When I lived up north I would get stung on average about 3 times a summer. I have an allergic reaction to bee stings so would always immediately drop whatever I was doing and go take Benadryl and fall asleep. We have lived in Florida for 9 years and I have yet to experience a bee sting. I don't know if I'm just lucky and should knock on wood, or if there's just a different type of bee here.

The bees that usually got me were the honey bees or yellow jackets. Their sting was fierce and the area would immediately start to balloon. Here in Florida I see black bees and wasps, but nothing that I can actually say compares to the honey bee. Now my friend at Taming of the Band-Aid knows a thing or two about bees. In fact, he has some gorgeous pix of a paper wasp and a great black wasp but I haven't seen anything mentioned about honey bees. Anyway, I choose to believe that even if they do exist on the Gulf Coast they just don't like our property. That way I can continue to walk in the grass barefoot without a second thought about getting stung.

The reason I go through this story is because I was reading an article the other day that talked about how to deal with bee stings. Of course the best suggestion is to avoid bees, closely followed by wearing insect repellant. Don't swat the suckers if they do decide to check you out and be sure not to wear that new perfume you just purchased in case the bee happens to like it. If you do get stung, run cold water on the area. To help with the pain, apply a paste of 1 tsp baking soda and 1 tsp of water. Here's to hoping there are no honey bees. Happy Florida Gardening.

I love everything about purslane. It stands up to heat and drought, spreads where you want it to, and makes a great ground cover. Not to mention the fact that the flowers are absolutely gorgeous! And, to top everything off, you can actually eat the plant.

When I lived in Maryland, I found purslane for sale once at one of my favorite garden shops. The summary info on the accompanying card talked about what a weed it is but it does well as a summer addition to the garden. I was very taken with the plant so when I moved to Florida I was not at all surprised to see flats of purslane available in the garden stores. What I didn't know, but should have suspected, is that it is a relative to the mexican rose. As a kid, I remember my mother used to plant mexican rose throughout her Maryland garden. I loved looking for the plants going to seed and would pop the seed pods and scatter the seeds throughout the garden. I'll bet she always wondered how the portulaca spread so far into her gardens when she used them as border plants.

As I did a little research on purslane, the latin name portulaca oleracae kept coming up, so that's when I put 2 and 2 together so to speak. Mexican rose or moss rose is a smaller variety that tolerates the same conditions as its bigger sister. I particularly like mexican rose in hanging containers since it will drape down as it grows and also does well in rock gardens. Here's something I didn't know - porto means to carry and lac means milk, hence explaining the succulent leaves.

Purslane and moss rose have very showy and colorful flowers. The blooms last one day and range from white to pink to orange, yellow and red and multi-hues in between. My favorite is a mexican rose I have in a lion's head pot. It is white with a lavender center - absolutely without a doubt drop dead beautiful! If you'd like some steadily performing color in your garden, count on portulaca to do it. Happy Florida Gardening.