Red’s” health struggle I know that nature will take care of everything… just the way it should be.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

Last night I went out and sat on the deck steps watching one of those beautiful sunset skies that make you almost ache inside it’s so exquisite.

As I looked out over the garden with its solar lights starting to pop on…I couldn’t help but think it looked like a secret garden caught up in the center of a swirl of pink and blue cotton candy.