Gigi, they are gorgeous!

Ken, I guess you're getting the cold air before we do on this front - our forecast is for a low of 59 tonight, high of 65 tomorrow then 45 tomorrow night and 42 on Tuesday night. Wind is still off the Gulf so it won't get cold until it turns around out of the north.

I was counting on not having to cover up my hoop house tonight, since I've been feeling rather rocky with an infection (not Covid) this weekend. I guess I'll venture out there and see how cold it feels, and maybe beg Marsh to help me cover if needed.

That may be true. You may be a day behind us, Elaine. I wouldn't worry a great deal regardless. I wouldn't think that mid 40's would be damaging, if you even get that low.

I just checked the Weather Channel, and your low is only supposed to be 58. Our low has now been changed from a 42 to a 49. No problems for either of us.

Yeah, that gives me a day's grace, for sure. But my Vandas are out there in the hoop house now, because it's the sunniest, warmest spot in the garden all winter. They start dropping leaves if I let them get below about 50deg. I also have tomatoes on the vine and some great looking pepper plants in bloom that need to keep warm. So, tomorrow evening, the cover goes on again. C'est la vie.

It's not onerous, except that I'm a bit shaky from my illness at the moment, and requires climbing on my little 3-step ladder.

Hope you feel better Elaine!

Gigi. It's already getting better. I had a bad reaction to the antibiotics at first, listed side-effects are "nausea" but you must take the darned stuff with food. But that seems to have calmed down and it's working. If I can just sleep well tonight . . .

Get better quickly, Elaine. I'm glad it's not covid. My brother and his wife now have a second round of covid, and it must be the Delta variant. They are really feeling bad. He's a physician and she's a nurse practitioner. They had the vaccinations and they had bad covid symptoms after every injection. My wife and I only had sore arms. I guess we were lucky.

Good to hear!

Been worried about the flu season. So, I've been stocking up on Publix ginger and been making spareribs soup with ginger, celery, potatoes and mushrooms. Hubby likes it especially now that it is cooler weather.

Good thing about using the spareribs for soup, I sometimes keep reheating up to 3 times. Ginger helps with nausea and helps cut down recovery time for runny nose or flu. (or at least that's what our family thinks.)

Hope your brother and his wife feel better Ken.

My bro n law is a doctor and his wife is a nurse too. They are seeing uptick of covid cases and it is also flu season. Omicron has similar symptoms as flu. So hoping not to get the flu and covid (flurona) at the same time. Been trying to avoid going anywhere crowded.

My next door neighbor here in Florida and my son in Arizona recently had identical symptoms - bad sore throat ( both dr.'s thought it was strep but it tested negative) high temp and significant respiratory symptoms. They both repeatedly tested negative for covid and flu. Obviously, something nasty is going around, be careful out there folks. I don't leave the house without my N95 and I hate it but will continue to put up with it if I can avoid what the neighbor and son said was "the worst ever."

We haven't been to a lot of places lately and that's how I collected 65+ (and counting) desert roses and several clearance succulents. The only place we are comfortable visiting is the Lowe's and HD garden center…at night when there is hardly anyone around. That's when new plants arrive and new clearance are put on the clearance rack.And As soon as we get home, we take showers. Clothes go to the laundry.

I told my bro-n-law about our routine and he is a doctor, he thought that it made sense. So he said he does the same thing now when he gets home. He makes sure he has showered and clean before interacting with his kids. Even though the wear PPE in the hospital an additional precaution is needed.

LOL, thanks to the pandemic I have been collecting begonias but online rather than in stores. Good to know about the stores putting their merch out at night. Never thought of that.

This morning I finally figured out how to play Wordle, I had been overthinking it. Anything to keep occupied these days.

Yes! I think mostly around Thursday night or Friday night. Here is last year's haul only.

The blooming and pretty ones:




The non-blooming/getting dormant, seedling, new experiments and etc.:

That's quite a collection, Gigi.

Ken! This is most likely just a fraction of your collection.

Gigi, I think you need to call yourself GigiAdenium!! Pretty awesome! Wow!!

Ursula said:Gigi, I think you need to call yourself GigiAdenium!! Pretty awesome! Wow!!

I said the same thing in Adenium forum. But first love never dies and my first love is plumeria. They just don't bloom this late in the season. But I have 70 plus in pots and 90% are seed grown so definitely a private collection to me:).

It's great you can grow both!!

Yes, I have to have plumeria because of its fragrance.

No, Gigi. I decided summer before last that I couldn't continue collecting adenium and maintain my passion for growing, propagating, and sometimes selling orchids and plumeria. I began to reduce my adenium collection then, and over an 18 mo. period, sold about 3/4 of what I had (including two, 40 yr. old plants). I've only got about 18 varieties now, generally only a single plant of each variety. Eight of those have never bloomed (grown from seed) and as they bloom, they may or may not be something that I want to keep. If any are similar to what I already have that bloom (older plants), or simply flowers that I don't care for, I'll just sell those off.

I have nothing close to your collection of plants and varieties.