Wednesday, October 21, 2020

no politics, no covid, just mostly flowers


Foggy this morning which dissipated into enormous white puffy clouds in the blue sky. I ventured out about 9:30 and I could not believe how humid it was/is. When I came in I checked the weather app...96% humidity. At 11:30 it's 75%. This is why I tell people I live
in the Gulf Coast. It's also why I have no patience with people who complain about the humidity when it's in the 50 and less percentile. It'd be nice if we got some rain out of this but we probably won't.




I did remember to set an alarm (thanks for the reminders) and the night blooming cereus did open last night. This is what it looked like at 9 PM.



And at 11 PM.



I've taken better pictures of these flowers when I had a flashlight to illuminate them indirectly instead of having to use the flash on my phone camera. These flowers are so delicate. This one must have been close to 7” in diameter outside petal tip to outside petal tip. And so sweetly scented. Can you imagine how gorgeous this plant and how fragrant the air was when it had a dozen blooms open at one time? Sorry I missed that.

The yellow trumpet flowers have been blooming as well but because they freeze down to the ground every year the plants are small and scraggly and my stingy pink one, which is really a good size because I managed to protect it last winter is finally putting on one flower and even it has some damage to it so no picture. There are three of these pink plants I see regularly on my travels around town and all three are covered with blooms. Mine gives me one at a time. If I'm lucky.



The firespike is putting out it's flowers.



The confederate rose (not a rose but a mallow) seems to be recovering from it's deformity, parts of them anyway. I'm getting some fully formed flowers.



The shrub that opens white is 12' tall. I kid you not, I measured it. The other one is just as tall. Here's what passes for a flower from one of the skinny pointy buds.



I mentioned that a few of the love-in-a-mist are sprouting way too early and a few poppies too but I have bluebonnet plants in the yard that are big enough to bloom. They shouldn't even have sprouted yet.



Remember my redbud tree in a pot that I thought might be dying? The new growth it sprouted at the bottom has continued to grow and the branch and twig tips on two of the three main limbs are all sprouting tiny leaves so I think I only lost one main limb.



The toad lilies are blooming though sparsely. I wasn't as good about fertilizing this 
year.



Steve Reed of Shadows and Light informed me of a problem with commenting on my blog due to the fact that it took
forever to load. I had noticed that it was loading very slowly this month while other blogs I looked at loaded quickly but I didn't know about the commenting problem. Anyway, I went to the help button and quite a few people were having this same problem with slow loading. Thanks to several of the answers already received it turned out to be a problem with a Linkwithin widget using HTML that was no longer supported. That widget was the one that selected 3 older posts at random and added links to them at the bottom of any new post and it quit working when I switched my comment format to the one I have now but it didn't start causing problems until new Blogger was de rigueur. So, thanks Steve. I deleted the widget and now my blog loads quickly.



14 comments:

  1. I need to check out that help button.
    Those toad lilies are whimsical magic. And it's too humid here for me.
    I wish I could smell your night-blooming cereus.

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  2. I had the same problem and deleting link within fixed it. Beautiful flowers in your garden.

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  3. Thanks for the pictures of the cereus. They're amazing plants. Your blog is now loading really quickly, which is good because I continually forgot to let it finish before commenting.

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  4. FLOWERS! They are so pretty, love the little toad lilies! Cereus, what a debut ! She is a lovely thing.

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  5. That night blooming Cereus is wonderful. Does it open at night to be fertilized by moths? I know that's true of other night blooming flowers, because other pollinators aren't about after dark usually.

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  6. The cereus is gorgeous. Odd, about the bluebonnets.I suppose the combination of rains and warmth got them stirred up, but I hope they don't decide to bloom. The front that's coming next week ought to give them pause.

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  7. That nighttime blossom is so amazing! I have never seen anything like it!

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  8. That is one beautiful sky. Thanks for cutting through the humidity to them.

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  9. Sometimes, flowers and skies are all we can handle. It's like a balm.

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  10. YES! That solved the problem! I love it! I'm so glad you figured out what was causing that. Now I won't lose any more comments! Woo hoo!

    That cereus is amazing. I remember one near my old office in Sarasota that had flowers by the dozen and it did smell amazing. (That's when I occasionally worked the night shift!)

    Your pink trumpet flower is like our Chinese lantern -- inexplicably stingy!

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  11. That cereus is gorgeous! Thanks for going to the trouble of setting an alarm.

    I read another blog with the same issue. I've learned to just wait until it finished loading before I try to comment. I'm going to go see if there is anything snarly on there & let her know!

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    Replies
    1. I had to go to the layout section from the blogger dashboard to find the widget and delete it. my problem was the HTML linkwithin widget.

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  12. I just love toad lilies and greetings from ours, just flowering, to yours. I gave up on datura years ago, too exotic for this climate but oh, so gorgeous!
    And what a cereus! We once stood in line for hours at the botanical gardens here to get a short opportunity to adore and inhale the night flowers there. It's still on my bucket list to visit the Royal Greenhouse in Laeken, Brussels for their night opening when their cereus is flowering, there are hundreds and hundreds of them in one massive greenhouse.

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  13. The flowers are so beautiful there. I love the night-blooming cereus. I'm so glad you went out and got that shot.
    I'm also glad that Steve mentioned that slow-loading blog page and comments. I had noticed that as well and am happy to see it fixed. Yay! Thank you!

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