Awesome May Weather

This morning I woke up to an amazingly beautiful day for the middle of May in Florida. Low sixties that took their lazy time warming up into delightful mid-seventies. There was a strong, cool breeze to top it off. My sister sent me a picture of snow on the grass up in Illinois so I guess we weren't the only ones below average today! The rain and cooler temps brought a full 20 blooms out on my rose, and me sky a brilliant blue. No matter how hard I tried, pictures could not do it justice. The dragonfruit plant had finally pushed out a bunch of new growth and it was time to top it off. I lopped of the growing tip with a sharp knife so hopefully it will now send out multiple branches flower. Up until now, only one fig tree had any figs on it, but today they all finally had some. I'm so excited to try all the different varieties! I was also glad to see the peanuts I planted a week ago had come up. This is my first time growing them and love the idea of watching something new develop (and an dreaming of LOTS of homemade peanut butter!).

Strawberries in the Heat

Florida is known all over for its delIcious strawberries, a fruit associated with the first warm days of summer. Interestingly, here they are grown as annuals in the winter. This is because the strawberry plants have difficulty setting fruit from the flowers when temperatures go above 80. However, my plants just keep on chugging even though it has been close to 90 everyday. You can tell from the pictures that the fruit isn't as high quality as the huge ones we got in March (that one was almost 4 inches across!). Quantity is still high though - this was 4 lbs picked on Monday. We had runners form in December and the new batch of plants from these are producing the best. This leads me to believe that decline is from plants getting worn out, not just the weather. Hopefully they will continue for at least a couple of weeks. I love to freeze then to use in smoothies and it would be nice to have enough for the whole summer!