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| Sometimes called "Blanketflower," or "Gaillardia," these Gaillardia pulchella are wildflowers in the aster family that provide plenty of spring-fall color in the garden. They prefer long, hot dry days. . . and they'll get some soon. |
Extreme heat returned to the Florida peninsula today along with plenty of sunshine. It is forecast to get hotter over the weekend (near 100° F, 38° C) with few clouds to provide any relief. The clear skies are the result of an extremely unusual cold front that pushed Tropical Storm Debby out to sea yesterday morning. The front is currently draped across the southern peninsula. While the cold front didn't bring any cool air, it did usher in drier and mostly cloud-free conditions.
 Though Tropical Storm Debby didn't provide enough rainfall to refill all of Florida's dry lakes (especially those on the east-central peninsula), it did provide enough moisture to cause the wildflowers growing in the dry lakes to bloom. |
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| A Cloudless Sulphur Butterfly (Phoebis sennae) on Zinnia. |
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| An Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) on a Tithonia rotundifolia (Mill.) S.F. Blake. This aster family flower is often referred to as "Mexican Sunflower" or "Clavel de Muerto." They return every year from seeds dropped the previous fall. |
The sunflowers that survived the breezy conditions of the past week have decided to bloom as well. |
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| Another Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on a Thithonia. |
I severely pruned all the larger Thithonia (Sunflower trees;
Tithonia diversifolia) during the cloudy, misty days of the past week. The larger plants will grow to 25-feet if not trimmed regularly. They won't
bloom until fall.
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| A field of wild sunflowers, perhaps Helianthus floridanus. |
I spent the afternoon moving some of my koi from their original pond into the
new pond that I started constructing in the winter. Their water was becoming toxic due to too many fish and too little filtration capacity. It was a filthy, nasty job but I moved 21 of the largest koi to the new pond, safely. They do not like to be disturbed and do everything they can to avoid the net.
I left another 50 large koi in the original pond along with many, many of their fry (young fish).
Due to the upcoming heat wave I'll have to mist the ponds in the afternoons to keep the fish from over-heating. Its a difficult process working around the ponds because there are many nesting birds in the bamboo and trees around the ponds and they do not like me coming anywhere near their nests or their fledglings. I have to walk the long way around to get anything done, staying close to the periphery of the property where there is some open land. Still I managed to annoy plenty of songbirds this afternoon while I was knee-deep in the ponds.
