🎅 Dog refused to play Santa - her reaction says everything

🎄 Christmas moment

Mango the Dog really tried to be festive! The Santa hat went on, slipped off, went back on, slipped again...
She sat there looking guilty, like she personally ruined Christmas... We forgave her. Obviously.

🐕 Mango's Christmas story

Mango is a black lab - loving, gentle, and loyal to her core.
One cool November night, she showed up at our gate and stayed there all night, waiting for someone to come back for her. No one did. We tried to find her family with no luck. So Mango stayed with us at TopTropicals with our rescued #PeopleCats.

When we took Mango to the vet for shots, we discovered she was pregnant! Maybe that is why she was left behind?

Right before Christmas, on December 17, 2022, Mango gave us eight beautiful puppies. Some stayed with TopTropicals - Sunshine, Draco, and Lilo - and the others went to close friends. They still come back to visit, and every year we get a full Mango family reunion.

🎁 Sometimes the best gifts show up quietly, wait patiently, and never leave.
Happy Holidays! Hope Santa brings you what you want!

🐈📸 Mango the Dog - the Christmas Dog of TopTropicals PeopleCats.Garden

#PeopleCats

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💐 Eight best winter blooming trees



🛒 Explore Winter bloomers

#Trees #Discover

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💐 Ten best shrubs for winter colors



🛒 Explore Winter bloomers

#Hedges_with_benefits #Discover

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💐 13 festive shrubs with bright flowers that bring color to your Winter Garden when everything else is dormant

Southern Living points to colorful berries as winter garden standbys. Tropical plants take it a step further, filling the cool season with real flowers, not just fruit. From vivid reds to electric blues, these plants prove winter does not have to be dull.

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  🌈 1. Gloxinia sylvatica - Bolivian Sunset

This plant waits for cool weather, then suddenly lights up the shade with fire-red blooms. Flowers appear almost overnight and continue through fall and winter. It rests in summer, returns in fall, spreads gently, and makes an easy, festive ground cover that is perfect for sharing.

👉 Learn more

• 
  🌈 2. Pereskia aculeata - Barbados gooseberry

An unusual vine that surprises in cool weather with delicate, star-shaped blooms followed by tasty fruit. It flowers steadily from fall through winter, adding light, airy color to fences and trellises when most vines are quiet.

👉 Learn more

• 
  🌈 3. Mansoa alliacea - garlic vine

Best known for its garlicky scent, this vine really shines in winter. Cooler temperatures bring clusters of lavender-purple flowers that brighten fences and trellises with very little effort.

👉 Learn more

• 
  🌈 4. Dombeya wallichii - tropical hydrangea

Large pink pompom blooms hang from bare branches in winter, creating a true holiday look. Lightly fragrant and impossible to miss, it brings hydrangea-style drama to the cool season.

👉 Learn more

• 
  🌈 5. Brunfelsia pauciflora Compacta - dwarf yesterday-today-tomorrow

Compact and cheerful, this shrub opens purple flowers that fade to lavender and white. The color shift makes it look like several plants blooming at once, perfect for pots or small garden spaces.

👉 Learn more

• 
  🌈 6. Clerodendrums

Long, cascading sprays of white flowers of Clerodendrum minahassae - fountain clerodendrum - spill from the plant during the cooler months. It brightens shaded areas and adds movement when the garden slows down. Most clerodendrums bloom through Winter!

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• 
  🌈 7. Tibouchina multiflora - glory bush

Soft, fuzzy purple blooms cover this shrub in winter, backed by velvety leaves that look good year-round. It adds strong color and texture during the cool season.

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• 
  🌈 8. Holmskioldia sanguinea - Chinese hat

Bright red, orange or yellow, hat-shaped bracts surround small flowers and hold their color through the cool months. The shape alone makes this shrub a standout in winter.

👉 Learn more

• 
  🌈 9. Barleria cristata - Philippine violet

This tough shrub blooms heavily in winter with rich purple flowers. It delivers dependable color when many plants take a break. There is a golden variety too!

👉 Learn more

• 
  🌈 10. Eranthemum pulchellum - blue sage, lead flower

Few plants offer true blue in winter. Electric-blue flower spikes appear in cool weather, adding rare color with minimal care.

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• 
  🌈 11. Petrea volubilis - queen's wreath

In winter, this woody vine erupts into cascading sprays of lavender star-shaped flowers. It creates a wisteria-like effect right when the garden needs it most.

👉 Learn more

• 
  🌈 12. Tabebuia varieties - dwarf golden and dwarf pink

These trees save their show for winter, blooming on bare branches. Golden forms glow yellow, while pink varieties cover themselves in soft trumpet-shaped flowers.

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🌈 13. Bauhinia trees - pink butterfly and Hong Kong orchid trees
Butterfly-shaped blooms open on leafless branches, giving bauhinias their signature winter elegance. The Hong Kong orchid tree stands out with especially large, vivid flowers.

• 👉 Learn more

🛒 Explore Winter bloomers

📚 Learn more:

• ▫️8 best flowering trees that will bloom for you in Winter
• ▫️Ten shrubs you need to have for winter colors
• ▫️Cassia vs Bauhinia: which is better as an everblooming container tree?

#Hedges_with_benefits #Discover

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🕯 Look what cat found in the box! (I wanna know too)

"What's in the box?!" - Brad Pitt, in the film Se7en (1995)

🐈📸 Cat Pelmen is satisfying his curiosity - a friend of TopTropicals PeopleCats.Garden.

#PeopleCats #Quotes

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🍇 How to have fruit year around from Everbearing Mulberry

📱

💗 Dwarf Everbearing and Dwarf Issai - Compact, container-friendly varieties perfect for small spaces. These dwarf trees (6-10 ft tall) are disease and drought resistant, with multiple crops year-round, even from the first year! Ideal for patios and small yards..

🛒 Plant hardy Mulberry year around

📚 Learn more:

• · Mulberry trees in Plant Encyclopedia
• · What are the best Mulberry varieties
• · Top 10 fast-fruiting trees: #7. Mulberry
• · How Mulberry fruit helps with diabetes

#Food_Forest

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🌳 What is so unique about Wurtz avocado?

Avocados come from three main regions, and each group has its own special look, taste, and growing habits. The three types are Mexican, Guatemalan, and West Indian. Many of today’s popular varieties are hybrids, mixing traits from these types as we mentioned in earlier post.

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  Wurtz Avocado, also known as Little Cado or Mexicola Dwarf, is special because it’s a true dwarf tree. That means it stays small, making it perfect for small gardens, patios, or containers. You can even grow it indoors in a sunny spot!
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  Wurtz is actually a Guatemalan-type avocado, not exactly a Florida or California type. It has a slightly different growth habit and pollination pattern than those two groups.
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  The fruit is small to medium in size, with smooth green skin and a rich, buttery flavor. Its flesh is creamy and full of healthy oils, much like the California (Hass-type) avocados.
• 
  In short: Wurtz is a compact, easy-to-grow avocado tree that produces delicious, buttery fruit. It’s perfect for gardeners who want a real avocado tree without needing a big yard.

✔️ Check outAvocado Variety Guide interactive chart. Sort them by flower type A or B, tree habit, fruit shape and quality, cold hardiness, origin, season and more!

🛒  Plant Avocado Wurtz
Explore Avocado varieties and Dwarf Avocado

📖 Our Book: Avocado Variety Guide, Snack or Guacamole?

• · Hard copy · PDF File Download

📚Learn more:

• · Avocado Variety Guide
• · Posts about #Avocado
• · Avocado tree (Persea americana) in Plant Encyclopedia

🎥 What is a Dwarf Condo Avocado that fruits at 3 ft tall? 📱

#Food_Forest #Avocado

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What is a Dwarf Condo Avocado and does it really fruit at 3 ft tall?

✅

🛒 Explore Avocado varieties and Dwarf Avocado

#Food_Forest #Avocado

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🏆 Nobel Prize goes to this pregnant male!

• 👀 Some Papaya trees really break the rules, and this one deserves its own headline. We have a true oddball in the garden - a male papaya tree that actually set a lot of fruit! Not just one fruit, but a whole cluster hanging from those long flower stalks.
• 👀 We all know that male papayas only make flowers but never set fruit. They only give us sweet fragrance from these flowers! By the way, thanks for the flowers, guys!
• 👀 The fruit comes from the female flowers that sit tight on the trunk. But every now and then, nature throws a curveball. It looks like a male tree forms perfect female flowers on its long stems and decides to become a parent after all!
• 👀 The result? Ripe, sweet papayas growing where they absolutely should not be. And yes, they even had seeds inside.
• 👀 Gardeners wait years for good surprises like this. A male papaya giving birth… that’s rare enough to give a Nobel prize!

🛒 Explore the unpredictable world of Papayas

📚 Learn more:

• ✦ More about Carica papaya from Plant Encyclopedia
• ✦ The secret facts of Papaya's private life: it can go transgender!
• ✦ Posts about #Papaya

#Food_Forest #Papaya

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🍴 Black sapote mocha dip: quick-n-fun exotic recipes

• 🔴Mix black sapote pulp with a spoon of cocoa powder.
• 🔴Stir in a drizzle of condensed milk for a silky dip.

🛒 Plant exotic Black Sapote Tree and enjoy sweet melting fruit

📚 Learn more:
▫️ Black Sapote tree (Diospyros digyna) in Plant Encyclopedia

#Food_Forest #Recipes

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