August Garden Tour

Hey, Pumpkin. Where are you going? You're all hyped up today. You want to hang out? Want to do the garden tour? Toby, you want to go outside? Do you want to go outdoors? It's time for the garden tour. You can be my helper. You can stand right next to me and trip me. That's what you like to do out there, right? Yeah, you make a good roadblock. Let's go outside. Come on, Toby. It's time to do a garden tour. Let's go. Come on, let's go. What's, oh no. What did you do? What did you do, Toby? Guilty conscious. You never get away with anything, do you? Really? It's a beautiful day. Toby, Tortoise, Pumpkin. No, Pumpkin, you're not allowed outside. Nobody wants to go outside. What's with you guys? That's fine. I'll go up by myself. Whatever. It is a beautiful morning out here. Wasn't expecting all that noise to happen when I did that. Not a cloud in the sky, which is nice. Although I like clouds and they actually make filming a little bit easier, but that's okay. And it's been a very busy week. I've been doing a lot out here. Mostly just getting things cleaned up from all the stuff I miss being able to do this summer. Just trying to get caught up with things. And there's a fair amount to update everybody on. There are hummingbirds and butterflies everywhere. But as soon as I move the camera to them, they disappear. Over here is an area that really hasn't gotten too much attention in the past. Mostly because I didn't, I don't think I got this potted up, this whole thing done until like late July, early August. So I think around the time the last garden tour happened, this was all probably very, very fresh. Everything in this planter has grown in very well. This is the Sun Patience, the variegated one. This was just a little thing when I put that in there. It's grown immensely. But what I'm most impressed by are these caladiums. Aren't they beautiful? These are the frog in a blender variety. I've talked about them on this channel plenty. Not so much this year, more last year, because they are easily one of my favorite caladiums. They're very simple, they're common, so they're not too hard to get ahold of. And the variegation on the foliage is stunning. And I don't know why I'm showing you these. The leaves over there are much more stunning to look at. Much more variegation. Perhaps it's because I filled the area with planters and it's hard to get the camera up in there. Look at those. That is some absolutely beautiful foliage. They've been low maintenance. I have everything over here in this area on drip. The cordyline fruticosa in the back, that is a harlequin. Harlequin is kind of like a giant kiwi, which I have in my planters around the pool. It just gets bigger, broader leaves. And with the cooler temperatures that'll start to come, probably sometime around late next month, there'll be a little bit more pink inside that foliage, which is going to look very nice. Speaking of very nice, the pakistakies lutea looking great over here. It's always a really pretty, stunning plant. One of my favorites. They're so easy to grow. The hummingbirds and butterflies absolutely love them and they're easy to overwinter. I essentially just let mine go dormant and then when I bring it back out and resume watering and fertilizing, it just takes off and does wonderfully. Still has lots of nice new bracts on it, opening up, putting out those little white flowers that travel up the top. Just a fun plant. One that I really, really like. It should probably be behind this cordyline. It ended up growing a little bit faster than I thought it would, but I think that this, I should probably swap these out because it's kind of hard to see this gorgeous foliage on this cordyline when it's trapped back here behind this pakistakies. Really hard to see it. Looks nice from in the house though. You can see it right through that window when you're coming out the door. Looks great. More yellow, the hibiscus. This is the chatty caffey and it is covered in flowers. Has tons of flowers on it. One, two, three, four, five, and six. Yeah, that's a lot. It's blooming very heavily. The seminal pink is just now going into a rest. It has one tiny little flower hanging out in there, but it's doing well. I also have a justicia in here and I think that I should probably move it because it's ended up getting pretty dwarfed inside this planter. You can barely even see it in there. The flowers are kind of a bubblegum pink. They're all faded right now, so it's hard to tell. This garden bed over here is doing amazingly. The plants are thriving, exploding in growth. These gingers, I mean, look at that. So many flowers. This one just opened a few days ago, so I'm a little bit disappointed with how quickly that those flowers are starting to fade out, but it has more spikes in the back and then up top there. Again, another plant that the butterflies and the hummingbirds absolutely love, and it's one of my favorite plants, especially at nighttime. That light orange color lights up with the light on the side of the house and they just, they stand out very nicely. They have this fun kind of arched growth to them and they look really tropical. So far, I mean, it's been many, many years. This variety, which is the flooding torch, been perfectly hardy here in zone six. It gets a good amount of mulch, but that's it. I don't do anything special with it. I just mulch it. The front of this garden bed, it's, things are doing well. There are some things I need to come through and clean up and prune out of here. You can see that. I'm still playing catch-up of having not been able to do much yard work this summer, but the saccharicia in the front, doing much better than I expected. I've planted this here before and it hasn't always done great. Sometimes they get like some rot during the summer, but I think that the hot days this summer have been spread out enough that it just, that wasn't an issue. We've had some heat, just not as much as usual. And I, and even though they are crowding the lemon coral sedum that are in there, I still kind of like how that pokes through. It adds a lot of dimension. I don't know how well that's going to show on camera, but I always enjoy having things set up in a way where there are layers to things. So it helps pull your eye in and make you kind of explore. It's just nice having the details. And that's, that's a big detail. This might be a bit much. If it were July, I would actually go through here and probably give these a heavy prune because the lemon coral sedum that's under there needs more sunlight than they're going to get like this, but it's almost September, so it's fine. I'm just going to leave it for now. Okay, I got some weeds here. I'm going to be pulling some of those as I go through too, as I see them. Look at the variegated setchrysias, looking very nice. Those don't always do that well. Sometimes they're kind of finicky. They'll rot out a little bit sooner. They revert back to just the regular purple very quickly. This one, this year, it's held on pretty strong. This corner over here, the bananas are growing so big. So, so, so big, very big. I love walking down this path and having them over the top of my head when I'm coming through. It just makes things feel so fun and so tropical. Even though they're fully hardy here, just adds such a nice extreme tropical vibe. Now back here, this is kind of like the new garden, the ginger garden, you could say. This is where all of the transplants went from that flaming torch ginger I just showed before. All of those got planted back here. So there's one there, another one right around the center, another one over there, actually there's another one down by my fence gate also. And I was concerned about them. I wasn't really sure how well they were going to transplant considering that got done in July. And it was also like the hottest we've had so far in summer. It was very toasty. But as you can see here, they did okay. They're starting to flower. At least two of these three are starting to flower and there's new growth coming up out of the ground. Needle palms are doing fine. The obsidian banana, this Nset morellii, is doing okay. It's been getting a little bit cooked in the afternoon sun. Went ahead and pulled that onto drip and that has seemed to help out a lot, just making sure that it always has some moisture in there. Sometimes it's kind of hard to get the hose back there and water that in. The dwarf crepe myrtles are still flowering. Another ginger with a spike on it. That's going to be so pretty. Probably not this year, but next year, these gingers will be tall enough they'll be able to see them through the kitchen window with those big orange flowers like I just showed you on the other one. That is going to be so pretty. I'm really excited for that. Moved my plumeria down over into this area. I originally had it kind of planted over or set by the wall, it's in a pot, and I didn't really like how it looked. It was taking up too much space. This is okay. This spot works for it, I suppose, for right now. Mostly just like it here because it's in line of the sprinklers. It's been a very thirsty plant, so it is better to have that in a spot where it's going to get regular irrigation. Alexander palm, looking great. It's put out a lot of new foliage this year. It's kind of hard to see. The sun's pretty harsh today. I'm going to do my best to be able to get everything on camera without the sun backlighting everything, but there's just not much I can do about it. We're supposed to have like a two week stint of rain here coming up, maybe, like a chance of rain every day. So I wanted to get this tour done today, even though the lighting's not fantastic. But you get the point. Look, the elephant ears, huge. These are the bikini teenies. The Baju bananas up there. They're just absolutely massive, as always. More gingers over here. I like this because it setups when you're entering through the gate. These gingers come over with that blue beach grass underneath them. I like how they come over the path and stand up. They don't come over too far. There's still a path here, but it's just enough where it kind of looks like they're just growing wild, even though they're not. That's what I want. That's what I like. At least in the backyard, I don't want things to look too planned and too intentional. Banana cannas getting big. Still not as big as I had hoped for this year, but they also, they didn't get planted until July, because that's, you know, when I was able to have someone come over and help me with things for a few weeks. So still lots of growth, particularly down low. There's lots of new growth coming up from the bottom on this banana canna. And the same with these banana cannas that are over here on this side. Lots of stuff coming up from down below. The thing I love about the banana cannas, it's not just that they get really big, it's their foliage. I mean, look at that foliage. These red undertones, the veining in them is very heavy. The foliage is very large, hence the name banana canna. So it's like a banana tree with the big leaves on them. And they remind me of the nset morelia, the red obsidian bananas, and they're party. You know, you want to put mulch on them if you're in zone six, probably in zone seven too, but what's not to love about that? Such extreme tropical appeal, low maintenance, and they get nice and big. These are going to put a big screen up here. Probably not this year, but next year when they come up, they should get, I would say, at least probably three feet taller than this one is. And that's going to end up creating a really neat looking backdrop of that dark red bold foliage behind the banana leaves. And that's going to be on each side of the gate here. Elephaneers doing great. When these were planted up, geez, not even that long ago. In the last garden tour, there was like nothing to see with these. They had just been planted like maybe three weeks prior to that tour, and they have exploded in growth. The alocasios, they have done a lot of growing. Those were just like sticks, I think, in the last garden tour. So they're looking really good, even though they're a little bit hidden back there. Couple more weeks and they should stand out a lot more from everything that's over here. Oleander still flowering like a champ. I think I talked about this in the last garden tour. This oleander, it is doing so well this year. I think it just really likes this spot, which I'm surprised by because it's pretty shady over here, but it's still flowering. This plant has not skipped a beat since I would say early July. And usually with oleanders, at least for me, normally I have to do some deadheading on them to keep them flowering, and I haven't had to do that. So that's a plant that's really blown my mind this summer. It's just an oleander, but it's one I've had for years, and it wasn't until this year that it like really took off. It's always been one of my favorite plants that I have out here just because I love the flowers. They're like a nice coral pink with an orangey undertone. It's just an oleander, but I really like this particular variety. Yeah, very happy, very healthy. We're moving into the berm. There isn't much to say with this. Things are just growing and doing their thing. The skip laurels are doing well. They're not really stretched, which is something I was worried about because they're getting a lot of shade, but though they can grow shade to sun, I still kind of figured in the shade that they would get kind of lanky, but so far, so good. I haven't had any issues with them. Fruticosa, I think somebody asked for an update on this last time, and I had forgotten about it. This is the Singapore twist. You can see it has that really fun shape to the inside of it. It is doing very well. Still a mealybug magnet, so that's why I kind of have it sequestered over here so I can stay on top of the springs with it. It is doing very well over here. I love the shape. It's the coolest shape to it, that fan shape, and as this keeps going, you can kind of see it starting to do it up here. It'll start to spiral and twist that fan around. As they keep growing, you can sort of see that happening down here on this one, how it was flat right here and it's starting to spiral. Just overall, it's been a really neat, fun, unique plant to grow, and it's been very well-maintenanced. This has been a very easy cordyline. Haven't, I've really, I've really haven't had to do much with it at all. Over here, I have another Elocasia. This one needs to be repotted. This is an Odoro, and it has some new growth coming up from the bottom there, some new shoots that I will try and divide out. Enough, lots of new foliage. It's doing really well over here. This is doing way better than my, those, the Okinawa silvers. This has been much more vigorous and much larger. I mean, it makes sense because this is an Odoro. They tend to just get bigger as it is, but this is a plant that really should go up into a nice big pot. The bigger the pot for this, then the larger the foliage and all of those things. Something I'll probably get done next week here, hopefully. I'm trying to finish up all my repottings, like, in the next week or so. Things that I would have preferred to have gotten done, like, a month or two ago, but, you know, had the stuff going on, so couldn't do it. Nopalms looking good. Nice, girthy, healthy plants, and very backlit. The pedicets are still holding strong. I'm actually thinking that next spring, what I will probably do is I may lift and pull the larger varieties and just let the variegated ones fill in this area because this is fun and it's neat to look at, but it's also, it's kind of a bit much. We'll see next spring how I feel about it, but I would really prefer to have the shorter growing variegated ones in here over the taller ones. I planted them both because I wanted to see them both, and now I have, and I definitely prefer the little, the smaller variegated ones. You can kind of see some of those variegated ones back there. The problem with the variegated ones, though, is that they really fizzle out around July or so, and these others haven't been doing that, so, I don't know, I'll make my mind up on that next year. Another hibiscus. Hey, hibiscus, how you doing? I love my hibiscus. False Aurelia, another plant I rarely do anything with, and it just grows and grows and grows. And I water and I fertilize, but I don't, like, go over the top. It's not a plant I worry about very often. The lighting today really just sucks. The sun is really harsh, but that's okay. I mean, you see all these things in my vlogs every single weekend, so it's not that big of a deal, but it would just be nice for things to be a little bit more crisp. Like, the sky has, like, a yellow tinge to it today. Strawberry vanilla hydrangeas are looking fantastic. This is that time of year when they transform from white into this nice, creamy pink color. And they've actually even started to kind of fade out from that. They're getting to the point where they're going to start to age out, and these are going to dry out probably by the end of September. They might hang on a little bit longer than that. I did go ahead and pull this other one down to this end of the patio. Even though the pot isn't identical to the other one, I was like, you know what? It's fine. I needed to clear a path. I think I talk about all that in the vlog. It'll come out after this video. It just, it was too big to have down where it was. And so the old one is ready to go away. I just have to wait for somebody to come over and do that, because that's still, like, I can do some light lifting now. The graft is taken for the most part, but I'm still supposed to be careful with things that are too heavy, and that pot is too heavy. I managed to pull it out of the way, but otherwise I have to wait for a helper to come out and do some things with that. And I'm going to under plant this hydrangea tree with some new guinea impatiens. It's kind of late in the year for it, but I have them, so I figured I may as well go ahead and just get something colorful under there. Even if it's only gonna be for like a month, why not? Now, in here I have cleared things out quite a bit. This, I always call it a wax myrtle. It's in the same family. It's a northern bayberry. This was coming down, and it was kind of like in people's faces, which I don't like that, so I came through pruning this up so that it's nice, more of an archway, and it's allowing more light into the cactus and the succulents. Now, I have these where they're just getting a strong morning light, then it's filtered throughout the rest of the day. I even moved a few more things over here because with the hurricanes and the tropical storms, which aren't going to hit here, it's just going to rain up here, so like safety-wise, everything's fine. But it's going to rain for several days, so I was just kind of pushing a few more things back here, so that way they won't get too wet during that time. It's going to rain for a long time. The lespedeza is in its full glory. Look at it, just covered in flowers, and it's actually just getting going. It has buds all along the ends of the stems. In a few weeks, this is just going to be a giant cascade of pink flowers, and it gets covered in hummingbirds and butterflies. In my last vlog, I talked about how I pulled that up onto a stake because it was just, it was too much. It was growing all the way over to like right about here, and the pathway was too narrow, so actually, I think I like it better up there, just the way it is like that. I think that that's a good way to do it, and I'll probably keep doing that in the future. The green giant arborvitae, the thuja green giant, that's only been here for like a week, so there's not much to say about it, but if you don't watch the vlogs, then that's a big update, a big change. There was a white pine here that died last summer from white pine decline. We had a bad storm, and it got uprooted, and finally got that stump out, and got a new tree put in there. It's about 10 foot. It's a really big one, and not anything crazy special, but it's really nice to have something there for the privacy sake of everything, and something that's evergreen. I always want to get more evergreens into the garden, especially, you know, wintertime. There's absolutely nothing else out here. I mean, this is, none of this is here during the winter. There aren't really any evergreens in either of these garden beds, and it just looks so blech and boring. Did I mention I have a broken sprinkler head down here? It's not supposed to be doing that. However, it's getting all my potted plants watered for me, so I've just been like, you know what? You just keep, you keep doing you for now. I'm not rushing to fix that right away, because it's, like I said, it's saving me about 40 minutes of watering in the morning. So it goes from here, and it hits all the way kind of down there by that lamp. Does a great job. The arborvitae, like I was talking about, still a little bit hard to see. It's looking good back there. It's doing its thing. Queen palms coming along. Pool planters are looking amazing. I'll go in for a better close-up of those in a little bit here. This entire area I have cleaned up. It may not look like it, but there were plants coming all the way out to right about where these clippings are. The iguana cage was over here, so I got things tidied up and pushed back more towards the perimeter of the patio. It had a heliconia that I went ahead and divided up into three different pots. Essentially, it just needed to be repotted, and then it had like three good-looking clumps in it, so I went ahead and made it into three different plants. I still have some cleaning to do, some pruning to do down there. I wanted to leave the dead stuff in here around this petunia. I did this planter, I don't know, May, maybe, when I repotted this foxtail palm. It's doing wonderfully. When I did this planter, I put in Supertunia Vista bubblegums and some purple wave petunias, and I just kind of wanted to see how they would do. Well, can you tell? There's the Vista bubblegum, there's the purple wave petunia. I really liked that purple wave petunia. It was very nice, it was very fragrant, but it just wasn't able to withstand the heat and the rain that we had back in July and over the past couple weeks, like the Supertunia Vista bubblegum was. I left that there just so I could show that contrast. If you remember that video, then that's what happened there. I'll get in there with some clippers and clean that out here pretty soon. I have a lot of tidying to do today. I've been repotting things out here just non-stop over the last few days, and there's plenty of cleanup to do because of that. Back here is where most of my orchids, bromeliads, and my pothos, and those sorts of things are, and like the ferns, the spot just gets really good morning sun, and it's filtered throughout the rest of the day, and the humidity hangs on back here really, really well. So all the plants that I keep back here tend to do really well also. Plants that really like a lot of humidity, kind of like this Addisonii, which I showed in my last video. It's a unique one. The seller I got it from didn't know like what variety it was. They just said it was one that they had been growing alongside some of their other Addisonii types and other Monstera types, and it was like a weird little hybrid that showed up. So I was like, well, that's cool. And it has really big foliage. It's growing very quickly. I like the larger foliage. Sometimes you have to wait a little bit longer to see that on some of the others. I have a Vanda orchid up here that has a really nice spike coming up on it, and another one coming out the sides. I don't think any of my other Vandas are spiking right now. Spiking is what you call the flowers that come out of them. But I'm impressed and happy that I'm even getting any flowers out of them because I didn't start fertilizing them until like, I don't know, maybe three weeks ago because I've had somebody else taking care of everything, including my orchids, which was nerve-wracking. I did lose some orchids. By some, I mean, I lost a lot of orchids. But you know, the people who are helping me with things, they don't know plants. So that's just the nature of the beast, and it's okay. They're just plants. I'm happy to have my health, so I'm not going to be complaining about that. I did just notice that there is a spike coming up back here. See it? There's a spike coming up out of that Vanda. I think that that's a Pachara right there. Maybe. Pacharas have these really big purple, like, pansy-shaped flowers. Most of these are gonna have the big, like, pansy-shaped flowers on them. I'll be sure to keep updated when those bloom because the Vandas are some of my favorites with their flowers. Prince of Orange Philodendron doing great back here. Big, bold, and vibrant. The foliage is coming up. I mean, that's what it's supposed to do. But sometimes when it gets really hot out, I don't get quite as much color and intensity out of the foliage. But it seems to be nice and happy. Doesn't seem to mind the heat that we've had. Even the heat's been, like, off and on. August was actually pretty cool up until a few days ago. Probably going to cool off here pretty soon. My Tetrasperma Repetifora, the little mini Monstera. This is the one that I got from Logee's last winter or late fall. I did a whole video on it. It was an experience to say the least, but it has recovered. There's a whole bunch of new growth on it. This is on my list of things to get repotted into something larger with a stake so it can grow up that stake. I almost forgot about this completely and Nikki from Plants, Pots, and Whatnot, she posted a picture of her new one on Instagram and I went, oh no, I gotta get that done. But that was a really big thing on my list to get done. It's old growth. You can see in there this yellow piece. I can just cut that out. That's what it had on it when it arrived and it just never did well. But I can go ahead. I'll chop that out of there when I repot it. It'll be fine. I mean, clearly. It's been doing all kinds of growing. When I came over here, when I was talking with Nikki on Instagram and showing her what mine was doing, it had like roots that were sticking down into the crevices in here. So it's liking it over here, but I want to get it up onto something with a support. I also did a huge cleanup over in this area. I had like my filming set up over there near the fans. I'm, you know, I'm supposed to kind of stay out of the sun as much as I can. There were pots and just things used for making plant videos all over the place and the elephant ears here. These are the Achillocasia melligolds. They had foliage that was just drooping down, just old foliage that needed to be cleaned up. So I got that done. I do still think that these are not appropriate for the spot. I thought they were only going to get two feet tall, but that's certainly not the case. This is like that. If this were in the ground, that would be probably five feet right there. It is stretching a little bit, but not quite that much. So these are too big for this area. Lesson learned. That's fine. I'm going to leave them for now. I had thought about pulling them and maybe planting some impatiens down in the front of these planters because it would just make the space look bigger. Not having these giant elephant ears right in the front, but they are so reflective at nighttime with this glossy foliage. Their foliage is so shiny. I mean, look at that. Look at how beautiful and shiny that is. And with that light right there at nighttime, these look so pretty. So I'm going to leave them for this year. Next year, I won't do that again. Or if I do, I'll put them in the back of the planters where I have the big white bird of paradise, which are doing wonderfully. They're doing fantastic. If you remember when I potted these up, they only had a few leaves on them because I'd cut them back and just done a whole bunch of things with them. They got repotted and they've bounced back. And that's what they do. They're vigorous growers, sturdy plants, and they're looking very good. But you can barely see them because they've got these big, floppy, gorgeous elephant ears in front of them. Another plant that I need to repot. My ficus down here. I think I need to do some deadheading back here on this fuchsia as well. This area wasn't getting quite as much light as it should have been getting to keep everything blooming. I'm hoping now that I've thinned these out just a smidge, some more light will get back there so that like these new guinean patients that have this gorgeous foliage on them, it's beautiful foliage, but they don't, they haven't been flowering. Like I said, I don't think it's, there just hasn't been quite enough light. Oh, I almost forgot. I got a new bromeliad. Isn't that a gorgeous bromeliad? It has very fun, unique foliage and it's really colorful. And I think I will probably be doing a spotlight on that particular bromeliad on its own. It's a gem of a bromeliad. It's kind of hard to see, but you just have to take my word for it. It's beautiful. Like I said, there'll be a spotlight on it. You'll see it better when I do that. This whole area, this is where all my stuff was, my tables and all those things. This is opened up now. I guess it doesn't really matter if you don't know how messy it was before, then you just kind of have to take my word for it. This is an improvement. I was in the middle of this, like right before I started filming this video and I was like, I got to get this tour done. So that's why things are kind of in an awkward place out here. I wanted things to be perfect for the garden tour, but there just wasn't time and that's okay. You know, the rain and everything. It's me moving in here over the next week or so. I wanted to get this done and get as much done out here as I could. And I got a ton done. Still more to be done. Working on some repottings. I've been repotting a lot of begonias. This one's next. As soon as I stop filming this, I'll get on top of that, the maculata back there. And then I did a lot of rearranging over here. I even turned the Eureka palm around so I can see the plants in the front of it better. I have a vinca hanging over the side here. That's in a hanging basket. I just set it up there for now because I don't want to tear it apart and plant it. It'll take a month to recover and in a month it's going to be time to be getting these things ready to take inside. Moved a few more gingers and things just kind of over and into the sun just because I wanted to give them another shot at like really getting to bloom. I had so many of my plants tucked into the shade since I wasn't able to water them and somebody else was doing it for me. It just made sense to keep them in a place where I wouldn't have to worry about them getting cooked in the sun. But I'm able to water now. So that's why I went ahead and pulled some things out like this costus right here, this red button ginger, I think with more light. I should start to see some flowers on there pretty soon. My dragon's wing begonia. You guys look thirsty. I spent like an hour watering before I turned the camera on. But as you can see, as I've been pointing out, the sun is very intense today. So I'm not surprised by that at all. Another hanging basket. I just went ahead and set it in this seashell right here. You can't even tell it's a seashell because the vinca is so prolific over the sides. I potted up an acuba over here and I have all my other acubas kind of down and around this corner. Those will be going into the garden next year. Wasn't able to get it done this year and I want to plant them this time of year. So that's going to have to wait. Look at how great these Artemisia are doing. That's the silver brocade. I have them planted here underneath this windmill palm and they are loving life. And then I also moved my Mayan palm. This is a Hupriana. This was back behind one of my fountains. I pulled it over here because I wanted to get some more airflow, some more light because I was worried about maybe getting some critters and infestations down inside these crevices where actually I can probably go ahead and start removing these and getting those trunks cleaned up. But I just did that like, I don't know, half an hour ago. It will appreciate being out where it's getting more light. I had it back here behind this fountain. It was just way too dark. The pine trees and everything up here have grown so big that I just, I don't think it was getting the love and the light that it deserved. So it'll do better over where I have it. And then I pulled my Monstera out from where I usually keep it, which is down on that end of the patio. And I usually move it over here in August because the angle of the sun has shifted and it's safer to have it over here. The problem, it's not, I mean, it's not really a problem, but it's grown so much. It's gotten huge, which is great, but it's not going to fit. I don't think it's going to fit back there in the corner behind the fountain where I usually put it. I don't know. I'm going to figure that out next week in next week's vlog or in its own dedicated video because I need to repot it, put it up on a new stake before I put it back there. If I put it back there now, I know I'm not going to get it repotted. So I'm just going to leave it out here where it's right in my face until I can get that done because it needs it. The roots down there are structural, you know, these are epiphytes for the most part, but in order to have a proper stake in here for this Monstera, it needs a much larger pot. So I'm going to be getting on top of that pretty soon here. The Tahitian Flame Hedichium, look at that variegation. That is doing wonderfully. I'm hoping it will flower this year. I've moved it towards getting more light than it used to and it's grown more than it ever has before. So I'm really hoping to see some flower spikes on there. Even if it doesn't though, the foliage on it is so pretty that it's okay. It has such stunning foliage. Oh, was I still recording that? Okay, did you hear that sound? It was a frog and it made that sound when it saw me right as I stepped on this drip line here and I thought I had stepped on and crushed a frog. My heart sank. No frogs were hurt. There's a frog in here that when it sees you, it makes that whatever that sound is and hops away back into the water. I also went ahead and put one of my Stromanthes. This one was sent to me by Pam's Planty Things when I was recovering from, I think it was my second surgery back in July. I put it in one of these floating planters because I've just, I've had really great luck with them in these floating planters. So I went ahead and did that with it. There might be a little bit too much light here so I'm going to go ahead and just scoot that over there. I have it on a wire so I'll move this wire over there so it'll be a little bit more filtered. Everything in the pond, pretty standard. You know, things aren't really doing anything nuts. Just pond stuff past the flowering on the water lilies and the cattails are reaching for the light because the angle of the sun has shifted. So it's just, yeah. So not a lot to say there. The Asclepias are doing well. They're doing their thing. I'm not seeing any caterpillars on them which is kind of disappointing but it is what it is. It was here for them. There have been monarchs everywhere but they just haven't been laying. I've been watching out for like praying mantis and things like that because those will predate on those babies but just haven't seen them. Sometimes it's like maybe just a smidge early. Usually around September I start seeing them so hopefully we'll get to see some caterpillars out here this year for the monarchs but I don't know. At the very least they're getting to munch on them and get some food. That's good. At least helping them out a little bit. Okay, getting like two seconds of overcast. Look, everything looks so pretty. There's a better shot of things before that. Nope, nope, too late. Yeah, I missed it. Come back tiny little cloud. That is a pretty basic rundown on everything. Bromeliads are doing well. Palm trees are doing well. Planters are doing well. Thirsty for some reason. I just, I watered in kind of a rush so I need to go through and hit them all again because it's only like a 40% chance of rain today and I've warned. Not safe to rely on it. Look it, look it. And it just got watered. It's when that sun, you know, gets so strong just makes them cook and they start to shrivel up. Happens so quickly. I'm really looking forward to getting this potted up and onto a proper stake. It's such a beautiful plant and I've had it for such an incredibly long time. One of the fun things about houseplants especially ones that are fairly easy to care for and long-lived like a Monstera, Sansevierias and those sorts of things is it's just so much fun to watch them grow. Last but not least, the pool planters. This is a Dracaenia. I need to repot it but I need to drill a hole in a pot that it's going in so for now it's just sitting there. These are doing very well. They didn't get their cut back but the dog runs around them on a regular occasion especially back in July when it was really hot and so they have been cut back at least 50% and regrown. I was going to give them a cut back on my own. I feel like I could get a better angle on this. This is risky. Don't drop the camera. Yeah, that's a much better angle. Is there anything in my pockets? No. The petunias in here have been doing so well. They're on drip. I've been fertilizing them with the JR Peters Petunia Fertilizer just about once a week and I've only been doing that for probably three weeks so I wasn't really able to be out in the sun and do those sorts of things until fairly recently. The only thing that's fizzled out and not really showing as much right now are the Supertunia Honeys here. They were much more prolific a few days ago. Today they're a little bit more faded and fizzled out but otherwise the rest of them are doing great. The Supertunia Vista Silverberries looking fantastic and then these are the Purple Wave Petunias. They held on pretty strong at least in this planter not in all of them. I would consider them to be kind of unreliable and inconsistent. Some of them did really well for me in certain planters other ones not so much. I still like them though because I love the shade of purple and they smell amazing in the evening time so I'll still be planting them. I just wish that maybe somebody would come out with a light purple petunia that is still fragrant and vigorous like the Supertunia Vista Bubblegum or the Silverberry or the Paradise. That's what these kind of magenta-ish petunias are right here. Those are the Supertunia Vista Paradise and I like the Wave Petunias. Pretty prolific but just not quite the same. See the difference? If we could get the characteristics of just a light purple petunia they're pretty much always fragrant. The light purple petunias I know there's like the Sensation and these ones that are advertised to be fragrant. Usually all light purple petunias are fragrant. Not always but usually. Oftentimes you lose things like fragrance when plants get hybridized and bred to a point that they'll flower so profusely. Generally smell is something you lose so I'm still happy to have these. I would just like for someone to take that and put it into something like this. That would be fantastic. Lighting, you know, lighting can make a really big difference. This planter over here gets a lot more sun than the other one does and it still did very well. It also, Tucker was running around it just like an hour or two ago. My dog, he was in here swimming and then he gets out and he runs around the pots. That's why I went ahead and didn't do the cutback because I was like he's, I mean, they get a regular prune from him. It's not quite the same as when you do your midsummer cutback and try and get about 50% of the plant chopped off. Give it regular fertilizing and they become very vigorous. I think that he's, the dog has just kind of done that for me. So I was like, you know, it's fine. These look good how they are. I mean, clearly they're okay. They're not all strung out and lanky, anything like that. They're pretty full. There are a few spots where they could use some pruning but for the most part, they're doing great. I haven't had to do much with them. They're on drip. The dog has taken care of any pruning that needed to be done with them. I love it. I love how these came out. I'm also just realizing that this, that's been right behind me the entire time. So that might have gotten kind of obnoxious. Sorry. I'm like actually at water level with the sound this time. So it feels louder in my ears, which means it probably does through the microphone too. Well, hopefully you're able to hear me okay. Oh, hey Petunia. I know you're in here because Tucker knocked you right off the plant. One of the last things I have on my list of to-do's, I'm going to get my tiki bar area cleaned up so I can move all the pool cleaning supplies and everything back over there out of sight. Because I'm really, I'm tired of seeing these poles up against the side of the house. So I'm like, hey, look at my garden bed. And then there's just all this right there. Nah, that's got to go. It's time to find a new spot for all that stuff. That was fun. It was nice to cool off. Wish I had had swim shorts on, but that's okay. The donkey's tail, burrow's tail, they are both still doing very well. When the heat came through, I was actually excited because I was like, hey, I can water you guys and fertilize you without worrying about killing you. So that's been nice. One of the nice things about having those heat spells is like give them a nice drink in the morning before it gets really hot and then start to see some nice gross spurts out of them. Okay, I think that that is going to do it. I mean, I could talk about the plants for hours, but I don't think we need to. I still have lots of repotting to get done over the next week or so and want to get some fall planters going. And it's just nice to have things opened up and decluttered and it's going to get even better. I just kind of stopped so I could film this video. I would have preferred to have finished and then film this video. But I figured it might be like a week or so until I'm to that point. So I wanted to get the August garden tour out in August because that's, you know, what makes the most sense, right? I hope everybody's doing well, having a great day and a great life and everything's just going beautifully for you. I'll be keeping everybody posted on what's going on out here. This next vlog for this weekend is going to maybe seem redundant because I was vlogging most of what I was doing out here. So sorry about that. I didn't know how else to make it work. I couldn't think of anything because otherwise I would have had to have just worked on this for like a few days and then come up with a vlog on with basically one day to film it. And I don't like to do that. I like to actually vlog and not like make something up for entertainment. So things may seem a little bit redundant. I don't know. I hope not. I tried to diversify between the two so there would be some differences. You know, this is more, hey, here's how things are doing and that vlog is going to be here's everything I need to do. And the panic in my voice as I'm trying to get things done. Yeah, like I said, I hope everybody's doing well. I have all my social media linked down below. I use Instagram more than anything else. I mean, I basically, I don't really use Snapchat or Twitter but sometimes I hop on there. And if you haven't already, you can hit that like button. It makes a big difference for the videos and for the channel and I appreciate it. Thank you. And subscribe as well and hit that notification bell. That way you know when new videos come out. And of course as always and most importantly everybody keep on growing. Bye, bye.