i’m really not spending all winter vacationing, but i’d like to be!
but the thing is, i’m in this play, i probably mentioned that, and we started rehearsals a few weeks ago, but we didn’t have rehearsals all week this week because one of the people in he play was going on vacation.
we had thought about going down to gulf shores this week, but it didn’t work for wayne, so that’s why we went to gulf shores a few weeks ago, at the end of january.
but then i kept thinking about how mom hasn’t been anywhere in years and she love love loves to travel but doesn’t have any friends to go with. her friend wanda is constantly taking trips all over the place; she just got back from cuba and his headed to south africa sometime this month i think, but she seems to have things planned a long way out. i keep encouraging mom to see if wanda would want to take a simpler, shorter trip somewhere, bu like i said, wanda is always on the move.
so i started looking into short trips to florida, and last wednesday i booked us for four nights at a hotel in fort myers beach. we left on superbowl sunday and got back last night.
it was fun but exhausting and IN THE 80s EVERY DAY!!!
we took a dolphin cruise, we hiked, we went to the beach…
amazing, but it’s more amazing that we even stay up here all winter long. i’m already making forays into research for a couple months at least next winter.
i only took photos with my phone, and i have many of them, even a couple good ones of the dolphins, but right now here are all the leftover photos from january.
when we got back from gulf shores, i noticed that this plant had bloomed – it’s one of the several plants that mom and dad left here when they moved out, and it has never flowered.
i’m pretty sure mom said it’s a begonia, but i looked up begonias and there are approximately a million billion different varieties, so i can’t be sure this is one. but it’s really cool, i think, and the flowers are very interesting.
here’s the shelf along one wall; we didn’t have these big shelves up last year, and this year i was able to cram many more plants in.
i bought this tiny candy corn plant a few years ago, and it continues to get bigger and bigger. i didn’t even put it back outside last summer, and soon it will take over the entire shelf.
this giant fern is too heavy to move anywhere, and too big to be anywhere else in the house, but i somehow managed to lift it to the top shelf. that geranium next to it was getting too big so i cut it as far back as i could in the fall, but once again, it’s a giant.
i worry, but only a little, about this shelf because the top tier is bowed in so much – that giant plant on the right is very heavy. it’s another one that mom and dad left here, and i always whack away at it, but it always comes back.
the tall plant in the middle on the top shelf is a crown of thorns cactus that erica gave me. she kept saying it didn’t get enough room in her apartment, but i think she just didn’t water it enough. i’ve been watering it pretty regularly and it’s doing well. that giant pot of impatiens there on the bottom just keeps growing and flowering, no matter how much i cut it all back. plants love the hot tub room.
here’s one whole corner.
i just noticed that a couple of other plants are flowering right now, so maybe i’ll take a picture of them. it’s nice to have so many cheerful flowers in the winter, now that i’m back here where we’ll be happy if it gets up above freezing sometime soon!
we did have a few giant plants out on the screened porch; kevin had a space heater going out there, and he put some kind of insulating plastic over the windows, but when i was gone he realized that the entire downstairs of the house was chilly but it was hot upstairs, so he brought the giant plants in and shut the door. so now our heat bill should be way, way less…but now our small dining room is filled with giant plants. i had to claw my way through them last night to get to the cabinet for a wine glass, which was critical.
hopefully i’ll find someplace to put them, although really, there’s no place at all.
i’m not gonna worry about that right now.
ok then,
mrs. friday afternoon already hughes.