In a follow-up to last year’s post, the landscaper and her team arrived about 8:00 yesterday morning and when I returned from my meeting around 2:00, they were already done. It’s amazing the way they rolled in; only four of them and she is right in there with them. For anyone not familiar with the soil here, digging is very difficult due to lots of coral rock embedded. It was also a day of 95 degrees. The last time we refreshed the yard, we had her work around the existing plants, many of which were in containers for two reasons. First was the difficulty in digging and second is we have some really nice containers. Some of the wooden planters though were in bad shape – it’s a tough outdoor environment and we weren’t doing the digging, so those were all replaced with in-ground plants.

They were among almost forty new plants and all of them were pruned, trimmed, etc,. We are set for when more butterflies and allegedly finches will soon appear, not to mention possibly buntings and hummingbirds. She had of course rattled off the names of all the plants when she came to do the survey and I couldn’t follow them all. Milkweed, I know of course and the lemon tree to replace the poor one battered by Hurricane Irma. There are already eggs on the milkweed and I’ll be patience as biology works its way through the stages. Now, we’ve always had butterflies;  simply not the mass of plants as now. In having also previously explained my lack of gardening skill, I have committed to keeping three of the container plants trimmed so they don’t become root-bound again. Hubby has the tougher job of pruning the numerous palms and the Pygmy date does have thorns. The landscaper claims that by transplanting the banana plant from the container into a new spot, it will eventually bear fruit. Not that I like bananas, but Hubby does so maybe with only one tree we won’t be overwhelmed.

Photos will follow occasionally as things settle in.