Tuesday

As of last evening, there are 155 cases of coronavirus in Nebraska and we've had a 3rd death. That makes the death toll 1.9% at this point. Compare that to the 66,500 cases they've had in New York with 965 deaths as of last night! I know that sounds like a lot, but a couple of points... First, think of New York's concentration of population compared to ours. New York's population was estimated in 2019 at 19.4 million, and Nebraska was estimated at 1.9 million, so they have 10 times as many people in New York as we do. So if you take the number of cases we've had times 10, you're still only looking at 1500 people! I think that says a lot... There's far more traveling in New York City especially, and the close proximity of the residents has to make a difference as well. On the other hand, their percentage is only 1.4%.

But they've been saying in the news recently that they believe we could have 100,000 to 200,000 deaths in the US because of coronavirus. I extrapolated that out using 2% and that means that they believe that between 10 million and 20 million Americans will have it eventually. That means that they believe 8 to 16% of us are going to be confirmed to have coronavirus before it's all over. And I think they must be deriving that number from the flu virus, because I see that between 5 and 20% of Americans typically get that each year. However, you have to take into account that a lot of people are vaccinated for the flu virus... I can't imagine that they didn't take that into consideration when crunching the numbers which tells me one of two things. Either it's not as contagious as they say it is, or the flu vaccine does not work as well as they say it does. Some interesting things to consider...hmmm!

Back to the plants... Yesterday I took pictures but didn't get any blogging done. So I'll go over those first. Fourth shelf has a lot of stuff that needs work on it. My 'Chicken Farm', which used to be so pretty, has mostly aging leaves that are starting to look a little rough. I'm trying to decide if I prefer to move it up into a larger pot size to get it to grow or whack it up and restart the whole thing. I may just take some cuttings and start them, move the main plant up and then add the cuttings to it once they're rooted...

Next is fuscomarginata. This is one of those pain in the ass species for me. When it produces a leaf, it's absolutely gorgeous with black edges. But the leaves want to drop when they're very young! So I don't get very many. I think I need to move it to a spot where it will never be disturbed, and that might help. Melliflua is like that, and it seems to work to put it outside in the summer, so I might just give that a try.

Hoya australis IML 006 is one that's looking pretty good. This one seems to be a bit of a climber, light green and fuzzy like australis ssp australis. Leaves are narrower and more pointed, and a little smaller. The climbing part is a little more reminiscent of ssp tenuipes.

Hoya anottiana is one I got from Gardino's several years back. As is typical with rooted plans, it didn't grow for me for a couple of years. It grows nicely now, but it does need moved up to a bigger pot this year.

And just a couple more in the sunroom... My largest macrophylla has at least been growing for the last 4 weeks. I suspect the one new leaf is done growing, not as large as the largest ones but pretty impressive!

Hoya lucardensiana has a single umbel of blooms...

And my star magnolia in the front yard is starting to pop blooms. Here's a single bloom...

Tomorrow will probably be the day that it's loaded with blooms, so I'll post a picture of the full bush tomorrow. It always gets loaded with flowers for a day or two, then when the flowers are spent is when the leaves come on.