Not My Usual Post

Cup and Saucer Vine bud(s)
Photo was taken Nov. 1, 2014

File this post under:
This is completely unrelated to printmaking but something I wanted to share just the same...
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I am not the most experienced or accomplished gardener, but this year I had some successes with seeds planted last March, indoors on a make-shift, grow-light shelving unit that I set up for seed starting. The frost-free dates in my area are in mid-May and if I wait that long to plant seeds, it will be frosty again before I see alot of the plants mature.

The photos shown are of cup and saucer vines planted from seed, indoors in March. Even with their early starts this year, they didn't flower until early October. This may be because my gardening skills are lacking or maybe it's normal for the plant to take so long to mature enough to flower, but when it did finally flower, it did so spectacularly. And it nicely covers my deck railing bringing a natural softness to the straight lines of the wood slats. I planted it as a hummingbird plant but since the flowers bloomed after the hummingbirds were long gone, it ended up being a mid-Fall late bloomer after all the other (perennial) plants were way past their blooming times.

The other annual plants that I have for the hummingbirds are still flowering: Cigar plant, Butterfly Deep Pink Pentas and a Bahama Firebush. These were all potted and brought inside with hopes of successfully overwintering them indoors while the snow falls outside. While they were outside living on my deck and in my side garden, they fed the hummingbirds so well, that the birds were fighting over the garden on a daily basis.

Here are a couple of more photos (below) of my Cup and Saucer Vine. I shot these yesterday, worried that if I waited any longer, the impending freeze that will visit us any day now will kill the plant before I have a photographic record of it's beauty.

Cup and Saucer Vine

Cup and Saucer Vine