Everything Is Dead

Not one living thing in our beautiful, vast river is alive. No one near my  home has spotted a single living creature in the water for more than two days. Everything is dead.

I have personally communicated with dozens of people who are suffering from the toxic aerosols from this event. It's mostly respiratory problems, shortness of breath, asthma, sinus problems. Conjunctivitis, dizziness, and nausea, too. Pets are affected also if they've been near the river. I'm heartbroken. I'm sick. It's World Water Day and I'm crying saltwater tears for our planet.... I will keep reporting as I learn more about what has happened here in my formerly beautiful world. I know many of you are suffering in similar circumstances. We all need to work together to keep this planet together. What a mess, and what a job. Through tears, let's have hope and work together!

Weekend Walkabout: They're All Dying....

Y'all know how much I love my sand dune and all the creatures that live on it, and in the ocean, and the river. (I live between the Atlantic Ocean and a large estuary, which we call a river.) This weekend I have had a heartbreaking walkabout. The river is dying.

Brown and red tides are becoming more common here. But they usually only last a short time, in one spot. The critters can vacate that spot and carry on. Not this time. The guess is that this Brown Tide is caused by Aureoumbra lagunensis. Each cell is tiny, yet they are legion. They suffocate everything in their world, and they eat arsenic, then secrete arsenite, a potent toxin. They also gunk up the gills and blowholes of marine creatures, thus suffocating them. They suck the oxygen out of the water.
This toxic algae hasn't been studied much, though there are a few researchers on the job in Texas. We're coughing and hacking a fair bit here, but that's nothing compared to the creatures that are stuck in the water:

Neighbors have noted manatees in distress, with gunked up faces, and dolphins, too. I'll report further as I know more. Have any of you had Brown Tide in your neighborhood? It really sucks.

Orchid Season: Oncidium and Catasetum

I love all orchids, but Dancing Spider Lady Oncidiums are one of my top three faves. And mine is blooming!

Oncidium, MRobb, 2016

Here is my other Oncidium, on its last bloom (it is a little sluggish this year, possibly due to our cold winter):

Oncidium, MRobb, 2015

Oncidiums can handle a lack of water better than Phals, as they have lots of water storage capacity. They do like water, however, and lots of light. So my Phals are in the shadier corners, while my Oncidiums have lots of bright morning sun. The rather comical aspect of Oncidiums is how they seem to "crawl" out of the pot. The highly visible roots are prolific, and really seem to push out of the pot. Interestingly, they seem to do better in a smaller pot than a larger one.

And in News for Orchids, my Catasetum tenebrosum has come out of its deathlike dormancy and is growing again. Can you spot the new growth?

So now I'm watering it every day, and fertilizing once a week. Grow, Cat, grow!

Tillandsia albida: The Desert Dweller

Tillandsia albida, which means White Tillie, is so very, very white, you might think it's dead....

Tillandsia albida, ready to bloom. MRobb

But that is because it lives in one of the hottest, roughest, toughest deserts in the world. The Chihuahuan Desert of Northern Mexico is high elevation, and dry, dry, dry, as it is what is known as a "rain shadow" desert sandwiched between two mountain ranges. This Tillie, in its native habitat, gets a wee bit of water in June or July, and that's about it. So the intensely white, thick trichomes reflect harsh sunlight and retard water loss. The leaves are exceptionally tough and hard. It was named by intrepid naturalists Mez and Purpus in 1916.

My T. albida does just fine with a weekly soak along with my other Tillies.  The plant grows along a central stalk and blooms from the same stalk. It then grows several new stalks from the sides of the main stalk. The total length can be about 30cm, and the leaves grow to about 6-12cm. If you grow it in less intense sunlight, it will darken up slightly, but not much. It's quite the roughty-toughty Tillie!

Weekend Walkabout: Throw It and Grow It

Well, sometime in October, I had some extra sweet potatoes, and I didn't feel like roasting them.

 

What do I do in such circumstances? That's right, gardeners, throw it and grow it! Here's one of the sweet potatoes now, with one of my "plant spirit sculptures" to encourage it. I did this about a year ago with another batch of sweet spuds and I harvested them- yum! There's always something new in the garden. This year I will try to grow Japanese Shiso.

For some random weekend photos, here's a lovely dawn from this last week. And here's some more lovely scenery from this fall in Italy (Lago di Garda):

Red Boat, Lago di Garda, Italy, MRobb, 9-2015

Have a wonderful weekend, and enjoy your walkabouts!

Tillandsia pruinosa: The Frosty One

I thought "pruinosa" meant "Pruney", as in wrinkled, and the leaves of T. pruinosa are indeed rather pruney at the tips. However, the name really means "Frosty", and this refers to the heavy, silvery trichomes that capture water for the plant. These trichomes give pruinosa a frosty look over dark green foliage:

Tillandsia pruinosa, M Robb

Frosty is a low-altitude Tillie that grows from Florida in the US to the Caribbean islands to Mexico and Central America. It even grows in Brazil! It reminds me a lot of T. paucifolia and T. caput medusae, but there are some differences:

Tillandsia paucifolia, M Robb

Tillandsia caput-medusae in bloom, M Robb

T. pruinosa has much darker leaves, like a fir or spruce type green. The trichomes are even coarser and more abundant than on the two species above. It also seems to like more water than the other two. I water my Frosties the way I water my T. filifolias and argentea fineleafs- soaks twice a week and mistings pretty much daily. But unlike the very fine-leaved Tillies, T. pruinosa is susceptible to rot, just like the caput-medusae and paucifolia. They really love good air circulation. It's important to drain them upside down after a soak. And just like all my other Tillies, they like bright filtered light (east-facing window in tropics), and a fertilizer soak once a month (I add a little powdered bromeliad fertilizer to their soak on the first of each month). Blooming and pupping are slow to happen, much slower than with T. caput medusae. They grow, but very slowly. That's one reason Frosties are harder to find and more expensive. So this is a bit of a higher-maintenance Tillie, but very beautiful! I have two in my collection, and they've both been doing well for several years now.

Weekend Walkabout: Mammatus Clouds

I learned to look with dread upon the freaky, alien mammatus cloud. Conventional wisdom was that they heralded tornadoes. Fortunately, research has disproven that theory. The bumpily weird mammatus cloud shows up mostly after the worst of a storm is over. Sometimes tornadoes have preceded the clouds, sometimes not. They do indicate the presence of a severe, but waning, storm. Very rarely, they can also show up in milder weather conditions. At any rate, they are caused by moist air sinking erratically into dry air.

I spotted these clouds offshore my sand dune at dawn this week. Amazing! I did not enhance these photos in any way whatsoever. This is really how they looked.

Mammatus clouds at dawn, MRobb, 2016

Hoping all my readers have wonderful weekend walkabouts!