Coffee Plant

When I came across this tiny plant I picked it up immediately and brought it home. It's not like I ever expect to harvest coffee beans from it, but somehow I get a kick out of just knowing there's a coffee plant out on the patio.

Theses photos have been taken on my patio during the past week. I'm focusing on adding plants that attract butterflies and hummingbirds and add a few plants each summer. They all seem to like the Pentas:

The butterflies are partial to the lantana:

I have three pots of these: 2 are plants I bought in bloom this Spring, and 1 pot is a plant that over-wintered in my garage and hasn't bloomed yet.

I have a wild sunflower that is tall and lanky and which takes up to much space for my little patio. It has sentimental value, but I'm trying to find a sunflower that I like as much that's more suitable for my space. This year I bought three of this sunflower from the Lichterman Nature Center plant sale, and the first one has bloomed:

We had some strong rain storms this past week which knocked the sunflower blooms down, and I can see that I'll need shorter sunflowers to work in this flower bed. I'll keep that in mind for next year.

The daylilies came from Mother's yard, like the wild sunflower did, and these common field lilies do well in this sunny area:

I bought this Rue last year, and this is its first blooming:

The coneflower has started blooming just in the last several days:

This "May Night" Salvia is new this year:

The strawberry begonia started from a tiny little slip of a plant and is now spreading through the rocks that are up against the house:

This year we have a pair of Carolina Wrens nesting in a flower pot that came from my great Aunt Frankie's house:

This is Aunt Frankie and her house back in the late 1960s:

One of these days I'm going to edit these photos to sharpen them up. Then I'll frame some of them in a collage. But not today. I enjoy having things that belonged to previous generations. It makes me feel connected and reminds me of where I came from.

Yesterday the baby fledged,

and we had so much fun watching it and its parents fluttering around.

This is the view from my computer:

from right outside the sliding glass door I sit in front of. When I use my computer, I sit on the floor where I can see out onto the patio. The patio faces north, and these chairs are shaded in the afternoon. There's a hummingbird feeder that goes on that middle hook, but it was inside being cleaned when I took that photo. I do dearly love the patio. It's just the right size for me -plenty of space for pots, a couple of small beds for flowers, but not so much space that I can't keep up with it. Just right!

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