The Essential Beachcomber

My garden is a conglomeration of plants & shells. One thing I love about the  little apartment complex where I live is that it reminds me of "old Florida".  The landscaping is mature hibiscus, bougainvillea, & assorted palm trees.  Instead of mulch they have landscaped the beds with crushed sea shell.  Almost every resident on the bottom floor has a small garden space outside their screened-in patio door.  The existing plants are never good enough for any of us.  Each area has been customized to suit the taste of the frustrated green thumb who lives there. My little corner  is full of my heirloom plants that I have been lugging around for 25 years.  My garden is also the final destination for any big horse conch or whelk that is too beat up to use for anything else.   So my garden is actually a seashell garden with lots of plants dispersed among it.  Being on the dog walking route of the complex, my garden get ...

My mom is the type of person that justs makes you want to do nice things for her. After my dad passed she lived alone in the huge house they shared for 35 years.  The upkeep and maintenance were overwhelming for her. I lived 120 miles south and couldn't just pop up every time there was a need.  Like the time her neighbor called and said "Hey, your mom is on the roof with a chainsaw".  A family meeting was held and it was mutually decided that mom just needed a base camp to operate out of. She & my dad became ministers late in life. Her heart was to continue working in the migrant camps outside of Tampa so we sold her house or the mini-storage as I call it. She only lived in half of the bottom floor. Most of the house was cram-full of the family's stuff.  That was a hard process for her. Going through her life and deciding what to keep, give away, or sell. So she moved the 120 miles south and has lived with us for 10 years now.  She had never felt well and...