My Florida Tropical Garden

The winter migration is on and we have some company. No it's not my family visiting for the holidays, I'm talking about a small "tournament" of Chipping Sparrows making a buffet out of our fresh bird seed. There's probably about 6 or 7 sparrows in this group I've been seeing almost everyday. Along with the chipping sparrows, we still have the titmice and cardinals.

Florida is experiencing an unusual hard freeze this early in December, which could mean a very cold and damaging winter in the near future. Last night the temps dropped down to 27-29 degrees for a couple hours here. Factor in the wind chill, and they say it feels like 20 degrees outside. BRRRRR! Several plants are still covered with blankets and my container plants are temporarily sitting in the garage. We're suppose to have another hard freeze tonight! That will make 3 freezing nights so far this season and it's only December 14th. I'm hoping we won't have too many garden casualties due to freeze kill. Though I'm sure the garden shops will be very busy in the spring when floridians will have to replace their landscape.

It's been awhile since I've added a photo so here's one I took today of the chipping sparrows. Enjoy! :)

Lately we've had a couple artic blasts coming through causing a long stretch of freezing weather here in Central Florida, which is unusual for our zone. I took some pictures below of some ice hanging from a Sago palm tree in our backyard and a plate of frozen water I removed from our bird bath. In fact, today some parts of Florida had actually seen snow flurries! Some Florida residents were making mini-snowman's with the winter surprise from the sky. I wasn't lucky enough to get any snow at my house though. I'm not sure if that's good or bad. LOL

The low temperature tonight is suppose to be 26°F in my area, the coldest so far. We are covering our tropical plants to prevent freeze damage which can kill palm trees and delicate perennials. Hopefully most of the plants will survive this cold snap but it's not likely everything will make it. Here's some photo's...