That's the last place (well not REALLY the last) I would want to live. Heck, I would be the ONLY "English-speaking American" there.

Melissa, this little Vanda bloom is a cutie!

I love that flower, Melissa. Did you read the article in the January AOS magazine about the history of V. testacea?

karmatree said:A bit wimpy? We are 100% authentic crybaby weenies when it comes to temps in the 30s-40s for two to three whole nights out of the year...(oh no!)

Ken, sounds cheaper and less complicated just to move to Miami.

Melissa...I have a soft spot for the mini delicate blooms...they are SO CUTE...can you post a picture of the whole plant? I may want this....

Kate, I do too. It is a cutie and a nice simple one to bloom for a newbie Vanda grower (me). I need to email Martin to find out if he plans to register it. Looking at it critically, I'm not sure it was the 'best' cross as garayi lost the orange/peach color.

Basically, the cross faded the garayi orange and faded the testacea yellow, which is really too bad. Sometimes that happens when experimenting with the crosses. I am evaluating it as an AOS judge might when looking at a new hybrid. I have overheard them say "why would someone do this cross" and "boy that hybrid picked up the worst of both parents."

At any rate, it is always fulfilling when we get them to bloom so I won't judge it too harshly until I see the full blooms.

drdawg said:I love that flower, Melissa. Did you read the article in the January AOS magazine about the history of V. testacea?

Ken, I didn't. I get the electronic version of the Magazine and have yet to get it to download correctly. I will try again. Sounds very interesting.

It is quite an extensive article, Melissa, and I found it very interesting to read the history and the confusion surrounding these plants.

I was born and raised in northern Indiana so I know what cold is all about. However, we weren't trying to grow mangos and lychees in the yard either. In fact, we didn't even know what they were. If we get a good hard freeze tonight, I, and all of my neighbors, will lose thousands of dollars in landscape plants. For example, banana plants will be killed to the ground and then come back from underground rhizomes in the spring but it will take two years to see another banana. Small mango trees will be dead but the larger ones will live with a 20 to 40 percent dieback. No mangos this year. It's the same with avocados, lychee, papayas and longans as they are in full bloom now. The passion vines will all die. Citrus trees will probably live but forget the fruit. It is also peak strawberry season so the farmers will be running sprinklers all night to try to save some of the crop. It will be a wait and see with my palms and cycads. It is not so much the replacement money as it is the rarity of the species that I have collected. A freeze here is serious business with a lot on the line.

The record low for Tampa on this date is 35 degrees and they are calling for around 30 tonight. It will be the first time in four years that we have had a freeze. I'm going now to get the blankets down from the attic to cover what I can. I'll start with the cymbidiums, spathloglottis and phaius orchids and go until I run out of blankets. Wish me luck.

Jim

My goodness, Jim. Y'all are going to break all records, and not the records you want to break. It is sad to even consider how many ten's of thousands of people and their plants will be affected by this cold. I wish you luck and hopefully, it won't be quite as cold as predicted. it is still only 20F here, so this front is extremely deep, which unfortunately will probably impact all of central and northern FL.

Worse yet are all of the homeless people who overwinter in Florida. There is a massive drive on to provide shelters for everyone. It's going to be a ruff night.

Jim

Yes, lots of things to be considered down your way.

Can you get your hands on a lot of Pine Straw? It is the best for healing in plants and straw bales too. Good luck! We forgot to drip the water last night and the faucet froze.

It is going to be another cold one tonight.

Lucky for us, not quite as cold as they predicted last night, but tonight if the wind dies down . . . it will be brutal. I covered everything I could get at last night, a couple of covers blew off but that was at least a good 'rehearsal' for tonight. Cool as it is right now even with the sun blazing, I'm leaving the covers on until later to see if the wind dies down and I can give the plants a breath of warmer air for a few hours.

It was nearly 60deg. inside my little greenhouse shelf units this morning, with one tiny candle flame burning in each, under a damp clay pot for humidity. That heating system is working like a charm for me! I think I've got enough old Xmas pillar candles to last me until this cold business ends.

Kate, I am absolutely a charter member of the crybaby weenies club. Just didn't want to speak for you . . .

Mulching helps some, Melissa, but it's the frost kill of the top growth that does in a lot of our evergreen tropical plants.

The ground collects and retains lots of heat, as the sun is pretty strong even on cold days like today, so blankets over the tops of the plants 'trap' the heat rising from the ground and prevent the foliage getting burnt, to a large extent.

I think I ran a bit of water from five sinks (alternating hot/cold) and as far as I know, all pipes are fine. We are supposed to be way warmer tonight, only 21F predicted! I might run a couple of faucets just in case though.

We have lots of pine straw here but I don't use any of it. I have only oaks and cedar trees at this house but had huge pines at my previous house. Two men, finger-tip-to-finger-tip could not reach around some of those pines. Twice-a-year I raked pine straw and did use a lot of that in the flower beds.

My house is chock full of my plants. I even had to hop around chasing an anole that got dragged in with them by accident!!!

BRRRR!!!!! This wind is a killer! I had to use Chapstick on my lips for the first time since I moved from Northern VA!

Just mounted this little fellow before it bloomed. Pot. Shinfong Little Sun 'Youngmin Golden Boy' it said on the label. That's a mouthful for such a petite flower, but its color says enough for me to fall in love.

And Jim, so sorry about all your fruits. I totally understand. I often dealt with heartbreak at surprise late spring frosts in VA. I had a 1-acre vegetable garden. A huge percentage of my asparagus shriveled into crust the first year I was actually able to harvest it. After waiting 3 years, the percentage that was safe to harvest was consumed by Jack Frost!

Pretty little flower, Kate. I am not worried about losing anything, but that all would change if we lost power. I do worry about all my garlic though. It all has nice, green tops and I would hate to lose those leaves to freeze. I don't know whether the bulbs would just start all over or would rot. I don't want to find out. My asparagus is heavily mulches with oak leaves and hopefully it will sprout in the spring as usual.

The worst thing I ever lost was my corkscrew pine. What a blow that was!

Here are two rare green bag plants which only bloom in the winter about every four or five years. Enjoy!

Jim

Jim, was it a Pandanus? The neighboring house to us is a vacation rental and they have a huge one. Come dig it up!

I have a bunch of bag plants, too! And T-Shirt plants!

Lovely, Jim. I have the more common and boring white variety. Frost cloth brugs, frost cloth hibiscus and cymbidiums.

Strangely enough they say if the wind stays up, the temps will not go as low, 'stirring of the air mass' evidently. Even though it feels colder to us, that would be better for the plants.

Let's cross fingers for the wind to stay so the cold doesn't settle in. It's still gusting nicely here.