A few friends recently asked me about my rain barrel, so I figured I should revive the old gardening blog. Although you can purchase a rain barrel online or at a store, I suggest searching for an event in your community where you can buy one at a discounted price. A couple of years ago, I attended a local event called Greenfest and bought a Systern Rain Barrel for only $58.
We first placed the rain barrel in a location where a good amount of rain ran off of the house. This was not very effective. Once we had gutters installed on the back of our house, we connected the rain barrel to the gutter with a rain barrel gutter diverter. This diverts the water to the rain barrel until it is full. Once the rain barrel is full, the water is diverted out of the gutter. This made collecting rain water much more efficient. Well, at least in the rainy months! 
A few other suggestions: Raise the rain barrel so you can place a bucket or watering can underneath. We built a simple stand using concrete blocks. Raising the barrel also allows gravity to help you to collect the water. I originally had the rain barrel on the ground and tried using the hose that came with the systern to water plants. This method was very frustrating since it took a long time to get the water to come out.
Yes, the azaleas are beautiful, as are many of the other spring blooms. However, there is one spring bloom that stands above all the rest - the Tabebuia (tab-eh-BOO-yuh) tree. Jeff and I call these trees "Tabs" for short. The past few weeks, the tree canopy in our neighborhood has been glowing with the pink and yellow blooms from this tree. We don't get fall color here in FL, but the Tabebuia trees give us plenty of color in the spring! I took a few pictures of tabs in our neighborhood (below). The above photo was taken at nearby Leu Gardens. 
The flowers littering the grass are almost as pretty as the tree itself! There are some areas that are completely covered by these blooms. 
In the photo below, you can see the blooms from the yellow tab followed by the blooms from the pink tab in the background. Unfortunately, we had some very windy weather before I could get out to take a picture of the pink tab. The wind blew off most of its flowers. 
I may have to talk to a landscape architect that I know to see if a Tabebuia tree will fit into our landscape plan! I would love to have one in our yard.
Here are a couple more pictures from the Flower and Garden Festival - a few of the many topiaries featured during the festival.
Spring is finally here! I decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather and the extra hour of sunlight today and spend some time in the garden. I spent over four hours pruning and trimming. I was happy to discover that only a handful of our plants died from the freezing temperatures.
