1/29/11

Mid WInter Musings

Speaking of Tillandsias, I must be doing SOMETHING right - one of them is blooming, which is really unusual for January! Maybe it's an extremely early sign of Spring (yeah...., that must be it!)



i have to turn the small gas heater in the Florida room on for a while every morning and evening in this weather, too, since the only South facing window is in there, and so that is where i keep all my tropical plants that live outside in the Summer.


 This pot of succulents summer over in my front porch box (the one facing West against the brick). In that box i have a mix of tropical and hardy succulents - the hardies are still out there -, since it gets so god awful hot that poor little annuals just won't make it. i have a thermometer out there that regularly reads 120-130 F when the air temperatures are in the 80's! These look so nice that i'm going to hate to break them up - i may have to leave as is and buy new ones for the box!

The pond has been frozen over for well over a month now, which is the longest period of time i can remember since we had the pond. Let's see, for December, there were 24 days in which the high temperatures were freezing or below! For January, there were 19 days so far, and really no change predicted for the rest of the month. And almost all the rest were in the 30's. So it has been at least TWO months that the pond has been frozen over. There were a couple of crises when the brand new (last winter) deicer decided to die just as it got real cold! Tractor Supply will be hearing about that! For a couple of days, all i had was a length of 2" PVC pipe stuck thru the ice for a tiny bit of oxygen! Finally found my back up, and have since seen some fish in there, plus my youngest Koi, so hopefully the older, i.e., hardier ones should be OK. Even saw some fry,(i really think calling baby fish "fry" is pretty funny - usually when i hear "Fish Fry" i'm thinking about making some tartar sauce)!


And the cats appreciate the sunny weekend days when i warm up the room and let them pretend they're actually outside!

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