This morning, from the front porch...

It's been such a boring winter, with just a dusting of snow a couple times.  Never enough to really get excited.  They were predicting we'd get a couple inches, which would be better than a dusting, but still not enough to keep it white for very long.  Well, we got 6 or 7 inches and it's just lovely.  The trees are heavily flocked and it's white for as far as they eye can see.  It's still spitting snow, though probably not enough to accumulate anymore.  I hate the brown of winter, so this is a vast improvement as far as I'm concerned!

We were supposed to have the cactus club meeting today at our place, but they decided (smartly so, I think) to cancel it.  I was really looking forward to it as Chuck was going to bring a bunch of plants to sell, including Hoyas and Dischidias.  But it's certainly not the best weather in which to drag out plants, so just as well, I guess.  There's always next month...

Got the kitchen floor all done, and I've ordered a new sink base - it's in now, and we're waiting on the countertops.  I'll be so glad to be rid of my laminate countertops.  I think my first chip on the edges must have happened in the few couple years, so I've lived with the ugliness of that for a long time.  I mean, the tops have held up well... I think the problem is that the laminate was just a fraction of an inch longer than the wood underneath, and that made the edges weak.  That's what you get when you buy stuff from Menards or one of the box stores.  This time, I'm getting it from a guy Keith (my tile guy) recommends.  Keith is such a perfectionist, I trust he only recommends people who live up to his standards...

Jeff repaired that awful spot on my bedroom ceiling - you can't even tell it was ever there.  It happened after that windstorm came through in 2008, and though I'm sure there has never been a leak since, it just got worse and worse, and because it's such a mess to have something like that fixed (and we had that bad financial spell 2010-2012...), I kept putting off getting it fixed.  I'm so glad not to have to look at that anymore!  It was SO ugly!  I took that opportunity to take down all the curtains and wash them, and have the blinds cleaned.  It feels so much better!!  

In the process of that, I enjoyed how much more light came in the spare bedroom and I ordered some rag garlands to go back up instead of the swaggy-valances that were up there before.  Here's how it looks now...

I love the new look!!  I figured I would need to maximize how many plants I can hang, too, if I'd be getting some from Chuck.  

And speaking of plants, I'm starting to propagate for spring.  I've got a bunch of australis ssp. tenuipes started... some obovatas.  I still have rubras from last fall.  And my verticillata decided to start dehydrating, so I chopped it up and made pots and pots of cuttings.  I'm hoping they bounce back so I can sell them this spring...  It's one of the BEST bloomers of all the Hoyas I grow!
I also plan to whack away at my australis ssp. australis.  I think I'll offer the two australis very very cheap this spring to encourage people to order and to get newbies hooked on Hoyas and maybe create some future customers.  

I spent about an hour and a half on one shelf in the GH today.  Detangling plants, clipping dead stuff, adding soil where necessary, even potted a Dischidia into a larger pot.  This I did while it sat on the shelf, because it had climbed up into the two shelves above it and I didn't want to untangle that one.  Most of the plants on that shelf are doing fairly good.  I did cut a dehydrating vine off of Ban Ngong Ngoy and put it in a pot to hopefully get it to bounce back. There's still a bit of parviflora hanging on - I've been nursing that one for 3 years!