Great pics...oooh, could feel the warmth!

Those "dinner plates" on the pond, wow.

And what a lovely Adenium you brought home!
I've got the desert rose too, and freaked when all the leaves fell off in Fall, but they're deciduous even indoors. (phew!)
Has yours got a big swollen contorted trunk?

What are those white flowers in your first pic at home?

The second pic looks like Malva? really invasive here, I've been chopping at the ground with a mattock for five years to get rid of it.
It's still winning 😕 coming up in gravel paths, etc.

Looks like the cat didn't starve while you were away 😆 😆
Barb

More pics from our RV-ing friends:

<img src=" " width="500" height="375" alt="el centro- palm springs 028" />

<img src=" " width="375" height="500" alt="el centro- palm springs 014" />

<img src=" " width="375" height="500" alt="el centro- palm springs 006" />

Barb

...
I've got the desert rose too, and freaked when all the leaves fell off in Fall, but they're deciduous even indoors. (phew!)
Has yours got a big swollen contorted trunk?

What are those white flowers in your first pic at home?

The second pic looks like Malva? really invasive here, I've been chopping at the ground with a mattock for five years to get rid of it.
It's still winning 😕 coming up in gravel paths, etc.

Looks like the cat didn't starve while you were away 😆 😆
Barb

Barb,

In the first pictures it's an echinopsis eyriesii. It had three flowers only all year long, all in the same time. I caught them open only in the first night we got home. (it has a lot of pups now, all less than 1", I can offer some in Canada if anybody is interested)
In the second one is a rose of sharon. It flowers all summer long and it's a very low maintainance bush. We prune it quite heavy in the spring, and it's always full of buds till the first frost.

It's true, even though the desert rose it's in a south facing window it lost all the leaves. I thought I lost it. Now it has a lot of them coming back, but it's like a meallybugs magnet.

Tavi

oh yes please, put me on your list for echinopsis in spring 😀 .
When the time comes, will see if there's something I can send you...

oops...rose of sharon, the flowers/stems/leaves look exactly like our malva.

The second time my adenium lost its leaves I knew not to worry.
I placed it in a cooler spot in a north window and withheld water for about 4 or 5 weeks.
Then back into a south window (and hopefully outside soon), more watering and a bit of fert.

I'll keep an eye out for mealybugs...seems my plants have everything else that crawls, flies, hops... 👿

thanks Tavi.
Barb

More pics from our RV-ing friends:

<img src=" " width="375" height="500" alt="el centro- palm springs 014" />

<img src=" " width="375" height="500" alt="el centro- palm springs 006" />

Barb

Robusta top

Filifera bottom 😉

Nice pics, makes me want to travel. 😀

They've headed to Palm Springs, visiting the Living Desert display:

<img src=" " width="600" height="418" alt="110218-Excellent_Adventure-Living_Desert_Entrance-600" />

<img src=" " width="561" height="600" alt="110218-Excellent_Adventure-Living_Desert_Zoo2" />

<img src=" " width="600" height="450" alt="110218-Excellent_Adventure-Living_Desert_Zoo-600" />

<img src=" " width="600" height="450" alt="110218-Excellent_Adventure-Living_Desert_Zoo-Cactus_Garden-600" />

<img src=" " width="600" height="382" alt="110218-Excellent_Adventure-Palm_Springs-600" />

<img src=" " width="500" height="375" alt="110218-Palm_Springs_Wind_Farm-500" />

The recent cold doesn't appear to have damaged palms yuccas or cactus...yet.

Barb

I like this last picture very much as a piece of art! But I rather prefer seeing the Washi's forest instead! Any data regarding the birds killed by these hydro windmills?

Igor,

However, a study[22] estimates that wind farms are responsible for 0.3 to 0.4 fatalities per gigawatt-hour (GWh) of electricity while fossil-fueled power stations are responsible for about 5.2 fatalities per GWh. The author's study therefore claims that fossil fuel based electricity causes about 10 times more fatalities than wind farm based electricity, primarily due to habitat alteration from pollution and mountain-top removal. The number of birds killed by wind turbines is also negligible when compared to the number that die as a result of other human activities such as traffic, hunting, electric power transmission and high-rise buildings, and the introduction of feral and roaming domestic cats

From here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_effects_of_wind_power

And years ago I read a report from a big big city (maybe New York?) where building custodians early each morning (before office staff arrived for work) would walk around the outside of skyscraper buildings, picking up dead birds that had hit windows overnight.

In the two years since my 10 kW wind turbine has been operating, we haven't seen so much as a feather on the ground near it. Individual wind turbines pose far less risk, I would think, than the huge wind farms where 200 turbines cover a large area of birds' flight paths. Recent legislation, based on input from the Audubon Society, has limited where wind farms can be built, i.e. away from historical migration paths.

Barb

Barb, no blames about a single standing mill. but if they are build as an industrial complex it means they are standing along (sorry I can't find right English words for expressing my thoughts) the main atmospheric flows that are using by migrating birds. I hope you understand what I mean.

And years ago I read a report from a big big city (maybe New York?) where building custodians early each morning (before office staff arrived for work) would walk around the outside of skyscraper buildings, picking up dead birds that had hit windows overnight.

Barb

I think it was in Vancouver, one biulding was a major bird kill. Thousands of birds a year. 🙁

Love the pics Barb, thank you friends for us. 😀

Igor, yes I understand what you meant perfectly.
Your English is much better than my Russian 😆 😆

Those wind farms ARE an industrial complex, that's true.
And naturally birds select the easiest (windiest) routes to help them along their migrations.
That's where the wind turbines are. Understood.

Aaron, holy cow Vancouver?
Possible, certainly, but building heights in Vancouver seem dwarfed compared to those that exist in much larger cities.

I remember as a kid in Vancouver looking up at the B.C. Hydro building, the tallest structure at that time.
Then as a teenager my parents took me to downtown New York City...
I doubted that the sun would ever shine on the streets below. 😯

Thanks for the friends' pics comment, Aaron; I'll tell them.
I'm looking forward to their next installment when they attend the Date Festival this week in Palm Springs...
Oooooh, it'll be a Phoenix sp. overload :happy5:

Barb

While waiting for the Date Festival pics, took a drive through Malibu.

I like this greenhouse... 😆 😆

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/33350784#comment

Aaron, holy cow Vancouver?
Possible, certainly, but building heights in Vancouver seem dwarfed compared to those that exist in much larger cities.

I'm looking forward to their next installment when they attend the Date Festival this week in Palm Springs...
Oooooh, it'll be a Phoenix sp. overload :happy5:

Barb

It was about ten years ago I read about it in a Smithsonian mag(I think). I could be wrong.
It was do to the area and the path the birds flew. I think it was an all glass building. People were being hit by dead birds, most birds dont fly that high. Been so long ago I am not sure where now. 😕

The Date Festival in Indio/Palm Springs, I drove through once and that was going on. A good place for a date shake. 😀 My first date plam came from seed from there. After you eat the date flesh plant the seeds. 😆

That could have been Vancouver's Bentall Centres One and Two...black glass top to bottom.
How sad. 😥

Seeds...why didn't I think of that? Duh!

Will have to email them.
Thanks, Aaron! 😀

Barb