Sign of the Season

[junglegeorge12]

My wife is elated her poinsettas are nice and red, and getting pretty big. All of our flowers are about to have their bigger winter bloom (they stay in bloom all year but have several explosions a year), looks like we will have an explosion jus tin time for Xmas. Where do you get those gorgeous camellias Mike? Tillasandia looks nice too.

I hope my orchids kick off again for the new year. They usually hit right before or afte xmas and then agian in late spring. Flower gardens are my other passion, after koi. My two hobbies, besides Lionel trains and 50s vintage stuff.

I got a guy down here with a warehouse full of old 45 playing juke boxes. he can retrofit hem to connect to a puter and play, or a 50 cd cartridge that isn't visible. the old 45s still drop and 'play', but the needle doesnt touch them and wear them out. Smart guy.

What other stuff do you enjoy/collect Mike? Love to know where you get your flowers. I will post a few pics of mine just b 4 x-mas.

[aquitori]

Sign of the season is when my fish show what they did throughout summer to look good in the fall..

[MikeM]

Jungle: The mini-botanical garden has been assembled from all sorts of places over the past 28 years. Camellias are a favorite. We are about as far south as they will grow, and we cannot keep the "late season" bloomers that look so good around Atlanta. And, Bromeliads were once a passion. Now I keep no more than 200 varieties, mainly Vrieseas. As the koi hobby grew timewise, other things had to be scaled back. ...Many koikeepers also have a gardening/botanical interest, having entered the hobby through a watergarden. There is a satisfaction derived from interacting with nature, and koi are more outgoing than most plants I know.

[adreamer2]

Nearly frozen solid at 64 degrees?... Geez-oh-man, where do you live?....

My pond is surrounded by 1 1/2 feet of snow... and it's like 17 degrees here....

Ha! Listen to you all and your 68 degree of bad weather...

I would not mind 68 or even 48 degrees right now.....

Talk about cold.... I'm in Pittsburgh, PA (North East) and I say you don't know what it means to be chilled by the weather!.....

Adreamer2

[junglegeorge12]

I live in Puerto Rico so I was teasing you cold weather boys. I am wearing no shirt, windows open, right at about 70 and a nice freshly cool breeze is blowing across the top of my mountain. The palm trees are gently waving and the koi are having a growth spurt.

I do know what cold weather is, grew up in D.C. and went to school for a year in northern wisconsin. 100 below with wind chill up there. I miss the snow some, but would not want any more than about a week or two of it.

[luke frisbee]

Kids Grandpa George is talking about his youth again...."100below wind chill"

[junglegeorge12]

Yes Luke, 100 below with wind chill. At night, in northern wisconsin, on the western border, right off the mississipi. there and nothern Minnesota. We had a week or two of 50 below or more with wind chill, and it dropped to 100 below with wind chill on a couple nights (1981 or 82). I left and never went back after that. Too cold for me. Made pittsburgh look warm and DC look hot.

[MikeM]

The new year has begun on the warm side, with afternoon high 79F.
The orange and yellow flower spike of an Aechmea is beginning to emerge, trailing violets bloom in the shade, Camellia japonica are showing their colors with angel-wing begonias, and pondside Kalanchoe are in bud. Pond water at 10am was 64F. The koi have been fasting the past week.

[junglegeorge12]

The orchids aren't blooming They pull this sometimes, we just have to wait.

I will take and post some pics of the flowers tomorrow.

The New Year's fireworks here are incredible. Everyone on the whole island lights them off at midnight. Thousands of displays going off at once. From up here, it looks like a carpet of fireworks and the smoke cloud is so thick afterwards we cannot see the city lights. I will see if the video came out good enough to post pics here.

[junglegeorge12]

The video of the fireworks did not come out so hot, just looks like lightbulbs flashing all over the place, too many too fast for the cam to adjust to and focus in on the colors. I will see if I can touch them up and show at least a resemblance of how awesome it looked later.

Here are some of our flowers. I will take more later today and post them.

The first pic is my son's castle. Later I will put a pick of him, he is four and the best thing I have bred yet.....