Original pot of Bromeliads left behind

Criminal caught - released to the wild.
Caterpillars can do an immense amount of damage to your garden in a short amount of time with their voracious appetites.  In the years of having my container garden on my lanai, I've learned what can happen when a caterpillar gets loose on my lanai.  The cute, little ball of fuzz moves from one plant to the next chowing down on all the new, tender growth first.  I have this crazy solution for this problem when I find an infected plant.  I quickly pull it away from the rest of the plants and quarantine it.  Where exactly is quarantine?  Out of the lanai and to the back of the house.  The back of the house is nasty!  I hide all the plants that I am not ready to deal with in the back of the house.  This is because I live in a deed-restricted community that has a rule book that is so thick that it covers how many and what kind of pets you are permitted to have.  

Oleander flowers

Oleander all grown up

 Soooo, the last time we had an infection, my oleander tree (also known as the Charlie Brown tree by my husband), was moved to the back of the house along with the white bird of paradise.   Both of the plants were kept in medium sized pots at the time.  I just planted them in the ground since the general rule I follow is once they are outside the cage they can never be returned.  They did ten thousand times better outside in the ground.    If I could only be sure the deer wouldn't eat the rest of my plants I'd be able to move them outside too and they'd also be able to grow much bigger and flourish.

Today, I spent a lot of time outside doing more spring cleaning.  I planted the last of the seedlings into permanent homes and resowed more chive seeds.  I staked the last of the bean plants to something or other.  It's quite funny to see them all because I went hunting in the garage for whatever I could find.   So there are metal pipes, dowel rods and even a  couple of curtain rods in my beans.  The beans aren't picky as long as it is sturdy enough and straight, they don't care.  When the bean plant bushes up a bit, it will hide the ugliness of whatever I used anyway.  I felt like I got a lot done because I felt all grimy and my body hurt all over.    

More than anything, it looked clean enough to sit down and have coffee out there in the morning.  What is clean enough?  Clean enough means that I will sit and drink my coffee without getting up every 2 seconds to clean something or fix something.  Clean enough means that I will sit and drink my coffee and actually enjoy the view.  What does the view look like?  I thought you'd never ask!