Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Tropical Garden #86, 1 by plantladylin

plantladylin wrote:
Debra: You sent me seeds of Cleome Purple Queen and Cleome Rose Queen so maybe you meant those plants for someone else? Our weather has been so weird the last month ... it was in the 60's today but we had two nights last week of 30º and 31º and tomorrow night and Monday night we are expecting possibly upper 20's here! I was really hoping this wouldn't be a winter like last year but this is waaaay early for us to have such cold! Some days/nights we've been 20º below normal temps!

Rita: What do you mean by my pictures are HD? My camera is a Canon Powershot SX20IS ... LOL, now don't ask me what that means as I have no clue. My husband gave the camera to me last Christmas because he knows I like taking pictures. I had a perfectly good Canon Powershot A630 but he figured I'd enjoy one with a better lens for closer shots. Unfortunately, I don't know a thing about photography or cameras and I'm forever hitting buttons by mistake and screwing up the settings ... then I have to wait for him to get home to fix it for me. I am very technically challenged and get frustrated easily with electronics! I've figured out the macro setting for taking extreme close up shots of stuff. He printed out a manual for me (since cameras don't seem to come with them anymore), but I can't make heads or tails out of the manual and all the technical talk. Sometimes I will shoot 100 pictures and maybe get 5 that are in halfway decent focus, sometimes they are so blurry I can't even figure out what it was I was trying to take a picture of! Many years ago (when I was 30ish I signed up at our local Junior College for a beginning photography course. Half the class was like me and knew nothing about cameras or photography but there were a few who seemed to be much more advanced and I have no idea why they were in the beginners class. After 3 weeks my friend and I dropped out, as did a few others. The instructor spent the entire class time answering questions and getting into discussions with the more knowledgeable folks, talking about dark rooms, developing, and even the chemicals used for developing film. The class was so far over my head and it never seemed to get back on track for the beginners! If I had a bit more patience maybe I could just learn my camera by playing with the settings but I get frustrated when I can't figure out what I've changed and how to get back to where I want to be.

This "Christmas Senna" (Senna bicapsularis) has been in bloom for about 1 1/2 months ... really beautiful blooms. This photo was taken last week. Now we've had a few cold days and some rain, and there aren't many blooms left on the tree.