Sometimes clubs are important to people when it invovles other things is a persons life besides just rod building. I think it is part of the friendship and spirit that you develop in being around others that have have the same passions and loves. As most of you realize, one of mine and Debbi's is our Plumerias. We have been married for 15 years in May of this year and have been growing Plumerias all that period. We started with a few, but as our passion grew...so did our collection. We had grown our collection to over 32 species and over 100 plants, the biggest being 12 foot. Some of our exotics we paid $75 for an 18" plant were now 6' high and 6 foot accross. The pictures posted here are from July of this year....this past summer was our best year ever...the blooms were incredible and prolific.
This January we were met with an incredible hard freeze that lasted 5 days. Since we are so close to Galveston bay, we usually fair pretty well not really seeing temperatures dip below freezing. Having the Plumies in the ground makes tham stronger and they do OK with this for a few hours. But this was different...it went into the mid 20's all night. It would warm back up again in the daytime, then plunge again. We dug up as many as we could and stashed them in my shop..but the bigger ones we could do nothing for...
It appears at this time that all of my big ones are dead. You have to cut off the frozen, dead limbs so it doesn't travel down the branches, but as we cut them back, we don't find live tree. Debbi and I are heartbroken to tears. We can start over again with what we dug up, but it takes years to get them to their former glory.
I know these are just plants and there are plenty of more improtant things in the world. But we learned when Ike took away our slip we had at Eagle Point and destroyed the Marina to the point that it will never acheive where it was before, to appreciate what you have at any point in time. Sometimes we get complacent with just assuming what we have now, will be there forever....I won't assume that anymore. I encourage all of you during your busy day, to take time out and (pardon the pun) smell the roses!
-- Edited by Terry Jones on Thursday 28th of January 2010 09:32:37 AM
Here are some current pictures....even though they look OK (they always loose their leaves over the winter)...the limbs are dead. These plants are mostly water.. The shots of the larger trunks shots where they weeped black ooze. We also lost over 12 seed pods....
Terry...... I share your pain.......years ago I had a greenhouse full of cacti and succulents from around the world...some raised from seed or cuttings....some given to me from follow collectors !! It was an extensive collection...and when we moved to Weatherford, we moved the greenhouse and collection, that was quite the ordeal.....then came the cold weather..;below freezing temperatures and just about wiped out my entire collection...seems the heater we had setup could not keep the greenhouse above freezing..so I ended up with a gooey mess like your bottem photo..!! Believe me, I share your pain !!...
I'm sharing your pain, too, Terry! I really hate to hear that. Up here in the northern region of Tejas, I've reached my limit on how many plumerias that I can have in pots...the garage is full up this winter. I know a fellow here that rents a climate control space each winter and rents a big Uhaul trk to transport them each fall/spring. I gotta draw the line somewhere. Again, sorry to hear, as you had some beautiful plants. Every summer, I DO smell the plumerias! Jerry
