tropical punch

Hey everyone ... hope you enjoyed the weekend, and Valentine's Day too! Would love to hear how you celebrated.

Sal and I spent a quiet V-day together. He surprised me with some beautiful flowers on Friday night. We ate a Valentine dinner at home, some take-out from one of our fave restaurants, an Asian fusion bistro called PF Chang's. We LOVE their vegetarian lettuce wraps appetizer so much that we order three of them and split them as our entree! YUM.

And we did some landscaping in the front yard on Sunday. It was time to improve our curb appeal. After deliberating for quite some time about what to plant, I decided on a bougainvillea tree ... gosh, they have gorgeous blooms! And they love warmth and sun (just like me! *wink*). I wanted something that would add a punch of tropical color to our front yard. Ideally, I would've liked to get a larger tree, but geez bougainvilleas are pricey {gasp!} ... with every little bit taller they are, the cost goes up exponentially. But we found this nice purplish-pink (magenta perhaps?) tree at a nursery around the corner from us that just happens to specialize in bougainvilleas. I did a double-take as we entered the nursery and saw that the owner had the abbreviation "BS" on his sign ... huh? ... it later occurred to me that it stood for Bougainvillea Specialist! Oh, of course! Since he's not originally from the U.S., perhaps he didn't realize that the acronym has "another" meaning in our culture? I thought it was kind of cute. :-)

Around the base of the tree, you can see Sal beginning to plant Golden Mounds (sometimes also called Golden Dewdrops or Derantas). I love, love, love these bushes! The foliage has a lime green + yellow color combo, it's so fresh. They won't "compete" with all the bougainvillea color. They too thrive in the sub-tropical climate, need lots of sun, so it's a great spot for them. We finished off the circle with red mulch and it's looking a lot more spiffy out there now. Next project: trimming some of our palm trees ... yardwork has to be done year-round here in SoFla, but I love that!

Have a great week,