purple, I lived in FL for 5 years and was hooked on green and lush. I have outdoor plants that bloom every month of the year, and my Musa basjoo banana trees provides a touch of tropical. Toni, if the Baltimore Oriole millionaires ever wanted my fruit, the price would reflect their ability to pay! As it is, I was frozen still to avoid scaring the timid Oriole. One thing about them, you usually only find the nest after the leaves fall. We hear them a lot more than see them. I don't know why the horrida name was used for these soft plants. Maybe because of their ability to spread horribly? A tiny piece can give a big plant in only a few years. This is the main specimen of R. horrida here, I would guess about 10 years old. My favorite Rhipsalis today is R. lindberghiana. It blooms well one time in the greenhouse in March, then again a little after I move it outdoors. It makes pretty purple berries, but whatever pollinates it doesn't work at it too hard since my fruit crop is somewhat limited. This might be a link to that one in bloom. I may have posted this before. Here is a link that might be useful: This post was edited by Dzitmoidonc on Fri, May 31, 13 at 17:28

Pixie Lou, I love those pond shots. You get such a range of critters visiting, and the green heron is especially nice. It has finally warmed up enough that Jane's least favorite critters are emerging in my garden, the snakes. I found a small (8") red-bellied snake that ended up in some grass clippings I moved to the compost after we hayed the lawn between rain showers. I was surprised to find him in the bottom of the garden cart, and tipped him out before I thought to photograph him. My reading tells me that they don't get much bigger than a big night crawler, so he was full grown. I was cleaning out the bed around the back patio where I so often see garter snakes, and had the company of this guy for a bit until he decided that I was interfering with his basking in the sun and left.

i have 5 to 6 pairs of Bullocks orioles nest around me every year. and they have anywhere from 3 to 5 babys for each pair. towards the end of July the males started leaving and are all gone. over the last 3 weeks i had anywhere from 5 adults females and about 20 fedglings coming and going from the necter feeders and the jelly dishes from sunup to sundown. but this week the numbers are going down each day. today i only had a group of four in and out. Mine are usually all gone by the first of Sept. but in late april the males start coming back and by mid may the females.

I was looking at some of my photos of the male and it seems it varies on the orange on the tail. I do have one bird book that says juvenile males have more orange so maybe the ones with more of an orange tail are last years males?? Here are two photos I took, the first one is a male back in May..... and this next one is from today, as you can see there is orange on the top of this male's tail.... Donna