Long weekend here, and...

off to a flying start.

Chilly here today. 65 degrees. 79 forecast for tomorrow, which will be nice. Maybe we'll have a BBQ.

Been pruning fruit trees and shrubs today. Surinam cherry got a major haircut. Rose apple got some lateral limbs lopped off. Grumichama, which had grown to 7 feet in the last 18 months, got whacked back to 4 feet and I opened the area around it so it should get more sun and grow more out than up.

Asian scale did kill the old queen palm, so I removed all the dead fronds and now there is just a forlorn five-stem trunk left. I'll probably plant stuff [palms come to mind] around it to hide it rather than try to pull it out. If I did pull it out, I'd have to use my truck as an anchor for the come-along, and the I'd have a hunk of debris too large for the recyclers to haul off, so I'd end up taking it to the dump. Much easier to just disguise it and let it rot down over a few years.

Been meaning to ask our orchid farmers--Scottie, Cathy, Jim--about cattleya orchids. Are they epiphytes? I tied an "orchid rescue" cattleya to the trunk of a ponytail palm about 18 months ago. It is putting out new growth in two or three places but no roots that I can detect.

That's the same ponytail that I gooped a "bulb" of a native orchid to a couple of years ago. It is growing very well, has roots the nearly wrap the ponytail's trunk, and is now a small cluster "bulbs". I halfway expect it will bloom this coming winter-spring season.

Island Jim
Southwest Florida
27.0 N, 82.4 W
Hardiness Zone 10
Heat Zone 10
Minimum 30 F [-1 C]
Maximum 100 F [38 C]

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