Dressing Up Our Site for the Holidays -- and Beyond

One thing about living in a house with an actual yard that we both miss is gardening.  Barry is a long-time vegetable gardener, and for many years, I always enjoyed planning landscaping beds and planting and tending flowers, shrubs, and herbs.  It always made me happy to see flowers blooming around our home.  

Since becoming full-time travelers, we haven't been able to do any gardening.  Until now, that is!  

Because we're in one spot in this central Florida RV park for a longer time than usual due to my orthodontia, Barry got the idea to dress up our site with some flowers and plants; it would be his Christmas present to me.  We also wanted to add a couple of decorative garden flags.  And we thought a couple of solar lights would mark where our plants were at night so no one would get too close to them after dark.

I ordered new garden flags online and a pair of solar torch lights from Amazon.  They are super cool at night as they have moving LEDs in a warm orange-yellow that actually looks like real flames.  They recharge in the Florida sunshine every day and come on automatically at dark.  So easy!  Our RV park neighbors admire them, and so do we.  We purchased the plants and pots at Home Depot after my last orthodontist appointment, as it is right across the road.

Although bright and sunny, it was a cool day in central Florida while I was potting up the Impatiens (a sun-loving variety) in a sweater. I'd been admiring the foliage plant with hot pink leaves on top that is ubiquitous in landscape plantings in this part of Florida, so we bought two and re-potted them as well.  I learned that they are Hawaiian Ti plants (Cordyline terminalis ).  They are also known as "good luck plant", and we could certainly use some of that after this year!  Finally, we placed a few Poinsettias around for the holiday season.

We created two symmetrical arrangements on either side of Pearl's front end, each with its own garden flag and solar torch light.  I love this Boston Terrier holiday flag I found on Etsy.  The palm tree is fitting for a Florida Christmas!

Here's the complete spread.

We added some LED holiday lights around Pearl's front end to complete the festive evening look.  

The torch light looks like a true flame as the LEDs turn off and on!

​We will have to leave the plants behind when I get my braces off and we finally leave this park, but we've made some friends who live here permanently, so we expect we'll have no trouble finding good homes for our "babies" when we move on.