SANDHILL CRANES, FINALLY!

After three years we finally had some Sandhill Cranes visit

The Great Freeze of 2018

Wow, time flies, I haven't posted any banana pictures since November 2017 since the weather has been amazing and we've been doing all kinds of projects outside in the beautiful 75-80 degree weather every weekend (actually, every Sunday since I have been working every Saturday...).  The bananas have been epic in size, health, and beauty, and I've just been enjoying them rather than photographing them.

Every January here in Melbourne, Florida, it gets COLD.  We hadn't had a freeze since 2014, and I guess I always hope for the best (no more freezes, no more hurricanes...  I'm 0 for 2 now with my "hoping"!).  But it was bound to happen, and the good thing is that now I'm confident that my bananas and papayas (and all of the tropical plants for that matter) can put up with 30 degrees F for a few hours for a few nights in a row and survive.

The banana leaves are a different story... they all suffered some sort of damage.  Mark and I did a survey around the park yesterday, and we agreed that the bananas that did well through this freeze need to be propagated, duplicated and spread everywhere... they're the ones that REALLY belong here!

Here's some examples of frost damage from the 30 degree low temperature 1/4/2018 (and a couple of 30 something nights which followed).

This is another Mona Lisa, added to the banana circle late summer 2017 to replace a wimpy banana.  She got a tree limb as a crutch after the hurricane to brace her and to allow her to strengthen.  She's fine overall but her leaves got melted in the freeze.  Other banana circle leaves had varying levels of damage, but the overall plant is fine.

Big Mick (actual lineage unknown) is gorgeous, really tall and tropical.  His leaves (upper left) just melted in the freeze, with rusty brown replacing healthy green.  Oddly, though, his big pup, Baby Mick, looks great!  What cold, was it cold?  LOL

This banana plant is fruiting and would probably have bananas ready to eat by February if the freeze hadn't happened.  We're leaving the bananas on the tree - they're gorgeous, they might be ok, and we'll never know unless we leave them there and see if they ripen into delicious bananas.  This is another "what kind of banana is this?" plant.  Check the rusty leaves out...

Big Mike (Gros Michel) did great through the freeze.  He's our entry banana, we love him and enjoy his huge leaves.  Ok, the leaves got pretty messed up, but he and his babies are fine.  He'd have more pups, but I harvested three pups a few weeks ago.  They're in pots in the back, looking just fine after the freeze.  Big Mike is HUGE - like 16 feet tall - and he's one of the bananas we want all over the property.

This is Mona of early Mona Lisa batch in 2016... well, Mona mat, that is, since the original Mona Lisa made delicious bananas last year and these are her pups.  The three pups from Mona look TERRIBLE after the freeze...  wow, she's probably the worst of them all.  We'll be watching to see what happens.  But my bet is that all of them are fine, they'll grow new leaves, and we'll forget about this ugly moment in their history. 

Lows this past week were:

1/4/2018    30 degrees F
1/5/2018    34 degrees F
1/6/2018    38 degrees F

And right now, it's 69 degrees F outside and I'm back in a tank top :)

Autotune South Park

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfkrtu1BSx8

Judgmental Map of Tampa

Locals are allowed to poke fun at their homes, but no one else can.  I'm sure I could easily make one of these for Southern California!

BEHIND CURTAIN NUMBER ONE

YOUR NEW LOW WEIGHT!

BUT YOU DID NOT CHOOSE THE BIG DEAL OF THE DAY BEHIND DOOR NUMBER THREE, OPEN IT UP AND LETS HAVE A LOOK......



ANOTHER NEW LOW WEIGHT!!!

WATCH OUT 169, I'M COM'N FOR 'YA!

Peacock Fly in From the Mountain

We have a lot of peafowl at P2, but we love watching this video to see what a zillion peacocks and peahen look like eating :)

PARADISE ISLAND, A SNAKE AND A BIRD

This corner of our property was covered with plants that looked like Missouri (read that not tropical). We like the jurassic look with big tropical leaves and palm trees so we cleared the area and found a bunch of crap buried there too. There was a big pile of concrete blocks, a couple of old tires, several dead tree stumps and a lot of crappy old viney dead plants that have not rotted all the way yet.

Paradise Island area begins along the right side of the Bridge/Road on the left

After extracting all the non organic matter (tires, concrete blocks) we leveled out the land and built a frame out of 2x12 boards that are 10 feet long. Eventually we want the boards to rot away or we'll remove them but right now they are supporting all the top soil we're adding to build the land up with good plant growing matter.

View from farther back

We've grown a pair of traveler palms from seeds, the largest of which is going to be planted in the Paradise Island garden. We'll remove the pot that is acting as a placeholder and try to install the plant in the placeholder hole causing minimum damage to the plant.

In the rear behind the wooden board frame we're going to add a Cocoa palm which we bought at Home Depot when he was a tiny ugly runt. Since then he's grown into a beautiful vibrant palm which is very slow growing. This is good because their leaves act like a privacy fence between our property and our neighbors.

S N A K E ! ! !
Jason our lawn tech god spotted a big snake while cutting the grass, he was sure it was a water moccasin. He told me and we went to investigate. By the time we got there the snake was no longer sunning himself on shore, he had headed into the safety of the pond.

I had my iPhone and shot the best photos I could so we could hopefully identify the visitor. His round eye shape makes me think he is a common banded water snake which is not poisonous. 

I grew up hating snakes but I've come to appreciate them as beautiful and part of our environment so I'm no longer scared of them. They eat biting insects and rats, both of which I really detest. 

Anna

The anhinga is a wonderful and strange bird. It flies through the air and it flies through the pond underwater trying to catch fish. She dives under the pond surface for up to 30 seconds at a time and covers the full length of the pond sometimes.

Anhingas use their wings and their feet to propel them under water. After they do a round of fishing they must sit on the shore for a few minutes and shake the water out of their wings so they can fly away. 

Anna looks prehistoric sitting on the shore with her outstretched wings. 

We love when she visits, some of our pond fish pay with their lives but a birds gotta eat! I've never actually seen her eat a fish, unlike our other visitor, the cormorant, who also swims completely below the surface catching fish. We named him Cory and we have seen him come up with a fish in his mouth more than once. 

PAPAYAS, BANANAS AND TREE FROGS, THANKSGIVING 2017

We had so much fun working on our farm over the Thanksgiving holiday. We moved over seventy 50-pound bags of top soil and another fifty 35-pound bags of mulch (we don't need no gym membership).

Our papaya named Herme (after Futurama character), making fruits 

Making bananas the all natural way

One of our four currently flowering banana plants

Home Depot $10 banana plant, a good deal, making bananas

Love the rich color of the banana flower, the bananas form under the petals of the flower

A little frog hanging out on Herme the Papaya

This little guy is less than an inch long

Frogs are down in each of the banana leaves looking for bugs to eat

Every banana leaf has water and a frog in it

P2 is a magical place bristling with life everywhere you look.

NEW BAMBOO AND BANANAS, THANKSGIVING 2017

Mary could not stop herself, she was out bright and early every morning over Thanksgiving break. She was chopping broccoli, moving banana plants and carving out new bamboo from some of our Emerald.

Here is how you make bamboo, dig down, cut the rhizome and you've got a new stick of bamboo ready to plant

Look at those roots, this bamboo is excited and ready to start a new stand of Emerald

We love the green color of the Emerald bamboo

Four new bamboo plants planted in the shady area near our irrigation pump

These are the new bamboo from Rockledge Gardens plus one Emerald from our inventory

Baby bamboo we planted less than a year ago, growing nicely, very fluffy

Another view of Rockledge Gardens new bamboo plants

One Emerald cane in the midst of Rockledge Gardens bamboo, this one is from our Emerald

This group of bamboo was planted over the 2017 Thanksgiving break. We bought four Emerald and two Hawaiian-Stripe bamboo plants at Rockledge Gardens nursery. 

Mary dug and carved out more Emerald bamboo from our own growth. 

Ants under ground

The banana circle is flourishing, but no bananas yet

These bananas were floundering by the bridge, too much water so we moved them to a new area

The banana orchard

Angel Mist

Original Recipe Bamboo - Propagated

Emerald bamboo - propagated

Alphonse Karr

Black bamboo - almost left for dead after ignoring him for a year, and with a little water he's sprouting green

Another Alphonse Karr

Original Recipe Bamboo - Propagated (2nd of 2)

HO-Fo, One of our $10 Home Depot banana experiments