Emergence: An Ant's Eye View, Part I

It has just begun to warm up in the rainforest garden and the elephants ears line up like soldiers to face the day and embrace the sunshine.  Here is an intimate view of spring recovery from the ground level.  To me, this is the exciting part of growing tropicals outdoors through the winter, entertaining the idea that life is persistent enough to come back stronger because of the challenges it has faced.  The next time I take photos of these plants they'll be so full that you wouldn't know they were ever frozen back, so these pictures are important to me since they capture that ephemeral feeling of hope for a gardener.  Its as if just by picturing the potential in something that looks so stark and hopeless, just by believing, new life will emerge to fill the desolation.

Chartreuse colocasia pushing out of the pine needles alongside germinating maple seedlings in a fierce competition for the light. If allowed to grow, the maples would win.  That's not going to happen though.

A behemoth awakens from it's slumber, shedding the skin of winter's death and emerging anew.



Pineapple lily, or eucomis, has started to show it's purple foliage to the sun, shoving through the dry bulbs of dormancy.

It won't be long before the rainforest garden regains it's composure and brims with exuberance all over again.

PS.  I'll be heading to the Miami area in the next few days, so rest assured that I'll have fun stuff to share with you guys.  Its gonna be fun!

PPS.  The poll for most tropical looking plant has closed, with Banana and Plumeria tying for the gold, Orchids in second place, and the Heliconias grudgingly accept the bronze medal.  Lets hear it for Plumeria and B-A-N-A-N-A-S this ____ is bananas!  (You know, from the song Holla back girl?) 

12 comments:

  1. OMG! That Colocasia in the 2nd and 3rd picture is just plain amazing! I'm still waiting to see if mine come back from our killer winter. They've been in the ground for 3-4 years and I've grown to depend on them...hopefully they will return again this year.

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  2. Looking good, and I am sure that your plants have developed a need to survive, as they keep springing back better and better.

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  3. Good to see the shoots and foliage as a sign of life.

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  4. Looking good! Mine are coming back too, but a little slower. It was a rough winter.

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  5. looks good, Some plant are coming back, however majority of them lost during the rough winter.

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  6. Your colocasias coming back is good news indeed. I still don't see any signs of "Polly" and "Aurora" emerging here. I have a Xanadu that has one little shoot coming out now, so I'm not giving up hope just yet.

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  7. Yeah for bananas...I was a voter for them!!! Yee-haw! It was a very hard decison though!!!

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  8. Well, I just did a checkup on the garden and my supposedly hardy rajapuri banana is now dead but I also noticed that my tree fern is putting out new fiddleheads! My other bananas are dead too, but the plumeria's roots are still alive. At least one of the poll winners sems to be alive!
    I'll be heading to Deerfield Beach Arboretum in the next couple days so I hope to have some great pictures!

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  9. The way you captured Colocasia leave emgerging is just amazing! That is called life! Have fun in Miami, which is not far away from my place. You can see the difference between two different zones now :)

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  10. Hey, RFG! I love this post! Everything must be so incredibly huge to ants, or other bugs. I wonder if they notice the stars or if they're too far off for them?!
    Your garden is definitely making a comeback! I'm so sorry about your bananas! Mine are coming back in force. YAY! But I lost a bottle palm, as you know...boo! :(

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  11. Wonderful to see the plant springing back to life from the old ancient roots.

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  12. Even though we have different tastes vegetation wise, in other issues we agree. I congratulate you for your blog and format change.

    Others have not been fortunate, fixing what was not broken.

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