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!

Winter Beauty?

The light is different. There's always"the" day around this time of year that suddenly looks a little brighter, even if it's cold with a thick cloud cover - the sun is a little higher, the shadows (when you can see any) are a little more defined - it's hard to describe, but the FEEL is different! And yes, our days are already 50 minutes longer than they were a month ago, too - and while it's not real noticeable yet, if we do have an rare evening without clouds, it makes quite an impact on us!

i'm trying...i really am. The sun was out yesterday, and the Porcupine grass was catching some of the late afternoon rays, so i was moved enough to take a few photos. Looks nice enough, you can't tell it's only 15 degreesF, can you?

Even a little blue sky can help this time of year, it brings out what little colors there are in the dead of winter.

Looking out into the Florida room (the name of which makes me laugh THIS time of year - it's not usually heated, so it sure doesn't FEEL like Florida!). i can almost fool myself into thinking it's a warmer time of the year, but i can't keep out of the back of my mind that any of these pictures would look 100% better if they were taken in June! 

All in all, it's my favorite day of January - The LAST one!