It was a mess in our back yard.

We started the cleanup of the tree branches, banana trees, cabbage tree branches and eureka branches.  The branches were even on the street so, they were also picked up. Maybe we should just cut down some of the trees before the next storm.

Some of the tree branches could be chopped using a woodchipper.  It will take a couple of more days to complete cleanup work

As 5:00 pm, 9/29/2022, Ian is once again a Hurricane from winding down to a tropical storm as it went over Orlando, once it crossed into the Atlantic, the winds increased to hurricane force and was focus on a different state..

We received a free orchid, (Grammatophyllum Scriptum) from Port St Lucie Orchid Society almost 3 years ago during a class discussing orchid division. Now the orchid is in full bloom with 2 long flower spikes and many amazing waxy, light greenish-yellow flowers that have a sweet fragrance. As of July 26 2021, the length of the flower spike was approximately 2′ 10″ and size of the flower was 1.5″.  Green petals and sepals of the flower have slightly dark strips from the base to tip. The flower lip is short with median lobe of the lip rectangular.  Two yellowish, round pollinia almost covered by light-green anther cap are solid, waxy and colorful.  Magnificent and beautiful!

This Grammatophyllum is first time blooming at our yard.  Unfortunately it does not bloom often like other orchids.  It only blooms every 2-4 years, and the bloom may last 1-3 months. We will see.

There are 13 species of Grammatophyllum. One of the specie is Grammatophyllum Speciosum, the largest orchid in the world, so called tiger orchid.

For more information: Grammatophyllum (aos.org)

We had an opportunity to watch and make time lapse video of night flower, Epiphyllum Oxypetalum bloom on July 10, 2021.  What a surprise.  Total eight buds opened at same time.  It started to open around 8:00pm and took only two and half hour to reach full bloom with beautiful flower and amazing fragrance.  A real strong stink !

A turtle decided to  walk along our property after some rain, unfortunately the poor thing did not get all the mud off.  It may want to wait for a heavier rain. We believe the species is an Eastern Chicken Turtle based on Florida Turtles :: Florida Museum of Natural History (ufl.edu)

We used a camera, canon EOS Rebel T7i to take Time Lapse video of the orchid.  Just had opportunity to practice.  With built-in Time Lapse and flexible sitting in camera, we did not need to watch the process. Just click a button and go away.  We used 45 second interval, 300 shots, recording time approximately 3:44 hrs to yield 5 sec Time Lapse.  The challenge was the size of 109 MB .mov file produced.  So we had to convert the mov file to mp4 file.  The end result is 8 MB mp4 file to upload to the server.

Lc. Spring Drumb ‘Volcano Queen’:  Large and extremely fragrant petal and sepals are deep pink with contrasting lip as purple and yellow.  First time ever at our yard, there were four flowers from two different pseudobulbs, as two flowers had light pink petal and sepals and other two flowers had deep pink color.

RLC Liu’s Joyance: Large orange flower with contrasting red ruffled lip.  Flower is proximately 5″ across.  So far this is the largest Cattleya flower size.

Lc. Tropical Pointer ‘Cheetah’. Sepals and  petals are ivory and spotted in rose – deep pink.  The spathe lip is deep rose-lavender.  One of my cousin had imagination of lip, column, and stigma together as a young lady portrait with white hat, yellow shirt and red skirt.  Interesting.

Cattleya Aclandiae, Tripp Johnson:  Waxy, light-brown background heavily overlaid in deep chocolate brown spots and blotches. The lip is deep-pink.  Anther Cap is light pink. Also there were some deep chocolate brown spots and blotches on some of the leaves.

C. lueddemanniona, darkxsib: Rose – purple color lip with yellow at the base, irregular purple line to the base.

As a current member of the Port St. Lucie Orchid Society and an online orchid group organized by a Plant Ecologist, I learned different ways to grow orchids.  It’s getting much better and easier at this point and I might add that a close friend of mine living in West Palm Beach who earned her PHD in Biology/Plant Ecology is always available for consultation on issues I do not completely understand or have experience with.

Watching Epiphyllum Hookeri, night flower bloom / open was amazing.   Taking time-lapse video is more fabulous than I can describe and also a challenge.  We set the equipment up in the daylight as I did not want to miss the actual opening as I did last time.  The flower opens around midnight and the next day it is gone, but the tea from the flower is healthy.

A time-lapse is compressed video frames on subjects, where the process is sped up. So when the flower was opening last night, around 10:40pm, it took approximately 28 minutes and this video was compressed into only 23 seconds long Time-lapse. Not too bad.  I sat on my chair waiting and watching for the flower to open.  Then flower bud was getting bigger and bigger until the narrow pointed white petals started to open, the outside of the petals opening first.  Based on one friend, a plant ecologist, moisture content gets into flower bud and pushes petals open so now we understand the process. I was surprised on how quickly and suddenly each petal opened once it started.  Amazing.

Here is another video of night flower blooming at night, this time opening started around 11:30pm, 8/26/2020

It was another challenge to feed birds, not squirrel at our back yard. We used different type of bird feeders at different locations of the back yard at very beginning.  Then, squirrels always had a way to get on the bird feeder and really enjoyed the food. We did not give up. This time we used a sheet-metal piece around at the top of the feeder hanger to fix the problem.  Not too bad.  So, squirrels then waited on the ground for leftover. The feeder is hanging from the gutter via a piece of wire and is far enough away from trees so squirrels cannot jump from tree to feeder.  Also the roof is a metal roof and is very hot during daytime.

Last bird feeder was made by metal net feeder hung by a small chain.  This is by far the best solution. The blue bird was Blue Jay and red bird was a Cardinal based on a ecologist.  The squirrel may be able to get onto the pole but has a problem with the chain and actually getting at the seed.  Now I might add that the squirrel should have sufficient acorns from the many oak trees we have in the yard.  Maybe they cannot remember where they buried them during the winter months. 

Five days after the first bloom of Epiphyllum Hookeri (直叶昙花). We noticed many new buds on different stems. Wow.  We did not know that there would soon be more flowers.  We actually thought we would see “Queen of the Night” blooming next year.  We were waiting for a something to happen for two more weeks, sometimes wondering if the buds would die after all.

At 12:10am this morning we were up to see if the flowers would show.  Here we are.  Two more blooms of “Queen of the Night” with heavy fragrant was standing out, so amazing and fabulous. Cannot believe this.  This does not seem to be the end of it as there are an additional 8 buds in the waiting.

Epiphyllum Hookeri is night blooming cactus with white, large, and fragrant flower.  It blooms at night and disappears quickly in the morning.

We received a cutting of Epiphyllum Hookeri stem approximately 1.5 years ago.  It grew very fast and stems were getting longer, a little messy in a way.  So we repotted couple of times to support the weight of this giant plant.   We noticed 4 little buds on 3 different stems 2 weeks ago.  Then as surprise, it started to bloom, one after another. 

The blooms were 7-8 inches across with white petals. Most amazing and beautiful of the bloom were many white, soft, slightly wavering stamens as male parts and orange long pollen tube with deep yellow stigma on top as female pistil standing out against many narrow pointed white petals.   

The bloom last at least 6 hours and we were able to capture picture up until 8:30am. 

The photo above were taken at another location and of another tortoise. This was identified as a gopher tortoise.  This tortoise was moving toward to us and biting a small pieces grass which did not let go of.  Interesting habits of the wild life existing in and around our property.