How Does My Garden Grow?

The weather here in Southern California has been phenomenal lately. Seriously. It has been the most perfect Spring so far. Very mild. Low 70's with a delicious breeze and then cooling in the evenings. (Go ahead. Take a moment. I'll wait until you're over your jealousy.)

As the days grow longer and the weather gets so super inviting, and in spite of our busy schedules, we always set aside a few hours on the weekends just to be outside in our own space. You know how much I love my garden. Well, this kind of a Spring practically screams, "Come out and play right now!" 

Also, I'm thinking I'm going to have a Big Birthday Celebration next month (Eric and I both have "milestone" birthdays this year) and because our house is freakishly small charmingly small and cottage-like, the party will have to be outside. Just like we did last year with Jonathan's graduation party.

We started cruising around both our front and back yards, making notes about what needed to be done and as we looked at our potted plants and beds we truthfully started to feel a little embarrassed. Don't even get me started on the condition of our lawn.

Time to bring out The Secret Weapon.

Our "go to" brand has always been Scotts MiracleGro®. We made a run to Walmart and returned with bags of Scotts MiracleGro® Potting Soil and also the Miracle-Gro® Garden Soil to refresh our potted plants and our beds.

We already use and love all of the Miracle-Gro® products for our lawn and garden, so I am delighted to participate in their Express Yourself Program.

As you know, over the warmer months we spend a lot of time outdoors. I also think that because we entertain so much and that that is such a family affair, prepping our home and garden in anticipation is always a group project. In other words, getting ready for the fun is well, in a word...fun.

"Honey, it's time to get out the wheelbarrow!" Yay!

The secret to our gardening success (besides the perfectly perfect So Cal weather) is Scotts Miracle-Gro®. Also, my home and my garden are definitely an expression of me and (full disclosure here) I really love driving up the street and seeing my white picket fence and all my flowers in bloom. 

I fantasize a little about when we throw our party and people drive up and see all the beautiful green growth and the flowers in beautiful bloom. (I know. Shut up.)

We recently spent a sunny afternoon - a perfectly perfect Southern California afternoon, not too hot, not too cool, but that's not important right now - weeding and pruning and refreshing all of our pots and garden beds.

The pots got a big dose of potting soil. We repotted some and just added soil to some others. The plants are super happy. Soil is a big thing for them, you know. 

Look! My newly re-potted hydrangeas are just going to sing! They already look totally happy. Am I right?

I want to make a distinction between the two Scotts products we use:

1) The Scotts Miracle-Gro® Potting Mix is for indoor and outdoor plants in containers. So we went around the entire garden re-potting and refreshing our pots. They were visibly happy. 

2) The Scotts Miracle-Gro® Garden Soil is what we use in our beds.  

The beds have eroded some from last year and I know they get so much happier when we give them this delicious soil because it also feeds for up to 6 months. 

Plus, my roses are already starting their first bloom and I'm a little crazed thinking about how awesome they're going to be after they get some fresh soil. 

Here's a gratuitous photo of my beautiful Disneyland Roses enjoying their first bloom. You can see how the bed has eroded and doesn't look happy.

I can hardly wait to see what they will do next month after the soil re-fresh and some feeding. Stay tuned. 

So, we spent a really fun afternoon doing all the prep work and planning the upcoming Big Birthday Celebration. And I'm getting super excited. 

Once we get our garden and backyard freshened up and it's all happy again, all I will have to worry about is the food for our party. I think all the prepping and planning may just be my very favorite part of entertaining. 

Do you do this same thing? Are you planning on fixing up your lawn and garden for the warmer months? Tell me all about it.

If you're on Instagram or Twitter, please share your garden photos and use the hashtag, #Mijardinalidad 

Remember to always read and follow label directions for the referenced products.

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Scotts . The opinions and text are all mine.

 

Los Angeles Cuban Festival - A Giveaway

Living in Southern California, it's sometimes difficult to find Cubans living nearby. Which is why I'm super delighted to be involved in this year's LA Cuban Festival. It's the very best place to celebrate all the things that we love most about being Cuban.

It's a wonderful event bringing together our people for a fun day of Cubania. There will be food, music, and all things Cuban. This pleases me greatly, because, as you know, I am always looking for the best places to get Cuban food in So Cal (but that's not important right now).

I'll be there with my family and my extended LA Cuban Family: the guys from Wassup En LA, the folks from Cuban Heritage Day at Dodger Stadium, and many more. 

The LA Cuban Festival will be held at

Rainbow Lagoon Park in Long Beach, California, on Sunday, July 13th, 2014 from 10:00am to 8:00pm. 

If you haven't yet bought your tickets, I'd like to offer you some! If you'd like to go ahead and purchase pre-sale tickets on your own, please visit Fiestalegre Promotions.

The featured artists are:

• Issac Delgado
• Timbalive
• Charanga Cubana
• MC Paloma Morales
• Super DJ Robby
• DJ Warapo

You know you want to be there for all this awesome Cubanity. (<--that should be a word.)

Today's giveaway is sponsored by the LA Cuban Festival. Thanks, guys! 

To enter this drawing for Two Free Tickets to the LA Cuban Festival on July 13th, please leave a comment on this post and answer the following:

• Where do you live in So Cal? 
• Can you find Cuban food there? (This is important information to have, people!)

For an extra entry, go to Facebook and "like" LA Cuban Festival. Come back and tell me:

• "I like the LA Cuban Festival!" 

Please leave your comment on this post and I'll choose one winner on:

Thursday, July 3rd, 2014 at 8 pm PST.

I really want to see you there! Oh, the Cubanity!

Island Girl

For as long as I can remember, summer meant finding a body of water to jump into to cool off. Simply stated, if it's hot and I see water, I want to jump in.

Maybe this desire comes from having been born on an island. Surrounded by pristine and inviting blue everywhere always made me want to be a part of the liquid beauty.

In Cuba, we spent our summers at Varadero Beach. The most perfectly perfect perfection of the beach experience anywhere. When we arrived in Miami in 1961, we used to go to Crandon Park ("El Charquito") where there were zero waves and so sometimes the water temperature would get into the 90's. Crazy, right?

Well, when I was 9, we moved to Southern California. There were many culture-shock moments moving from East to West coast, and the personality type of the Pacific Ocean offered one of the most shocking.

The Pacific Ocean, I quickly learned, was not the same as the Caribbean. Or for that matter, the Atlantic. For one thing, there was nothing "pacific" about it. There were waves. And when I say "waves," I mean WAVES.

There was an entire language dedicated to the description of the ocean activity. We learned to recognize when a "set" was coming in. We learned (after getting tumbled a few times) how to move toward the breaking waves instead of away from them to keep from getting pounded into the sand by the shore break. "Shore break" is a thing. Who knew?

There's an entire "surf science" based on high and low tides and there are optimal times to surf. Beach breaks are better at a medium tide - mostly early morning or early evening. Reef breaks will "close out" if the tide is too high. If you get caught in a rip tide that starts dragging you out to sea, you swim sideways, not toward shore.  See what I mean? So much to know. What a contrast between all of this and the yay-we're-at-the-beach-let's-go-swimming simplicity of the Caribbean and the Atlantic.

Also, in Cuba as well as in South Florida, ocean water is pretty much the same as bath water. You can walk right in with no shock to your system. The coolest the water gets there (please correct me if I'm wrong) is maybe the mid-80's. Still a very comfortable temp.

Ah, but in Southern California, the days of sea-water-the-same-as-bath-water were long gone. The water temperature here on the West Coast is routinely in the low to mid 60's. The cool water helps keep the coastal temperature refreshing, but surfing (which my people do routinely) or swimming usually requires a wetsuit.

There are lots of beach days where I don't do more than dip a toe in and complain about the cold water. And I miss being in the water. It's the only downside to life on this coast. (Well, that and our ridiculously liberal governor who is driving our economy into the ground and business out of the Golden State, but that's not important right now.)

However, these past couple of weeks there has been a heat wave here in So Cal. And mercifully the water temperature has risen along with the thermometer.

That's right. 74 degrees! Air and water temperature! And this coincided perfectly with our beach vacation. Thank you, God!

We spent our entire week splashing around, surfing, boogieing, and just cooling off in the ocean. Strangers were remarking to each other about how warm the water was. 74 degrees, people! Southern Californians headed to the shore in droves. We high fived each other over the awesome air/water conditions.

"The water is so incredibly warm!" We exclaimed to anyone who would listen.

I know. It's not Caribbean warm, but this island girl did not care. When the air and water are about the same (74!) temperature, magic happens. It was like this for the entire week we were vacationing at the beach. And there was no getting me out of the water.

Even when it was time to get out of the water.