Here's some info that I posted a couple months ago in response to another quetion about false rosemary. I love my false rosemary and it is one of the toughest plants I've ever grown. It thrives in both drought and rainy conditions as long as it has well drained soil, blooms beautifully, has wonderfully fragrant foliage, and really attracts bees. Once it was fully mature it also became thick enough to smoother any potential weeds and since it's evergreen I never have to weed under it. I really need to trim mine back but I love how it looks so much that I haven't been able to do so yet. To propagate it just pin some of the longer braches to the ground and partially cover them with dirt. The branches will root themselves fairly quickly. My main plant is surrounded with smaller plants where it's branches have layed on the ground and rooted themselves. I bought my original plant at a native plant sale up in Gainsville several years ago and it was in a 3" pot. This is a florida native that is also known as a scrub mint in the Conradina genus. This particular variety gets between 2 and 3 feet tall and as wide as you will let it. I've had this plant for about three years now and have never had any problems with it as long as you don't count the fact that when it is in bloom it is constantly covered in bees. Even though I walk past this plant and brush against it while it's in bloom none of the bees have paid me a bit of attention. I believe that there are 4 different varieties of Conradina native to florida, two of which are endemic and endangered and a third is endemic and threatened. My plant is probably the fourth variety, Conradina canescens, but I'm not positive. As the first picture shows the plant is slowly trying to swallow up both my plumbago and my bleeding hear vine. The trash can in the background gives you an idea of the plants size. This is a plant that loves full sun but will tolerate some light shade (mines under a moderately large multi-trunked crape myrtle) and needs plenty of room to grow! Yes, my swamp sunflowers are Helianthus angustifolia. They do spread but so far I haven't had an issue with them, when they started migrating beyond the area I wanted them in I just just off the babies with a shovel and pulled them out. The native monarda is Monarda punctata and does have the lavender and white flower bracts. One native plant I forgot to mention that makes a great background plant is the Sparkleberry (Vaccinium arboreum). It's north america's largest member of the blueberry family although the fruit doesn't taste all that good. Here is a link that might be useful: Sparkleberry

It's an Allen's hummingbird.

A note about sugar ratio and percent: To say a 1:4 sugar:water mix is 20% sugar is incorrect; the sugar is in dry, granulated form and the water is (obviously) liquid. The sugar industry expresses sugar concentration as percent sugar by weight (mass for you scientists) also known as Brix; where one Brix is equivalent to 1 gram sugar dissolved in a 100 gram sugar solution. This is the number a sugar refractometer will give you. A cup of sugar weighs 200 grams. A cup of water weighs 237 grams. A 1:4 sugar mix is 200 grams sugar + 948 grams water = 1148 grams total. Percent sugar by weight or Brix is: 200g / 1148g x 100 = 17% (rounded to the nearest percent). You 1:4 purists are only offering half the sugar concentration found in natural nectar preferred by Hummers! So, get over it already... By the same method: A 1:3 sugar mix is 200g / 911g x 100 = 22% by weight A 1:2 sugar mix is 200g / 674g x 100 = 30% by weight A 1:1 sugar mix is 200g / 437g x 100 = 46% by weight Benjamin F Tucker was among the first to mass-feed hummers in the 1930s and '40s. He used laboratory glassware to make his feeders (no Perky-Pet or Droll Yankees back then). His work was described in the December 1946 Popular Mechanics article: "Hummingbird Cafeteria". The lead photo shows 22 of his 'beaker feeders' lined up on wood shelves. A quote from page 125: "If you supply artificial nectar - half water and half sugar - he'll stay long after blooming time." Sounds like a 1:1 sugar mix to me - 46 Brix - and I don't believe he poisoned a single hummer... (PM December 1946 may be found on-line - I'll let you figure that out for yourself...) - waw -

I love the photos of the foxes and the coyote. The photos of the otters are positively magical, Pixie! What a wildlife treasure to have in your back yard! The hermit thrush is our state bird, but I don't believe I've ever actually seen one. That's a great picture, Claire. As to wildlife around my house, all I've seen lately are the neighbors' two yellow cats that patrol my brushy areas in search of rodents collecting food stores for winter. One cat has a tail and the other doesn't, and they belong to two different families. My old cat seldom ventures out in this weather, and then only for a few minutes, and she never leaves the porch. These two relative newcomers have inherited her hunting grounds.