Wildlife Sightings and Venusian Trivia

I was taking an early-morning walk yesterday when I encountered a guy standing in the road in his bathrobe, holding a cup of coffee, waiting for his dog to do its business. I saw these stately, dramatic Angel's Trumpet (Brugmansia) plants growing in a nearby yard, and stopped to take a picture of them. "If you break a piece of that off and stick it in the ground, it will grow for you," he said. Which I suppose was an offer for me to do so, because then he went into the house behind the plants, but obviously I can't very well smuggle Brugmansia into the UK so I passed.

(Besides, Dave and I tried to grow a Brugmansia in a pot many years ago and it didn't go well. We had an invasion of red spider mites, as I recall.)

I had a pretty good walk, actually, and saw several other interesting things. I made a quick FloriVideo™ to share them with you:

We begin with a flock of ibis at sunrise, followed by a nonchalant peacock, some wary deer and some very loud black-headed parrots. (I think they're Nanday Parakeets, which are apparently known to have large feral colonies in the Tampa area.) I didn't bring my big camera and zoom lens on this trip so I couldn't get a better shot of them, sadly.

Thanks for all your good wishes about my stepmother. She seems to be doing much better. We spent time with her yesterday morning and again in the evening. She has some issues that have affected her kidneys, so she got both a blood transfusion and dialysis yesterday to help correct her blood chemistry before they do a procedure today to hopefully fix the problems. "I never thought I'd be having dialysis," she said, and I must admit it was a surprise to all of us too. I don't think she'll be home for Christmas, but we'll see.

In the afternoon Dave and I went to see blogger E, who is an old college friend of mine. We both worked on the student newspaper at the University of South Florida back in the day and became friends that way. I haven't seen her in a while so it was nice to meet up and sit by the pool in her condo complex for a chat on a pleasant, sunny day.

Here's a large colony of mother-in-law's-tongue growing around a tree at her condos. Florida is the place where houseplants run wild!

Last night I went out to play in a trivia contest with my stepsister and her husband. We didn't win, but it was an interesting contest -- the host asked a question, and then played a song that is somehow associated with the answer. A word in the answer may be in the name of the song, for example, or in the artist's name. Sometimes it's a tenuous association -- "Ventura Highway" was associated with the planet Venus, for example. Speaking of which, if someone asked you to name the hottest planet, what would you say? I said Mercury, but apparently Venus is hotter, at least according to our trivia host. I guess the atmosphere must trap heat, while Mercury is mostly barren rock. Who knew?